Human Universals is a book by Donald Brown, an American professor of anthropology

 (emeritus

Emeritus

Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...

) who worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara

University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...

. It was published by McGraw Hill in 1991. Brown says human universals, "comprise those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche for which there are no known exception." He is quoted at length by Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker

Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...

 in an appendix to The Blank Slate

The Blank Slate

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences. Pinker argues that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations...

, where Pinker cites some of the hundreds of universals listed by Brown.

Contents

• Preface
• Introduction

1. Rethinking Universality: Six Cases

Color Classification • Samoan Adolescence • Male and Female among the Tchambuli • Facial Expressions • Hopi Time • The Oedipus Complex

Oedipus complex

In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...

Conclusion

1. Conceptualizing, Defining, and Demonstrating Universals
2. The Historical Context of the Study of Universals
3. Explaining Universals

Explaining a Universal with a Universal • Cultural Reflection or Recognition of Physical Fact • Logical Extension from (Usually Biological) Givens • Diffusionist Explanations that Rest upon the Great Age of the Universal and, Usually, Its Great Utility • Archoses • Conservation of Energy • The Nature of the Human Organism, with Emphasis on the Brain • Evolution Theory • Interspecific Comparison • Ontogeny • Partial Explanations

1. Incest Avoidance
2. The Universal People
3. Universals, Human Nature, and Anthropology
   • Bibliography
   • Index

External links

• Human Universals. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991.
• List of Universals from the book.