Cross-Cultural Studies

This academic discipline represents a study of the shared constructs that emerge out of the social interactions of individuals from different cultures who inhabit overlapping social and physical spaces. The shared constructs are the various practices, beliefs, social roles, norms, expressions, forms of organization, and conflicts (economic, political, legal, religious, expressive, and artistic) that exist in an array of ways and that promote internal cohesion within communities. The cohesion that exists within communities arises from two different stimuli: First, the historical [Page 243]experiences of communities, that are numerous and often times unpredictable, that impact a community's cohesion and, second, the physical and social environments that people live in. It is from these stimuli that individuals and communities derive their ability to connect with their neighbors and other communities.

Cross-cultural studies is a relatively new area of academic study that has become more significant toward the end of the twentieth century as it sought to link working-class culture to domination and social liberation. Developing out of the British intellectual left movement of the 1950s and 1960s and spreading across the world, especially the English-speaking world, cross-cultural studies is prominent in a number of disciplines, including political science, economics, mass media, communications, literature, film, American studies, European studies, African studies, Asian studies, modern languages, and some social sciences.

The basic premise of cross-cultural studies is that comparisons are possible across different cultures, because all cultures have some traits in common with each other. Early cross-cultural studies are rooted in the studies of cultural evolution, which was based on the notion that all human societies went through a similar developmental process. The process had three stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. As a society progressed from one stage to another stage, it developed a set of practices, beliefs, social roles, norms, expressions, forms of organization and conflicts (economic, political, legal, religious, expressive, and artistic) that produced internal cohesion within the community. It is in the progression from one stage to another that shared connections to other individuals and communities are possible.

Key principles in cross-cultural studies include:

• Regional comparison, which is an attempt to define classifications of cultures and to then make inferences about processes of diffusion within a cultural region.
• Worldwide cross-cultural analysis is a way of developing a statistical analysis of cultural traits of a sample of nonliterate societies by comparing their traits to other diverse cultures for the purpose of identifying both common and uncommon traits.
• Controlled comparison is different than worldwide cross-culture analysis in that it attempts to answer specific questions about traits between groups.
• Coding of data from cross-cultural studies research can be done directly from ethnographic sources or from ethnographic reports. Both coding processes offer advantages and disadvantages.
• Comparison is essential to cross-cultural studies because it is the way by which understanding is developed about societies.
• All theories about cultures require testing.

Cross-cultural studies (a) identify aspects of national character that are common to all societies, (b) identify psychological characteristics that are common to all societies, (c) discover and describe intercultural connectedness, and (d) identify the ways by which culture is a determinant of cross-culture interaction.

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