Our third NSF-supported Summer Institute for Cross-Cultural Anthropological Research was held on the Yale University campus this summer. It was an intense and exciting three weeks for the instructors and the 12 participants that included a…
Carol R. Ember and Ian Skoggard In many societies known to anthropology, people look to their gods for help and for explanations of unfortunate and traumatic events. Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1948) suggested that religion is…
In a recent cross-cultural study published in American Anthropologist, authors Carol R. Ember, Teferi Abate Adem, Tahlisa Brougham, and Emily Pitek, reported results that may help us understand why land, a vital resource for most…
Does vocal music, or song, exist across all known human cultures? What behaviors are commonly associated with it? Do the musical features of a song predict the behavioral context in which it is performed? Samuel…
HRAF President, Carol Ember, has contributed this post reporting on her ongoing research into natural hazards and cultural “tightness”. Some societies appear to have strong and clearly defined expectations for how to behave in many…
It is rarely necessary to use the entire eHRAF World Cultures for comparative studies. As long as a sample is representative of some well-defined universe of cultures, societies, or archaeological traditions, sampling a sub-set saves…