The smile is universal...

Turns out my wise old Granny was right about most things. Whenever I was heading off somewhere to travel this adage would always be her parting words to me. Apparently her own mother had given her the same advice as she waved Grandma off on a French exchange during the interwar period of the 1930s.

One of the things I’ve been keen to explore further since starting this blog is the evidence for what all humans share, regardless of their culture. I figure that if the resources I create or find, link to areas of our life and values that we all have in common then a) that makes them relevant to a lot of people and b) offers opportunities for cross-cultural learning and exchange to connect us on both the individual and global level.

A long time ago I was a student of Anthropology. Like many pursuits of the nineteenth century (& since!), the foundations of traditional ethnographic research were built predominantly on the white, most often male, Western gaze. People in far off lands were viewed as ‘exotic’ and ‘Other’, with the majority of energy and resources spent on documenting and emphasising differences rather than shared features of their lives. As such the many things all human societies have in common have been underplayed.

In his book “Human Universals”, anthropologist Donald Brown lists several hundred features common to all known human societies. The detailed list spans societal customs & norms, language, behaviour and beliefs. He also discusses the difference between ‘etic’ and ‘emic’ features. For example, that we all have a blood type is an etic fact; that our culture might label and make use of them in some way is an ‘emic’ feature (apparently in Japan, blood types are considered in terms of couples’ compatibility). I’m interested in the interplay between these two, if our etic starting point provides common ground then perhaps the etic meaning or function in another culture can be applied to our own.

Since the turn of the millennium and the rise of genetic science we have come to understand that biologically, at least there is very little to divide us. We share 99.9% of our genetic material with other human beings. Just 0.1% of your DNA separates you from any other (unrelated) human on this planet. That such miniscule biological margins account for all the variation we see in humans is mind-blowing and all too often forgotten. Coincidentally it seems that the human brain is hardwired to separate and categorise. In-group bias is indeed a human universal.

In his discussion, Brown notes that historically, psychologists have been much more open to the idea of human universals than anthropologists, but have been limited in their discoveries by a lack of cross cultural studies. If we take the long view, the very long evolutionary view then we find a neat handful of processes which give rise to the majority of human universals. They are:

1. Ancient and useful traits developed by our early common ancestors. E.g. tool making, use of fire & cooking food

2. The cultural reflection of physical facts. E.g. Kinship terms to describe relationships; “mother”, “daughter” “sister”.

3. The operation, structure and evolution of the human mind (we’re all limited by the same information processor!). E.g. reciprocity to bond individuals to each other

Brown outlines how his list of universals cut across what he terms, ‘realms’ of the human condition - cultural, social, linguistic, behavioural and cognitive. For example ‘kinship terms’ to describe the relationships between members of a family are at once social, cultural and linguistic. I like the idea of realms. In my mind, these ‘realms’ are easy to relate to as the broad themes by which we manage our everyday lives - what we know, who we know and care about, how we communicate, how we spend our time, how we interact with each other and the environment, how we think and what we believe...

Once we remind ourselves that all humans are members of the same species then it’s fairly easy to imagine a common, underlying “why?” that underpins these realms - so that I and my loved ones can live a happy & healthy life.

I’ve been thinking about how this research might inform and structure my resources. It is pleasing to me that all the rich and varied ways of life humans have created can be sorted into a handful of categories, determined by our shared evolutionary history as members of the same species.

I will base my approach on the following assumptions:

1. Our biological common ground is the result of millions of years of evolution, resulting in a set of relatively narrow fundamental needs which all humans must fulfil in order to live happy & healthy lives.

2. As a species we have developed wide and varied ways to meet these needs within our ecological niche (of both time and place), we call this culture.

3. Dominant ‘Western’ culture is not a sustainable way for all humans to survive on a planet of limited resources and so there is an opportunity to learn from cultures that are less pervasive.

So currently what I am imagining is creating learning resources that relate to each ‘realm’ of the human condition. Clearly some universals lend themselves more easily to activities or learning than others. My next steps will be to look more closely at the detailed list of human universals and the cross cutting ‘realms’ to create family friendly categories that relate to everyday life. I think it will probably end up as some kind of phylogenetic tree… infographics help me sort my brain out and they usually start as a set of post-its…

Oh and to finish this post where I started… the smile is indeed universal, as is the facial expression of emotion more generally, but their meanings vary. And that my friends is a whole other post… or maybe a resource in the social (friends and family?) realm...

For a comprehensive summary of the study and implications of human universals head to this article by Donald Brown which I used to research this post.

Brown, D. (2004). Human Universals, Human Nature & Human Culture. Daedalus, 133(4), 47-54. Retrieved May 7, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027944