ABSTRACT
General theories, which suggest explanations across many seemingly diverse cultural settings, are not antithetical to paying careful attention to culture and cultural variations. This principle is illustrated by showing how a general theory of status relations and careful attention to cultural variations can provide useful explanations for three very different phenomena: (1) the regulation of eating and sex to maintain status differences in contexts as varied as teenage peer groups, the Indian caste system, the pre-1950s US South, and Latin America; (2) the nearly unconscious adoption of the therapeutic (rather than punitive) response to failure and deviance in societies strongly committed to capitalism; and (3) why Britain was the country that voted to withdraw from the European Union. Combining a suitable general theory with cultural analysis provides insights not attainable by the sole use of either approach.
