Donald E. Brown

Are there cultural traits shared by all people in the world? That is the core question in the 'Human Universals' debate. It is one of the most essential questions in social anthropology, and at the same time the most intensely debated issue. Donald E Brown (° 1934) theoretical anthropologist from the University of California, Santa Barbara, provides a good overview of that debate in this book. Very interesting, as far as I'm concerned. And actually entertaining too, although I say that with some gloating. Brown exposes how some renowned anthropologists in the first half of the 20th century (especially Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Borislaw Malinowski) unjustifiably claimed that all human behavior was completely culturally determined, and that there could therefore be no such thing as universal characteristics or behavior (this is called cultural relativism and determinism). Indeed, this puts us in the middle of the nature-nurture war that was fought within the social sciences for much of the 20th century (and which has actually still not been completely settled).

Brown clearly how this cultural relativism/determinism was based on very inadequate field research, and biased assumption. Brown's own position will be clear by now: according to him, there indeed are universal characteristics that transcend local cultures, and these are simply the result of general human evolution in the Darwinian sense. Brown draws mainly on evolutionary psychology, which was just emerging when his book was published (1991). I must admit that in his treatment of what these universal values are in concrete terms, he remains rather vague and general: for example, that language is very important for all people and in all cultures, both in dealing with the environment, with others and with oneself. Well, I could have come up with that myself. Brown is a little more concrete when it comes to family and kinship: that a family is primarily a mother and children, and that this usually also involves a man and some form of marriage or institutional commitment. But then again: what use are statements like that? Maybe it’s merit just lies in proving cultural determinism wrong, nothing more than that. But perhaps I should see Brown's work as a starting point: it is already 30 years old, and maybe others have built on it to arrive at much more concrete delineations. I keep on searching.… (lisätietoja)

I commend the author of this book for his ambition. A comparative study of ancient historical writing ranging from Mesopotamia to Egypt, Israel, India, China, Greece and Rome would be a big challenge in itself. Adding medieval Europe, Byzantium, Islam, renaissance Europe and more to this list signifies a serious commitment to cross-cultural comparison. But unfortunately the author bit off more than he could chew in this book. He asks why historical records have been written and preserved in some societies (e.g. China, Rome) while history seems to have been a subject of no interest in other societies (India, Egypt). His hypothesis is that historical writing is suppressed in rigidly hierarchical societies but accepted or even encouraged in societies where changes in social status depend on merit. This seems to make sense on an intuitive level, so I was looking forward to reading his analysis to learn more.

But to my disappontment there wasn't really anything more to learn. This book is beset by a number of problems. First of all, the author has included far too many cases in his study. The societies he studies are so different that I doubt if it makes much sense to uncritically compare "historiography" and "social stratification" across them all. Think about Egypt and Mesopotamia, for instance. It would require a great deal of qualification and detailed explanation to show in what sense they are comparable to Islamic civilization or renaissance Europe. But the author just cuts every possible corner without any elaboration.

His method is simple almost to the point of embarrassment: first, see if historiography in society A is judged to be of low, medium or high quality. Then, see if social stratification in society A is judged to have been rigid or flexible. Finally, compare the historiography and hierarchy data from societies A, B, C,... and see if these two variables correlate. But there's no sign of a general theoretical argument which would capture any key aspects of this comparison. The simple statement "hierarchy seems to correlate with historical writing" just isn't interesting enough to be carried through an entire book without further elaboration.

The text also seems quite fragmented. Most pages have at least 5-10 references to other sources. It reads almost like a student's essay where the author skims the surface by citation but never penetrates beneath the sources to new insights. Again, this reflects the absence of a theoretical framework where facts could be classified and discussed. Finally, the correlation the author sets out to prove is there, but could it not equally well have been established for other fields of intellectual activity? Was history really any different from, say, political or scientific thought in this regard? The author comments briefly on this question in the final conclusions, but he doesn't manage to say anything of interest.

In conclusion, this is an ambitious book but the author falls flat on his face in putting the argument together. Instead of searching for correlations in a broad sample he should have focused on a smaller number of societies, studied them in greater detail and written in a more theoretical mode. As it stands, there's no reason for you to read the book since I can express its one and only point in this sentence: historical writing has occurred to a greater extent in societies with flexible social organisation than in societies with rigid, inherited hierarchies. That's it.

Instead of this book I recommend Bruce Trigger's Understanding Early Civilizations, which includes a much better comparative study of social hierarchy. It also has some good chapters on literature and knowledge.… (lisätietoja)