I do not know the answer to this but it is an interesting question. Keen to see comments.

If you don't have the book, you can have a look here:

https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCQQFjAAahUKEwia18Lep4_IAhWFPRoKHWTgDus&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.humiliationstudies.org%2Fdocuments%2FBrownUniversalsDaedalus.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGBNdvYdeQ_YXQSmish5kcrG4yEdg

Methodology is not normally a term applied to writing a book (as opposed, say, to doing field or laboratory research), or at least not that sort of a book. 

In a sense the book 'Human Universals' is a "review" of the literature.  They are written all the time in many fields (n psychology, sociology, and of course anthropology). But there is no standard methodology for writing a book about cultural or biological universals. Brown did search the term 'universals' to go through various published journal indexes that listed references for further investigation.  

 In particular, aside from the anthropological evidence for cultural and biological universals, Brown paid attention to the evidence in psychology and evolutionary psychology.  

He also drew on his own field experiences in Brunei, Bali, Mexico, and of course the US--hence he relied on the comparative method.  That in turn was much supplemented by a long interest in world ethnography.  He had prepared for field work in Latin America.  He studied with Africanists (Leo Kuper, M.G. Smith, Victor Turner) to learn British Social Anthro, and thereby read a lot of African ethnography.  All this adds up to the comparative method.

 There is a section of my book where Brown discusses how he assessed the universality of problematic cases for universals and he dealt with the quantitative issue of absolute vs near universals. Much of this is not dignified with the term methodology but is standard method across many fields as part of what constitutes objective or scientific writing.

Brown followed in the footsteps of Murdock and others who had focused on the study of universals, but produced a more nuanced account of universals that had been neglected by the majority of anthropologists who tended to focus on cultural differences.  

Of course Brown does not deny tremendous cultural variation and differences throughout the world.   But the neglect of cultural and biological universals often led anthropologists to 'exoticize' humans in various regions of the world, reducing the ability to empathize with the so-called 'other.'   Anthropologists must emphasize both the similarities and differences of people and societies they investigate to produce a more comprehensive understanding of humanity.  

There is actually a long history in anthropology of looking for human universals. Brown was far from the first. Thus the tension between looking for universals vs the known unique cultural and sometimes physical characteristics of one's own fieldwork area/group have always been there. But it is only in more recent decades that the search for universals has fallen out of favor, leading eventually to the unfortunate category of "the other," someone unknowable and unlike "us."

Agree with you Patricia.  There is an interesting new book by German anthropologist Christoph Antweiler called 'Inclusive Humanism: Anthropological Basics for a Realistic Cosmopolitanism.'  He uses Brown as well as other research and reflections in philosophy, biology, and anthropology on universals to argue for a realistic empirically-based form of cosmopolitanism. http://www.v-r.de/de/inclusive_humanism/t-156/1009754/.  I have corresponded with him and he may write a precis of his book for the Journal of International and Global Studies that I edit (www.lindenwood.edu/jigs).  Christoph admits that he is within a minority of anthropologists these days who do focus on universals, but he thinks (as I do) that it is a worthwhile project for a truly cosmopolitan and scientific anthropology.  

Dear Jean-Loïc,

I hope you are doing fine! Thank you very much for taking the time to send me the link to Brown's article. I will be checking it out.

Best regards,

José Manuel

Dear Raymond,

I hope you are doing just fine! I really want to thank your for taking the time to think about my question, and for your excellent response. From what I understand, then, Brown did a comparison of case studies from all over the world and not a systematic cross-cultural analysis (in the sense that he did not work with a large random sample of cultures, and employed statistical analysis). Is this correct?

Regarding the book you mention, in which Brown discusses how he assessed the universality of problematic cases for universals and dealt with the quantitative issue of absolute vs near universals, what is the name of the book? I would like to get my hands on it.

FInally, I wanted to ask your opinion about the work I am trying to do, since it is clear that you have an extensive knowledge of this anthropological issues. I know that Brown states in his book that "mood- or concsiousness- altering techniques and/or substances" are a human universal. Besides, it is usually assumed (but not demonstrated), among some anthropologists, that the frequency of this behavior is high, even universal, but I have yet to find an investigation that convincingly supports such an assertion (beyond listing some examples from all over the world). In order to quantitatively ascertain the prevalence of this behavioral pattern I am working with the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, developed by Murdock and White (2006). I want to determine how common is the use of psychoactive plants, mushrooms, and alcoholic beverages in preindustrial human societies. I plan to survey the ethnographic data for all of the 186 societies of the sample in order to codify the information regarding the presence or absence of the consumption of inebriants. Do you think there is something to contribute to anthropology by doing this? Or would this be something useless and/or superflous to do, given that Brown already said substance use is a human universal? In other words: Is the use of drugs established enough as a human universal that it would be pointless to perform a systematic cross-cultural analysis as the one one I am doing?

I would really appreciate your suggestions on this matters.

Best regards,

José Manuel Rodríguez Arce

Dear Jose:

Brown used the HRAF based on Murdock's original cross-cultural studies to explore various questions regarding universals.  However, his book is not a statistical treatment of cross cultural universals.  When I discussed how Brown assessed the universality of problematic cases for universals and dealt with the quantitative issue of absolute vs near universals, I made an error in my sentence.  I was referring to his book Human Universals, not my book. He discusses these issues thoroughly in his book.  I discuss his book in my various anthropology textbooks published by Pearson such as my newly revised Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective, 9th edition, 2016.  

I think that your cross-cultural study of hallucinogenics, etc will be a great contribution to the cross-cultural literature.  You should look for Melvin Ember's Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology, which has some cross-cultural data on this topic.  Weston La Barre did some early work on this topic and I think he stated that it was a universal also.  Marlene Dobkin de Rios has a cross-cultural study in the American Anthropologist from 1985.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1985.87.4.02a00540/abstract.  If you haven't seen this piece, let me know and I'll mail you the PDF.  

Best wishes on your research.  Ray

Good discussion and I like Raymond's take on it.

Anthropology (social and cultural) is a natural science based on four basic steps: observation, conceptualisation, comparison, and reflexivity (or what Stanley Diamond called  introspection). therefore any question related to conceptualisation and comparison is central.

The fact that Brown's volume, which I read (a long time ago) with great interest and quoted in several papers, is attracting attention is very intriguing, but probably a good sign that young anthropologists start emerging from the quagmire of postmodernism, postcolonialism, French Theory, litterary criticism, deconstruction, and other delusional fads and magical mantras.

I am in the process of rewriting an introduction to a book dealing with a general proposition concerning the way humans in general (Homo sapiens) have built communities. I start by acknowledging the inherent difficulty in asserting that humans are everywhere different and display radical cultural differences.

Looking for universals is in this quest a necessary step, not taken by the majority of anthropologists in the past decades(with noted exceptions) since a dominant ideology has prevented us to do so.

As for the "methodology" it is like this in my humble view: there is a strategy of knowledge that combines comparison and conceptualisation. You have to compare but cannot do it if you lack the conceptual grid to compare. What will you compare if you do not know what is salient or important? You cannot compare everything you have to select items to compare. So you need a conceptual grid to begin with. But how are you going to build this grid without looking comparatively at the facts? this is an old conundrum: you cannot understand without comparing, you cannot compare without understanding.

But here is the good news: we do possess an instrument that is capable to solve more or less this impossible problem. It is called the mind. Apply it day and night and an answer will  start to form, probably not the only one or best one, but something to start with.

Just let me add that human diversity has been overrated.

The neglected pioneer here is Darwin. In the Descent of Man he wrote a chapter 'On the Races of Man.' In it, he considered whether or not the races were separate species. This was a claim typical of the racists of his day. He spends several pages reviewing the case for separate species and then proceeds to demolish this argument. People who are determined to make Darwin into a 'typical Victorian racist' lift quotes out of the part of the chapter where he outlines the position he means to demolish. In another chapter 'On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilized Times' he remarks that that the advance of civilization was affected by natural selection only to a subordinate degree. He talks about education, customs, laws, religion, public opinion as important factors. He cites Tylor's definition of culture. 

Great comment Pete!!  

Dear Raymond,

Thank you very much for the clarification regarding the procedure followed by Brown to gather the information for his book. This is incredibly helpful for me! Regarding your book, it sounds really interesting. You can be sure I will be getting it as soon as I can. Unfortunately, it is really hard to find good anthropology textbooks in spanish that are up-to-date and of good quality. Most works in social sciences do not get translated.

I really appreciate your comments, suggestions, and good wishes regarding my investigation. I did not know about Ember’s work; it sounds like it might be useful so I will try to get it. In regards to Dobkin de Rios’ publication, I would really appreciate it if you could mail me the pdf; I have her book but not the article. Thank you very much, Raymond!

Best regards,

José Ml. Rodríguez Arce

Jose: 

Please provide me with your email address so that I can send you the de Rios' publication as a PDF.  If you don't want to list it at this site, you can send it to me at [email protected].  

Colleagues, I have described the typology of archetypal features, from structural and statistical analysis of art and rock art. The features seem like a haphazard collection of 'concepts' such as species, postures, items, functions, etc, but they are primary expressions of compulsive inspiration.

Thus culture re-expresses the structure of perception, and thus of nature. Many of the recurrent features described in anthropology, psychology, iconography, calendar systems, myth, ritual and building sites, fit securely into the five layers of structure.

See some of my papers in the anthropology journal Expression, and some new papers and extracts from my book Mindprint on www.mindprintart.wordpress.com and from my book Stoneprint on www.stoneprint.wordpress.com

Typology may look like like a parlour game at first, but about 600 demonstrations indicate that I have found the structure, and most of the contents, of the set of human universals.

I welcome your comments on www.stoneprint.wordpress.com

Nice Contribution Raymond Scupin

Hi Jose Manuel. I was searching for something else re: Human Universals so apologies for my hazy recollection on this one. When I was a grad student, we read a prepublication version of Human Nature in Don's graduate seminar, and I looked into the universality of mind altering behavior or substances. For what was possible (by me) at the time, mood altering substances/psychoactive substances were extensively used across cultures, and the few possible exceptions I could seemed to have potentially mood altering ascetic-like practices (whirling, long silent prayer sessions or the like).

Using the online sample now, 30 some years later might allow quantitative systematic survey, but you'll likely find cases where no reports are found...and have to deal with whether that is missing data or absence of practice. For theoretical perspective, you might search for Ed Hagen and Roger Sullivan's work, which looks at why it is so common, e.g., Article Psychotropic substance-seeking: Evolutionary pathology or adaptation?

Wadley 2016 cites references asserting it is universal but in books that I couldn't quickly access, so can't tell what the methodology was https://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/gwadley/pubs/Wadley(2016)HowPsychoactiveDrugsShapeHumanCulture.pdf

Archetype is in nature and culture, not in drugs. Science should state the obvious, since popular anthropology is stuck in the paradigm of visible causes and effects, as in Hancock and others writing about a supposed 'code converted into certain plants as a message to the future'. I kid you not.