Luck of the Irish: Folklore and fairies in Rural Ireland
If the month of March has you seeing shamrocks, it might be a good time to brush up on your knowledge of Irish culture. The Rural Irish collection in eHRAF World Cultures is a great…
Category Archives: World Cultures Database Highlights
Celebrating the Vernal Equinox
The vernal equinox marks the beginning of Spring, representing the moment when the sun passes directly over the equator. This time of year is known for its many cultural and religious celebrations. For instance, Easter…
Women, gender and power in eHRAF (2015)
How does the relationship between gender and power vary cross-culturally? According to Forbes, Angela Merkel tops the list of “world’s most powerful women“, with Hillary Clinton and Melinda Gates labelled the second and third most…
New Culture Collections in eHRAF World Cultures
We are pleased to announce that eHRAF World Cultures now contains cultural collections for Haida, Karajá, Kutenai, Kiribati, and Mormon peoples. Jump straight into the culture collections by clicking on the culture name links below.…
Trick or treat: Ghosts, demons and zombies found in eHRAF
Happy Halloween! It’s the time of year for ghastly ghouls, wicked witches and terrifying things that go bump in the night. From haunted houses to headless horsemen, there are many spooky legends in Western culture.…
“I have worth”: female body confidence and perceptions of beauty around the world
Based on interviews of 10,500 women – including 5,165 girls aged 10 to 17 – in 13 countries worldwide The Dove Global Beauty and Confidence Report (2017) investigates the current state of female body confidence (Dove…
Our Better Nature: Resource Stress and Sharing Practices
There is enormous interest in the evolution of cooperation in both the animal kingdom and among humans. This focus on cooperative behavior is a necessary corrective to longstanding emphasis on competition in evolutionary models. Some…
Announcing: New look and features for Teaching eHRAF
If you haven’t yet browsed our open access collection of over 40 teaching exercises, now is a perfect time. Teaching eHRAF is a ready-made classroom companion offering sample syllabi for the eHRAF World Cultures and…
A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Childhood
What is a “normal” childhood? Childhood, child-rearing and care-giving are all areas of human development which are largely taken for granted from within a single culture. However, approaches to childhood and children vary greatly across…
Human Sociality and Cooperative Behavior: A Cross-Cultural Approach
This week, we have a guest contributor to eHRAF Highlights: HRAF Research Anthropologist Ian Skoggard, who shares some thoughts and findings on human cooperation. Cooperation has deep evolutionary roots. Bees do it, ants do it,…