One of the central problems in the anthropology of <answer>art</answer> concerns the universality of '<answer>art</answer>' as a cultural phenomenon. Several anthropologists have noted that the Western categories of 'painting', 'sculpture', or 'literature', conceived as independent <answer>art</answer>istic activities, do not exist, or exist in a significantly different form, in most non-Western contexts. To surmount this difficulty, anthropologists of <answer>art</answer> have focused on formal features in objects which, without exclusively being '<answer>art</answer>istic', have certain evident 'aesthetic' qualities. Boas' Primitive Art, Claude Lévi-Strauss' The Way of the Masks (1982) or Geertz's 'Art as Cultural System' (1983) are some examples in this trend to transform the anthropology of '<answer>art</answer>' into an anthropology of culturally specific 'aesthetics'.
What is a cultural phenomenon? 
art