Our Common Denominator

Download or read book Our Common Denominator written by Christoph Antweiler and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the politicization of anthropology in the 1970s, most anthropologists have been reluctant to approach the topic of universals—that is, phenomena that occur regularly in all known human societies. In this volume, Christoph Antweiler reasserts the importance of these cross-cultural commonalities for anthropological research and for life and co-existence beyond the academy. The question presented here is how anthropology can help us approach humanity in its entirety, understanding the world less as a globe, with an emphasis on differences, but as a planet, from a vantage point open to commonalities.