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On the Unity and Diversity of Cultures
Author(s) -
CLARKE J. J.
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1970.72.3.02a00040
Subject(s) - epistemology , diversity (politics) , cultural relativism , endowment , sociology , relativism , philosophy , political science , law , anthropology , human rights
Attempts to display the underlying similarities of superficially different cultures in terms of basic needs, problems, drives, etc., fail, not, as is usually argued, because of paucity of basic materials relative to superstructure, but rather because of a logical feature of the concepts of need, problem, etc. Societies certainly have needs and problems, which they satisfy and solve, but these already presuppose the existence of a society that constantly subjects its environmental and biological endowment to re‐evaluation. The needs of a society are not “given,” therefore, but are functions of an already developed culture, and for this reason they cannot be thought of as constants variably filled with diverse cultural content. [methodology, cultural relativism, needs (basic), meta‐anthropology, semantics]