We're Different; We're the Same: Cultural Universals, Generalities, and Particularities

Figure 1: Various Types of Family Units (Far Left: Nuclear Family; Middle: Extended Family; Far Right: Same Sex Parents Family; Image Sources: Google Images)

Today's blog post will be an extension of a previous post about culture, in which the elements of what is considered part of culture and how culture affects our daily interactions and thinking were explored.  While cultures around the globe are unique there are actually quite a bit of similarities among all human groups.  These similarities do vary by type, and today's blog post will be exploring these further by addressing cultural universals, generalities, and particularities.

Cultural universals are aspects of culture that exist in every culture.  This means that there are certain components of cultures that are the same, which are the result of human biological and cultural needs.  These needs necessitate these basic and key aspects of culture that is present in all cultures around the world.  For example, all humans have to eat, so every culture has some sort of food sharing system in place.  Additionally, in order for the human species to continue to exist there needs to be some reproduction, and attached to that and due to the extended infant dependency period among human children there are family units (Figure 1).  These family units also account for satisfying the human social need to be integrated into groups and consistently surrounded by people.

While these cultural universals are present in every cultural group it does not mean that they will manifest the same way.  This is where cultural generalities come in, a term that is defined as cultural patterns that vary by culture, being present in some but not all.  Let's look again at the cultural universal of the family unit.  Every culture has family units with them (again, an example of cultural universals), but what the family unit looks like will vary.  Some cultures acknowledge a nuclear family unit where only the parents and children are considered a family unit, whereas some cultures promote the extended family unit, in which the parents and extended family (e.g. grandparents, aunts and uncles, and any associated cousins/nieces/nephews) are one family unit (Figure 1).  Some cultural groups will also acknowledge family as only being on either the mother's (matrilineal) or father's (patrilineal) side, meaning members of either parent's family are acknowledged as family, while the other parent's family is not.  There can also be ambilineal descent, where both parents' family is identified as family, too.  Then there are matters of who can get married and start a family, with many cultures only recognizing heterosexual family units and some, such as American and Canadian cultures, that recognize homosexual families (Figure 1).

Lastly, there are some aspects that are unique to only one or a few cultures.  These are known as cultural particularities.  These aspects of culture are often so unique and different from other cultures that they require their own classifications and discussions.  Examples of cultural particularities are acts of cannibalism (e.g. among the Fore), head hunting traditions (e.g. among the Jivaro), and sometimes even unique cuisine.  Again, these are elements of culture that are unique to only one or very few cultures and are not considered the norm across all cultures.  The uniqueness of these traditions or customs are often accounted for through various culturally specific needs that often can be linked back to universal aspects of what it means to be human but the manifestation of that need is specific to the culture practicing it.

References

Gezon, L., & Kottak, C. (2014).  Cultural Anthropology McGraw-Hill