This book explores physical and behavioral characteristics that can be considered universal among all cultures, all people. It presents cases demonstrating universals, looks at the history of the study of universals, and presents an interesting study of a hypothetical tribe, The Universal People.

International human rights law was originally focused on universal individual rights. This book examines the developments which have seen it change to a multi-cultural approach, one more sensitive to the cultures of the people directly affected by them. It argues that this can provide benefits, but that aspects of universalism must be retained.

This book summarizes findings from interview studies probing K-3 students' knowledge and thinking about topics commonly addressed in the primary grades social studies curriculum.

Informed by the anthropological research of Professor Donald E. Brown on human universals, this book compiles 10 articles exploring the representation of common human cultural practices and concerns in literature, cinema and language. The book as a whole demonstrates not only that Brown’s human universals are shared by different cultures, but most importantly that they have the potential to form a basis for inter- and intra-cultural communication and consolidation, bridging gaps of misinformation and miscommunication, both spatial and temporal. The contributors are Egyptian scholars who cross temporal and spatial boundaries and borders from Africa and the Middle East to Asia, Europe and the Americas, and dive deep into the heart of the shared human universals of myth, folklore and rituals, dreams, trauma, cultural beliefs, search for identity, language, translation and communication. They bring their own unique perspectives to the investigation of how shared human practices and concerns seep through the porous boundaries of different cultures and into a variety of creative and practical genres of fiction, drama, autobiography, cinema and media translation. Their research is interdisciplinary, informed by anthropological, social, psychological, linguistic and cultural theory, and thus offers a multi-faceted and multi-layered view of the human experience.

Government and Politics is the component of Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Humanities in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme on Government and Politics in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Humanities deals with the discipline of general and introductory descriptions on a wide range of political phenomena in rather conventional ways. It covers the following topics: The first two topics, “Forms and Modes of Government” and “Structures of Government”, deal with institutional and structural aspects of political phenomena. The third topic “Political Aspects of Government is about dynamic political processes. The fourth “Ideas and Ideologies in Politics” investigates political thoughts and ideologies in the modern world. The fifth topic “International Politics” intend to give readers an international perspective, since contexts and systems which have international or transnational characters are obviously important background against which a political aspect of building a sustainable society must be considered. These two volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College students Educators, Professional practitioners, Research personnel and Policy analysts, managers, and decision makers and NGOs.

There are now many features of a new world order: the circulation of concepts, techniques, rules; the development of global epistemic communities; an increasing mix of national and supranational institutions; the formation of more horizontal links among States, which do not disappear, but rather become accountable to one other; the generalization of common usages and rules. Overall, this is conventionally called globalization. Globalization is the major development in the field of public law in the second half of the twentieth century. It has evolved according to an incremental pattern. First, it was applied to peace and human rights (the United Nations); then, to areas such as the sea, nuclear waste, health, labor, the environment. Subsequently, it was applied to trade, and, finally, to global terrorism and global crises. The process of globalization has been piecemeal, and globalization has developed through crises and unbalances, by accretion and accumulation.