Within universities, a tension exists between research and teaching and learning, where research is often accorded a higher status creating a Cinderella effect by rendering teaching and learning of lesser importance. World university rankings, also referred to as global rankings, are contentious although they have become a permanent feature of the higher education system internationally. Lindsay argues that institutions have emphasized the importance of publications and prestige, which contribute to national and institutional reputation. Publications increase rankings (...) thereby contributing to the lower prestige given to excellent teachers as compared to excellent researchers. This has consequently led to a decline in the attention given to teaching. Pressure exists in the HE system to play the ranking game without acknowledging that there are expertise and pockets of teaching excellence in universities. Through their performance criteria, global rankings are transforming universities into becoming similar and conforming to a single hierarchy. In order to compete in the global HE market and improve their rankings, some universities have adopted a business model to mitigate the effects of globalisation and have begun to view themselves and higher education as a business. Global ranking systems thus have the agency either to perpetuate teaching and learning as the Cinderella function in HE, through the ranking game or to holistically focus their performance criteria on all the core functions of universities. Ethical policy decision-making in higher is thus essential. (shrink)

In this paper, I present some responses to an argument made by an economist in an online video: that when Britain leaves the European Union, it will be taking many high ranking universities with it, which will lead to an innovation deficit in the union. I present some responses by means of a pastiche of a widely read European fiction writer.

The fecund growth of open source knowledge goods in the global communicative environment underlines their public good character. Once knowledge goods are disseminated, their cost and price tend towards zero. It is now obvious (as apparent in recent OECD policy documents) that commercial research and trade in intellectual property capture only a small fraction of open source knowledge, which is expanding even more rapidly than global markets. But for policy makers this poses the problem of how to assign stable and (...) defensible value to free floating knowledge goods. Across the world, research universities have been positioned in a networked competition of institutions with globally mobile personnel and converging goals and organizational cultures. In rapid time global university ranking and the associated technologies of publication and citation ordering and counting have proved potent in arranging status, assigning value and shaping behaviours in higher education. We find that public goods are readily annexed to the longer-standing projects of producing university status and sustaining an imperial global geo-politics of knowledge. Here the relation between status production and free open source cultural production is not so much a contradiction as an antinomy. These issues are discussed in the light of the flourishing and fall of the lowland city-states of the Maya in Mesoamerica, a notable example of a status economy and of the interplay between status reproduction and cultural goods, a dynamic only partly nested in economic production. The article reviews the rankings technologies, led by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University research metrics, the global strategies of university executives, changing national policies on universities and research, and the aggregation of these effects in the emerging `arms race' in investment in innovation. (shrink)

Global university rankings have become increasingly important ‘calculative devices’ for assessing the ‘quality’ of higher education and research. Their ability to make characteristics of universities ‘calculable’ is here exemplified by the first proper university ranking ever, produced as early as 1910 by the American psychologist James McKeen Cattell. Our paper links the epistemological rationales behind the construction of this ranking to the sociopolitical context in which Cattell operated: an era in which psychology became institutionalized against the backdrop (...) of the eugenics movement, and in which statistics of science became used to counter a perceived decline in ‘great men.’ Over time, however, the ‘eminent man,’ shaped foremost by heredity and upbringing, came to be replaced by the excellent university as the emblematic symbol of scientific and intellectual strength. We also show that Cattell’s ranking was generative of new forms of the social, traces of which can still be found today in the enactment of ‘excellence’ in global university rankings. (shrink)

There is clearly a demand for rankings and information systems in the field of higher education, but there are also many questions about their validity, quality, and impact. Moreover, it seems that rankings, or at least some important rankings, are inclined to reinforce certain negative tendencies. Until recently, international competition has focused for the most part on publication and research output. As a result, education and the social role of universities have been neglected. It is an important (...) challenge, therefore, to create multidimensional rankings or information systems that take the different functions of universities into account and can be used by students, employers and policy makers. (shrink)

From the perspective of the complex system, university ranking is a complex system that involves multiagent actors, which evolve over time. Yet, current major university rankings fail to reflect the system dynamics of the university innovation system. In this paper, we apply the complex system model in the field of the university innovation system in the context of university ranking in the countries along the Belt and Road, which is a long-term overlooked field. We (...) introduce a new method of university ranking based on the “winning and losing” relationship to measure the relative competitiveness between universities. This paper contributes to complex system research, the Belt and Road research, and the university ranking arena. (shrink)

University ranking systems attempt to provide an ordinal gauge to make an expert evaluation of the university’s performance for a general audience. University rankings have always had their pros and cons in the higher education community. Some seriously question the usefulness, accuracy, and lack of consensus in ranking systems and therefore multidimensional ranking systems have been proposed to overcome some shortcomings of the earlier systems. Although the present ranking results may rather be rough, they are the (...) only available sources that illustrate the complex university performance in a tangible format. Their relative accuracy has turned the ranking systems into an essential feature of the academic lifecycle within the foreseeable future. The main concern however, is that the present ranking systems totally neglect the ethical issues involved in university performances. Ethics should be a new dimension added into the university ranking systems, as it is an undisputable right of the public and all the parties involved in higher education to have an ethical evaluation of the university’s achievements. In this paper, to initiate ethical assessment and rankings, the main factors involved in the university performances are reviewed from an ethical perspective. Finally, a basic benchmarking model for university ethical performance is presented. (shrink)

'The evaluation and ranking of our universities and their departments is here to stay. Should we oppose them, denounce them, sabotage them as much as we can? Or can and should we use them, refashion them, expand them, in such a way that our universities end up fulfilling their various functions better than before, without worsening our lives or those of our students in the process?' These were the questions put to the keynote speakers and over one hundred participants at (...) the 7th Ethical Forum of the University Foundation. As usual, the speakers presented contrasting viewpoints and the discussion was lively. The text below is a much expanded version of the personal conclusions formulated at the end of the Forum by its coordinator. (shrink)

'The evaluation and ranking of our universities and their departments is here to stay. Should we oppose them, denounce them, sabotage them as much as we can? Or can and should we use them, refashion them, expand them, in such a way that our universities end up fulfilling their various functions better than before, without worsening our lives or those of our students in the process?' These were the questions put to the keynote speakers and over one hundred participants at (...) the 7th Ethical Forum of the University Foundation. As usual, the speakers presented contrasting viewpoints and the discussion was lively. The text below is a much expanded version of the personal conclusions formulated at the end of the Forum by its coordinator. (shrink)

There is clearly a demand for rankings and information systems in the field of higher education, but there are also many questions about their validity, quality, and impact. Moreover, it seems that rankings, or at least some important rankings, are inclined to reinforce certain negative tendencies. Until recently, international competition has focused for the most part on publication and research output. As a result, education and the social role of universities have been neglected. It is an important (...) challenge, therefore, to create multidimensional rankings or information systems that take the different functions of universities into account and can be used by students, employers and policy makers. (shrink)

Motivation plays an immense role and is one of the key factors for successful and qualitative performance in all spheres of personal and professional engagement of individuals. Therefore, educational institutions, including academia, pay special attention to finding tools for motivating students, but also for motivation of their academic staff. Increased motivation has shown to lead to better performance and better performance inevitably contributes to quality enhancement at both individual and institutional level. The aim of this paper is to present an (...) institutional Ranking and Remuneration Policy based on Key Performance Indicators in four areas identified as the most crucial for successful operation of a higher education institution: teaching and learning, research, staff digital profile, service to society and project-based activities. Southeast European University in North Macedonia has developed KPIs in these four areas through an inclusive and transparent process based on its unique Total Quality Management approach. The policy has been created after many consultations, trials and simulations and its main objective is to enhance institutional academic productivity and effectiveness through a human resource vibration that starts from individual evaluation, motivation and performance differentiation and leads to stimulation for achieving excellence. It is at an initial stage and if tested well in practice, it can serve as a model for other higher education institutions in the country and wider. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article critically examines the value and scope of the cab rank rule in England and Australia. Despite the laudable non-discrimination principle underpinning it, the cab rank rule is subject to so many exceptions it is debatable whether the rule has any effect, positive or negative, on access to justice. On the other hand, when the rule is followed, it has the potential to unnecessarily distort the legal services market. Despite legitimate questions about its continued relevance, the paper argues that (...) the rationale for the cab rank rule remains critically important in an age where most people are unable to afford private legal representation and are ineligible for public legal assistance. The cab rank rule could play a greater role in delivering access to justice for all, by ‘rebooting’ it as a limited universal service obligation to provide legal representation for all who genuinely need it but cannot obtain it privately. In practice this would involve the creation of a compartmentalised pub... (shrink)

The study of ethical behavior and ethical decision making is of increasing importance in many fields, and there is a growing literature addressing the issue. However, research examining differences in ethical decision making across fields and levels of experience is limited. In the present study, biases that undermine ethical decision making and compensatory strategies that may aid ethical decision making were identified in a series of interviews with 63 faculty members across six academic fields and three levels of rank as (...) well as across gender. The degree to which certain biases and compensatory strategies were used in justifications for responses to ethical situations was compared across fields, level of experience, and gender. Major differences were found across fields for several biases and compensatory strategies, including biases and compensatory strategies related to use of professional field principles and field-specific guidelines. Furthermore, full professors tend to differ greatly from assistant and associate professors on a number of constructs, and there were differences in the consistency with which biases and compensatory strategies were displayed within these various groups. Implications of these findings for ethics training and future research are discussed. (shrink)

One of the unintended consequences of the New Public Management (NPM) in universities is often feared to be a division between elite institutions focused on research and large institutions with teaching missions. However, institutional isomorphisms provide counter-incentives. For example, university rankings focus on certain output parameters such as publications, but not on others (e.g., patents). In this study, we apply Gini coefficients to university rankings in order to assess whether universities are becoming more unequal, at the (...) level of both the world and individual nations. Our results do not support the thesis that universities are becoming more unequal. If anything, we predominantly find homogenisation, both at the level of the global comparisons and nationally. In a more restricted dataset (using only publications in the natural and life sciences), we find increasing inequality for those countries, which used NPM during the 1990s, but not during the 2000s. Our findings suggest that increased output steering from the policy side leads to a global conformation to performance standards. (shrink)

Writers on human dignity roughly divide between those who stress the social origins of this concept and its role in marking rank and hierarchy, and those who follow Kant in grounding dignity in an abstract and idealized philosophical conception of human beings. In these lectures, Jeremy Waldron contrives to combine attractive features of both strands. In the first lecture, Waldron presents a conception of dignity that preserves its ancient association with rank and station, thus allowing him to tap rich historical (...) resources while avoiding what many perceive as the excessive abstraction and dubious metaphysics of the Kantian strand. At the same time he argues for a conception of human dignity that amounts to a generalization of high status across all human beings, and so attains the appealing universality of the Kantian position. The second lecture focuses particularly on the importance of dignity - understood in this way - as a status defining persons' relation to law: their presentation as persons capable of self-applying the law, capable of presenting and arguing a point of view, and capable of responding to law's demands without brute coercion. Together the two lectures illuminate the relation between dignity conceived as the ground of rights and dignity conceived as the content of rights; they also illuminate important ideas about dignity as noble bearing and dignity as the subject of a right against degrading treatment; and they help us understand the sense in which dignity is better conceived as a status than as a kind of value. (shrink)

A detailed analysis of Leopold Ranke’s blending of universal values with factual data in the writing of scientific history, especially helpful in explaining Ranke’s intellectual development, and showing that Ranke’s famous claim to portray what actually happened was much more than an unqualified commitment to factual history. The author suggests that, despite the formidable reputation of Ranke in giving to his discipline a new direction and a new role for history in culture, his was not any startling discovery of the (...) new, as much as an unprecedented way of combining notions and contexts. Ranke is seen as a complex character, committed to factuality, objectivity, the uniqueness of historical forms, the analysis of states as "ideas of God" representing collective destinies, but even more concerned with the connectedness of history in its universality and individuality. Ranke, though involved in epistemological questions, was wary of philosophy. He saw in the term "philosophy of history" a devious invention of philosophers for the enslavement of history. He was certainly wrong in his early appraisal of philosophy as "always negating." Yet for the general, abstract, and universal, Ranke developed a progressive sympathy in the important process of historical understanding, and in his later years he saw philosophy as more than the Fichtean romanticism which seemed so far removed from objectivity. He sided with his friends Schelling and Schleiermacher against Hegel at the University of Berlin. (shrink)

Resumo: Os processos avaliativos, na universidade, são perpassados por um ethos que prima pela quantificação e pelo ranqueamento. Em decorrência, observa-se cada vez mais a descaracterização da avaliação na sua acepção qualitativa e, consequentemente, formativa. A afirmação desse ethos, na universidade, bem como na sociedade, é facilitada pelos algoritmos de big data, os quais estão na base da constituição da chamada “sociedade métrica”, em que há uma tendência geral para utilizar formas quantitativas para realizar classificações sociais. Neste texto, com respaldo (...) em revisão de literatura, objetiva-se refletir sobre dois processos de avaliação de docentes que atuam no ensino superior e que ultrapassam o espaço acadêmico pela sua dimensão pública espetacularizada: a) o ranqueamento da produção docente, por meio do índice h; e b) a avaliação realizada por estudantes em sites públicos, neste caso específico, o site de avaliação docente ratemyprofessors.com. A partir destas duas estratégias de avaliação, professores, pesquisadores e alunos envolvem-se em uma espécie de certame onde se mostrar, ser visto, monitorado, classificado passa a ser critério de aprovação (percebido) ou, no limite, perda de financiamentos e do próprio trabalho (cancelado). Palavras-chave: Avaliação Docente; Algoritmos; Sociedade Métrica; Cultura Digital. Entre el ranking y el rating: La evaluación digital del profesor en la era de la sociedad métrica Resumen: Los procesos de evaluación en la universidad están impregnados de un ethos que busca la cuantificación y el ranqueo. Como resultado, se observa cada vez más la descaracterización de la evaluación en su sentido cualitativo y, en consecuencia, formativo. La afirmación de este ethos, tanto en la universidad como en la sociedad, se ve facilitada por los algoritmos de big data, que están en la base de la constitución de la llamada “sociedad métrica”, en la que existe una tendencia generalizada a utilizar formas cuantitativas para realizar clasificaciones sociales. En este texto, apoyado en una revisión de la literatura, el objetivo es reflexionar sobre dos procesos de evaluación de profesores que laboran en la educación superior y que van más allá del espacio académico por su dimensión pública espectacularizada: a) el ranking de la producción docente, a través del índice h, b) la evaluación realizada por los estudiantes en los sitios web públicos, en este caso concreto, el sitio web de evaluación del profesorado ratemyprofessors.com. A partir de estas dos estrategias de evaluación, docentes, investigadores y estudiantes se involucran en una especie de certamen en el que mostrarse, ser visto, monitoreado, clasificado se convierte en un criterio de aprobación (percibido) o, en última instancia, pérdida de financiamiento y trabajo propio (cancelado). Palabras-clave: Evaluación Docente; Algoritmos; Sociedad Métrica; Cultura Digital. Between ranking and rating: Digital evaluation of professors in the metric society Abstract: Evaluation processes at universities are permeated by an ethos that emphasizes quantification and ranking. As a result, an increasing discharacterization of the qualitative and thus educational sense of evaluation is observed. The affirmation of this ethos in universities, and in society as a whole, is facilitated by big data algorithms, which are at the foundation of the constitution of the so-called ‘metric society’, in which there is a general trend to use quantitative forms to conduct social classifications. This text, supported by a review of the literature, reflects on two processes of evaluation of professors of higher education that go beyond the academic space because of their spectacularized public dimension: the ranking of professor production, by the “h index” and b) evaluations conducted by students on public online sites, in this case, the ratemyprofessors.com site. Based on these two evaluation strategies, professors, researchers, and students are involved in a dispute in which displaying oneself, being seen, monitored, and classified become criteria for (perceived) approval, or, at the limit, for a loss of financing for one’s work (canceling). Keywords: Evaluation Of Professors; Algorithms; Metric Society; Critical Theory; Digital Culture. Data de registro: 15/04/2022 Data de aceite: 13/12/2022. (shrink)

Ranke (1795-1886) championed objective writing based on source material and established the study of history as a major university discipline. These essays, presented in October 1986 at a conference held to mark the centennial of his death, place the German historian in the context of the developing discipline and introduce important issues and problems in European historiography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The target article contains a number of distinct but interrelated claims about the cognitive nature of folk biology based in part on cross-cultural work with urbanized Americans and forest-dwelling Maya Indians. Folk biology consists universally of a ranked taxonomy centered on essence-based generic species. This taxonomy is domain-specific, perhaps an innately determined evolutionary adaptation. Folk biology also plays a special role in cultural evolution in general, and in the development of Western biological science in particular. Even in our culture, however, (...) it retains an autonomy from other domains of thought and from science. These claims are questioned and clarified. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit nineteenth-century debates over historical objectivity and the political functions of historiography. I focus on two central contributors to these debates: Leopold von Ranke and Johann Gustav Droysen. In their takes on objectivity and subjectivity, impartiality and political engagement I reveal diametrically opposed solutions to shared concerns: how can historians reveal history to be meaningful without taking recourse to speculative philosophy? And how can they produce a knowledge that is relevant to the present when the project (...) of “exemplary” history has been abandoned? I put a special focus on the relativist themes in Ranke’s and Droysen’s answers to these questions. Ranke’s demand for impartiality leads him to think of all historical epochs as equally valid, while Droysen’s emphasis on the historian’s subjectivity relativizes historical truth. In order to explain why Ranke and Droysen nevertheless remained unfazed by the problem of historical relativism, I analyze their normative conceptions of the historian’s disciplinary ethos. I show that Ranke and Droysen think of objective impartiality and subjective partiality not only in methodological terms, but also in terms of justice and ethic duty. This normative element secures the professional study of history an ethical-political relevance for the present. (shrink)

The Laws of Belief: Ranking Theory & its Philosophical Applications, by SpohnWolfgang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 598.

Recent developments in agriculture have stirred up interest in the concept of “sustainable” farming systems. Still it is difficult to determine the extent to which certain agricultural practices can be considered sustainable or not. Aiming at identifying the necessary attributes with respect to sustainability in Dutch dairy farming in the beginning of the third millennium, we first compiled a list of attributes referring to all farming activities with their related side effects with respect to economic, internal social, external social, and (...) ecological sustainability. A wide range of people (i.e., experts and stakeholders) were consulted to contribute to our list of attributes. Our consultation showed that only one attribute was selected for economic and internal social sustainability: profitability and working conditions, respectively. The list for external social sustainability contained 19 attributes and the list for ecological sustainability contained 15 attributes. To assess their relative importance, the same experts and stakeholders ranked the attributes for external social and ecological sustainability by using a questionnaire. The most important attributes for external social sustainability were food safety, animal health, animal welfare, landscape quality, and cattle grazing. For ecological sustainability they were eutrophication, groundwater pollution, dehydration of the soil, acidification, and biodiversity. The present method for identifying and ranking attributes is universal and, therefore, can be used for other agricultural sectors, for other countries, and for other time periods. (shrink)

Between Leopold Ranke and Eduard Gans - Certain circumstances and stylistic considerations lead us to believe that the manuscript MS. 114 in the Mendelssohn Archive at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin is evidence of a course in "Contemporary History" held by Leopold Ranke at the city’s university in the summer term of 1827. The course was on the chronological history of the French Revolution. Ranke had already dealt with the same subject the year before, though in a less detailed manner. (...) And it was not until 1875 that he published a work on the period of the Revolution, but focussing solely on the war between the European powers in 1791-1792. Hence the importance of the new manuscript - in Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s own hand - which, previously, had been mistakenly connected with the teaching of the Hegelian jurist Eduard Gans. Mendelssohn attended his course on the French Revolution in the summer of 1828. (shrink)

Comparative constructions form two classes, those that permit direct comparisons (comparisons of measurements as in Seymour is taller than he is wide) and those that only allow indirect comparisons (comparisons of relative positions on separate scales as in Esme is more beautiful than Einstein is intelligent). In contrast with other semantic theories, this paper proposes that the interpretation of the comparative morpheme remains the same whether it appears in sentences that compare individuals directly or indirectly. To develop a unified account, (...) I suggest that all comparisons (whether in terms of height, intelligence or beauty) involve a scale of universal degrees that are isomorphic to the rational (fractional) numbers between 0 and 1. Crucial to a unified treatment, the connection between the individuals being compared and universal degrees involves two steps. First individuals are mapped to a value on a primary scale that ranks individuals with respect to the gradable property (whether it be height, beauty or intelligence). Second, the value on the primary scale is mapped to a universal degree that encodes the value’s relative position on the primary scale. Direct comparison results if measurements such as seven feet participate in the primary scale (as in Seven feet is tall). Otherwise the result is an indirect comparison. (shrink)

Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), generally recognized as the founder of the school of modern critical historical scholarship, and Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897), the great Swiss proponent of cultural interpretation, are fathers of modern history--giants of their time who continue to exert an immense influence in our own. They are usually seen as contrasts, Ranke as representative of political history and Burckhardt of cultural history. In five essays, each flowing gracefully into the next, the distinguished historian Felix Gilbert shows that such contrasts (...) are oversimplifications. Despite their interest in different aspects of the past, Ranke's and Burckhardt's views arose from common elements in the first half of the nineteenth century, the time in which they grew up and in which their first masterworks attracted such wide attention. This concise volume clarifies the beginnings of history as an autonomous discipline, while forcing us to examine our views on basic questions in historical scholarship. In the case of Ranke, relating his work to his times counteracts the current tendency to disregard the difference between the historical concepts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By focusing on this difference, Gilbert emphasizes the originality and novelty of Ranke's ideas about history. Although Burckhardt is often portrayed as an intellectually lonely figure, this book reveals the importance of relating his thought to the intellectual trends of his time. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Ranking systems such as The Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings and Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Rankings of World Universities simultaneously mark global status and stimulate global academic competition. As international ranking systems have become more prominent, researchers have begun to examine whether global rankings are creating increased inequality within and between universities. Using a panel Tobit regression analysis, this study assesses the extent to which markers of inter-institutional stratification and organizational segmentation predict global (...) status among US research universities as measured by position in ARWU. Findings indicate some support that both inter-institutional stratification and organizational segmentation predict global status. (shrink)

There has always, apparently, been a strangely persistent belief among scholars in the existence of Knights of Senatorial rank, and though the definition of these has varied from time to time, their existence seems to be universally accepted.The first form of this idea is to be found in the view that the phrase ‘equitesillustres’ used by Tacitus refers to Knights possessing Senatorial rank. In a recent article the writer has dealt with this question, and tried to show how Mommsen definitely (...) disposed of this theory. But in spite of his masterly refutation of it, it has found acceptance among more recent scholars, such as Furneaux, Pelham, Cagnat, and others. (shrink)

Environmental, health, and safety management systems have become common in research settings to improve laboratory safety through systematic observation and self-regulation. However, there is scant empirical evidence assessing whether these surveillance and inspection systems meet their intended objectives. Using data from safety inspections in research laboratories at a large university, we investigate whether conducting inspections, and recording and reporting findings back to the formally responsible actors (i.e., principal investigator scientists) lead to the improvement of regulatory compliance. Our analyses identify (...) a population of well-funded, high-status, tenured researchers whose non-compliant practices persist. Our interviews with environmental, health, and safety personnel suggest that higher-status actors disengage from the regulatory system, the compliance officers, and the system’s feedback process by their variable recognition and acknowledgment of relevant regulations, attention to the inspection reports, and responses to the feedback concerning repair of the unsafe situation. This study extends previous literature on regulatory compliance by providing evidence for the role of power and status in explaining actor-level non-compliant behavior. (shrink)

To what extent does perceptual language reflect universals of experience and cognition, and to what extent is it shaped by particular cultural preoccupations? This paper investigates the universality~relativity of perceptual language by examining the use of basic perception terms in spontaneous conversation across 13 diverse languages and cultures. We analyze the frequency of perception words to test two universalist hypotheses: that sight is always a dominant sense, and that the relative ranking of the senses will be the same across different (...) cultures. We find that references to sight outstrip references to the other senses, suggesting a pan-human preoccupation with visual phenomena. However, the relative frequency of the other senses was found to vary cross-linguistically. Cultural relativity was conspicuous as exemplified by the high ranking of smell in Semai, an Aslian language. Together these results suggest a place for both universal constraints and cultural shaping of the language of perception. (shrink)