HRAF Academic Quarterly Vol 2024-03
Francine Barone
This summary features some of the exciting research accomplished using HRAF data from the eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology databases as well as Explaining Human Culture (EHC), Teaching eHRAF, and other open access materials from HRAF. If you would like to stay informed of the latest eHRAF research, sign up here to receive an email when our next summary is available.
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This issue of the Academic Quarterly features cross-cultural research, reviews of ethnographic literature, and examples of how ethnographic data from eHRAF can inform and challenge quantitative research. Topics from cross-cultural research and cultural evolution highlighted this quarter include bride price and harm, community resilience to disasters, female drug use, the universality of lullabies, witchcraft beliefs, climate change and housing, and varieties of love. There are also two examples from libraries and museums working towards more inclusive and reparative metadata to describe their collections.
Cross-Cultural Research and Cultural Evolution
Exploring cross-cultural patterns of female drug use: A systematic ethnographic study
Drake Rinks (MA thesis, San Diego State University)
The use of recreational substances, commonly referred to as “drugs,” constitutes a global phenomenon that carries both individual and societal ramifications. However, these burdens are not equally distributed across gendered and cultural divides as cross-national data indicate a male bias for virtually all recreational drugs. The vast majority of data indicating gender differences in drug use stem from industrialized nations or urban centers within developing countries, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of drug use patterns among smaller-scale, subsistence-level populations that constitute a substantial portion of human biocultural diversity. […] To untangle the complex interrelationship of cultural, political-economic, and evolutionary factors underlying low female drug use, I conducted a systematic study of ethnographic descriptions of drug use in electronic Human Relations Area Files, restricting the analyses to the 186 populations included in the Standard Cross- Cultural Sample. Ethnographic descriptions of drug use were cross-examined with preexisting population-level data on cultural, political-economic, environmental, and ecological factors theoretically tied to drug use in general, and low female drug use in particular. Results support the cross-national trend of a male bias with substantial cross- cultural variation in female use. Controlling for male drug use, the odds of female drug use decreased as male dominance increased and the odds increased when the drug was shared, used in courtship or sex, and/or used medicinally. Famine threat also emerged as a potential risk factor for female drug use, whereas fertility and pathogen stress had no effects. These results provide important cultural, political-economic, and ecological context to cross- cultural patterns of female drug use and illuminate promising avenues for future research.
Lullabies and Universality: An Ethnographic Review
Stéphane Aubinet
Lullabies are commonly described as a universal musical genre among humans and a likely source of insights into the origins of music. This study explores the validity of these claims through a critical analysis of the ethnographic literature, starting with a literature review based on the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Lullabies emerged as a “near universal” when defined broadly as any type of singing used to soothe children, but neither as a “near universal” nor a “statistical universal” when defined strictly as a specific category of infant-directed songs. As Indigenous Peoples from America presented more societies with few or no lullabies than other regions did, a second review focused on this area was conducted, highlighting three cases: (1) the absence of lullabies among certain Native American communities, (2) the historical diffusion of repertoires in the Circumpolar North, and (3) cross-cultural convergences and entanglements between musical genres on the Pacific Northwest Coast (complemented with corresponding examples from Polynesia). In conclusion, while the act of singing to soothe children is a near universal, it also presents significant cross-cultural variability. Perspectives for future research are discussed.
The author sought sources using the eHRAF World Cultures database, which “provides ethnographic texts for each society in the SCCS. Five searches were performed, using the following keywords respectively: lull*; cradle song*; sing* AND sleep; song* AND sleep; sooth* AND sleep. Mentions of lullabies (present or absent, broadly or strictly defined) were found for 74 societies within the SCCS.”
The cultural evolution of witchcraft beliefs
Sarah Peacey, Baihui Wu, Rebecca Grollemund, Ruth Mace
Witchcraft beliefs are historically and geographically widespread, but little is known about the cultural inheritance processes that may explain their variation between populations. A core component of witchcraft belief is that certain people (‘witches’) are thought to harm others using supernatural means. Various traits, which we refer to as the ‘witchcraft phenotype’ accompany these beliefs. Some can be classified as ‘symbolic culture’, including ideas about the typical behaviour of witches and concepts such as familiars (witches’ magical helpers), and demographic traits such as the age and sex of those likely to be accused. We conducted an exploratory study of the cultural evolution of 31 witchcraft traits to examine their inferred ancestry and associations with historic population movements. We coded a dataset from ethnographic accounts of Bantu and Bantoid-speaking societies in sub-Saharan Africa (N = 84) and analysed it using phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs). Our results estimate that while some traits, such as an ordeal to test for witchcraft, have deep history, others, such as accusations of children, may have evolved more recently, or are limited to specific clusters of societies. Demographic and symbolic cultural traits do not typically co-evolve. Our findings suggest traits have different transmission patterns, and these may result from benefits they provide or from universal psychological mechanisms that produce their recurrent evolution.
Using eHRAF World Cultures, the authors “ran searches using the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM) on the topic of ‘Sorcery’ and a keyword search for the terms ‘witch*witchcraft*sorcery’. Our variables were coded by two coders from 143 ethnographic documents, published between 1827 and 1995”.
The Varieties of Love as Interpersonal Attraction
Victor Karandashev
Joining other publications on love by this author, the current volume examines the great varieties of love as interpersonal attraction. Drawing on classical and recent studies from global perspectives, it explores the components, dimensions, and contexts of interpersonal attraction. Its comprehensive coverage includes biological, physical, psychological, social, and cultural perspectives to give a full scientific picture of love as attraction in animals and humans. This book is relevant to professionals and researchers who seek an in-depth knowledge of love and interpersonal attraction, the key aspects of studies in a range of scientific areas.
From the introduction: “Different from that holistic and multifaceted perspective, my second book, Cross-cultural Perspectives on the Experience and Expression of Love (Karandashev, 2019), presented an analytic cross-cultural approach. The book has further elaborated the conceptualization of love constructs across various cultures from a comparative perspective. […] From the descriptive, comparative, analytic, and integrative approaches of my previous books, this book, The Varieties of Love as Interpersonal Attraction, is going to present one specific yet overarching typology of love: the typology of love as interpersonal attraction. This typology encompasses broad and diverse varieties of interpersonal attraction as one of the major dimensions of love. Based on the comprehensive review that was set up in my last book (2022), I am going to present the biological, physical, sexual, psychological, rational, practical, social, and cultural varieties of love as interpersonal attraction.”
Ethnographic Reviews and Methods
Does bride price harm women? Using ethnography to think about causality
Eva Brandl, Heidi Colleran
Many institutions claim that bride price – where the groom’s family transfers wealth to the bride’s family at marriage – harms women. Owing to its long-term engagement with communities that practise bride price, ethnography is well placed to identify causal mechanisms at play in this issue, and there is a substantial literature on its effects in a variety of world regions, including Melanesia. Here, we condense this literature, drawing out key causal arguments made about bride price in various Melanesian societies. This reveals a complex, multi-causal picture: rather than being singularly harmful, bride price may involve a mixture of drawbacks and benefits, making it a double-edged sword with contested implications. Bride price may constrain women’s options before and during the marriage but also serves as a safety net that enhances their status. Its effects are probably influenced by many other variables, including age, kinship networks and residence structures. These dynamics have been transformed by conversion to Christianity, the (post-)colonial state, market integration, urbanisation and formal education, often yielding ambiguous outcomes. Rather than reducing ethnography to a collection of datapoints, we show that it can serve as a source of verbal arguments that can be used to challenge reductive narratives about sensitive issues and to formulate hypotheses for testing with quantitative data.
Brandl and Colleran argue that, “Taking ethnographic arguments seriously allows us to identify relevant claims in the literature and to challenge reductive narratives. These arguments can inform quantitative research by generating novel hypotheses, drawing attention to competing predictions, raising awareness of potential confounders that may have gone unnoticed in other disciplines and encouraging critical reflection about causality.”
Relationship between political participation and community resilience in the disaster risk process: A systematic review
Luisa Fernanda Duque Monsalve, Camila Paz Navarrete Valladares, José Sandoval Díaz
This article presents the results of a systematic review of the evidence on the relationship between political participation and community resilience in the face of disasters. The study aimed to understand the contribution of political participation to the resilience of communities exposed to disasters or disaster risks. The review included research reports conducted with communities exposed to disasters or disaster risks that presented results on political participation and community resilience variables. Studies presenting individual or family resilience results and theoretical articles or literature reviews were excluded. […] Upon reviewing the 22 research articles that met all inclusion criteria, it was found that political participation promotes community resilience to disasters by contributing to the quality and transparency of post-disaster reconstruction projects, enhancing trust and satisfaction with these projects, and fostering community autonomy in disaster risk management programs. However, despite its contribution to resilience, participation is often limited by multiple barriers that reduce its influence on disaster risk management projects. Studies emphasizing the political nature of participation in community resilience to disasters remain scarce and only sometimes account for the community’s impact on decision-making and the distribution of power and public goods. It is concluded that political participation is recognized as a facilitator of community resilience, especially when it constitutes civic power.
A practical guide to cross-cultural and multi-sited data collection in the biological and behavioural sciences
Laure Spake, Anushé Hassan, Susan B. Schaffnit, Nurul Alam, Abena S. Amoah, Jainaba Badjie, Carla Cerami, Amelia Crampin, Albert Dube, Miranda P. Kaye, Renee Kotch, Frankie Liew, Estelle McLean, Shekinah Munthali-Mkandawire, Lusako Mwalwanda, Anne-Cathrine Petersen, Andrew M. Prentice, Fatema tuz Zohora, Joseph Watts, Rebecca Sear, Mary K. Shenk, Richard Sosisand John H. Shaver
Researchers in the biological and behavioural sciences are increasingly conducting collaborative, multi-sited projects to address how phenomena vary across ecologies. These types of projects, however, pose additional workflow challenges beyond those typically encountered in single-sited projects. Through specific attention to cross-cultural research projects, we highlight four key aspects of multi-sited projects that must be considered during the design phase to ensure success: (1) project and team management; (2) protocol and instrument development; (3) data management and documentation; and (4) equitable and collaborative practices. Our recommendations are supported by examples from our experiences collaborating on the Evolutionary Demography of Religion project, a mixed-methods project collecting data across five countries in collaboration with research partners in each host country. To existing discourse, we contribute new recommendations around team and project management, introduce practical recommendations for exploring the validity of instruments through qualitative techniques during piloting, highlight the importance of good documentation at all steps of the project, and demonstrate how data management workflows can be strengthened through open science practices. While this project was rooted in cross-cultural human behavioural ecology and evolutionary anthropology, lessons learned from this project are applicable to multi-sited research across the biological and behavioural sciences.
Libraries and Museums
Provenance and historical warrants: histories of cataloguing at the Museum of Anthropology
Hannah Turner, Nancy Bruegeman, Peyton Jennifer Moriarty
This paper considers how knowledge has been organized about museum objects and belongings at the Museum of Anthropology, in what is now known as British Columbia, and proposes the concept of historical or provenance warrant to understand how cataloguing decisions were made and are limited by current museum systems. Through interviews and archival research, we trace how cataloguing was done at the museum through time and some of the challenges imposed by historical documentation systems. Reading from the first attempts at standardizing object nomenclatures in the journals of private collectors to the contemporary practices associated with object documentation in the digital age, we posit that historic or provenance warrant is crafted through donor attribution or association, object naming, the concept of geo-cultural location and the imposition of unique identifiers, numbers and direct labels that physically mark belongings. The ultimate goal and contribution of this research is to understand and describe the systems that structure and organize knowledge, in an effort to repair the history and terminologies moving forward.
Where Do I Belong?: Creating an Inclusive Metadata Policy
Nicole Lewis, Karen Glenn, Jeremy Myntti, Sharolyn Swenson, Katie Yeo
Inclusiveness and honoring different cultures that reflect our patrons has been discussed in many different venues in the last few years. The staff of the Brigham Young University Library recognized the need for our metadata to demonstrate the commitment we have to honor others and to create a community of belonging. The staff also recognized that a policy would provide a roadmap for how to embark on fixing legacy metadata and how to move forward in creating metadata that reflects our core values in the library and at the university. This case study details how we developed an inclusive metadata policy and its accompanying documentation. We provide examples of how the policy is being implemented and the steps we have taken to help library staff understand cultural humility and how it can be applied in their work.
Research from HRAF staff
HRAF Research Anthropologist Ian Skoggard recently published these three fascinating articles reporting his anthropological observations in the Diversity of Love Journal based on the paper he presented at the International Institute of Love Studies conference in January 2024.
Milk Jug Symbolizes Love among the Turkana People
Sex and the Sacred in North American Indigenous Art
How the Australian Bullroarer Invokes the Happiness of Sexual Love
In Skoggard’s work over the years at HRAF indexing ethnography for the eHRAF World Cultures, he has been intrigued by discussions of love symbols. Scholars argue that love is ubiquitous across cultures and ranges from the sexual to the divine. Skoggard argues that symbols can capture this multi-vocality of love in one image. He discusses three such symbols in a paper he delivered at the Institute of Love Studies Conference in the Canary Islands in January of this year and later published in three parts in the Diversity of Love Journal.
Climate, climate change and the global diversity of human houses
Robert R. Dunn, Kathryn R. Kirby, Claire Bowern, Carol R. Ember, Russell D. Gray, Joe McCarter, Patrick H. Kavanagh, Michelle Trautwein, Lauren M. Nichols, Michael C. Gavin, Carlos Botero
Globally, human house types are diverse, varying in shape, size, roof type, building materials, arrangement, decoration and many other features. Here we offer the first rigorous, global evaluation of the factors that influence the construction of traditional (vernacular) houses. We apply macroecological approaches to analyse data describing house features from 1900 to 1950 across 1000 societies. Geographic, social and linguistic descriptors for each society were used to test the extent to which key architectural features may be explained by the biophysical environment, social traits, house features of neighbouring societies or cultural history. We find strong evidence that some aspects of the climate shape house architecture, including floor height, wall material and roof shape. Other features, particularly ground plan, appear to also be influenced by social attributes of societies, such as whether a society is nomadic, polygynous or politically complex. Additional variation in all house features was predicted both by the practices of neighouring societies and by a society’s language family. Collectively, the findings from our analyses suggest those conditions under which traditional houses offer solutions to architects seeking to reimagine houses in light of warmer, wetter or more variable climates.
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References
Aubinet, S. 2024. Lullabies and Universality: An Ethnographic Review. Cross-Cultural Research (available on-line: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10693971241272406, accessed 17 September 2024).
Brandl, E. & H. Colleran 2024. Does bride price harm women? Using ethnography to think about causality. Evolutionary Human Sciences 6 (available on-line: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2513843X24000215/type/journal_article, accessed 17 September 2024).
Dunn, R. R., K. R. Kirby, C. Bowern, et al. 2024. Climate, climate change and the global diversity of human houses. Evolutionary Human Sciences 6 (available on-line: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2513843X24000057/type/journal_article, accessed 17 September 2024).
Duque Monsalve, L. F., C. P. Navarrete Valladares & J. Sandoval Díaz 2024. Relationship between political participation and community resilience in the disaster risk process: A systematic review. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 111, 104751 (available on-line: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2212420924005132, accessed 17 September 2024).
Karandashev, V. 2024. The Varieties of Love as Interpersonal Attraction, 1–55. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland (available on-line: https://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-3-031-63577-9_1, accessed 11 October 2024).
Lewis, N., K. Glenn, J. Myntti, S. Swenson & K. Yeo 2024. Where Do I Belong? : Creating an Inclusive Metadata Policy. Library Resources & Technical Services 68 (available on-line: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/7208, accessed 17 September 2024).
Peacey, S., B. Wu, R. Grollemund & R. Mace 2024. The cultural evolution of witchcraft beliefs. Evolution and Human Behavior 45, 106610 (available on-line: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1090513824000862, accessed 17 September 2024).
Rinks, D. 2024. Exploring cross-cultural patterns of female drug use: A systematic ethnographic study. Master of Arts in Anthropology, San Diego State University (available on-line: https://digitalcollections.sdsu.edu/do/736c5561-3575-43e9-affd-6fda4dce5ef8, accessed 17 September 2024).
Skoggard, I. 2024. “Milk Jug Symbolizes Love among the Turkana People”, Diversity of Love Journal. October 11. (available on-line: https://love-diversity.org/milk-jug-symbolizes-love-among-the-turkana-people/, accessed 14 October 2024).
— “Sex and the Sacred in North American Indigenous Art”, Diversity of Love Journal. October 11. ( available on-line: https://love-diversity.org/sex-and-the-sacred-in-north-american-indigenous-art/, accessed 14 October 2024).
— “How the Australian Bullroarer Invokes the Happiness of Sexual Love”, Diversity of Love Journal. October 11. (available on-line: https://love-diversity.org/how-the-australian-bullroarer-invokes-the-happiness-of-sexual-love/, accessed 14 October 2024).
Spake, L., A. Hassan, S. B. Schaffnit, et al. 2024. A practical guide to cross-cultural and multi-sited data collection in the biological and behavioural sciences. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 291 (available on-line: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2023.1422, accessed 17 September 2024).
Turner, H., N. Bruegeman & P. J. Moriarty 2024. Provenance and historical warrants: histories of cataloguing at the Museum of Anthropology. Journal of Documentation (available on-line: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JD-02-2024-0037/full/html, accessed 17 September 2024).
Images Credits
Photos via Canva Pro License:
Study session by PeopleImages from Getty Images Signature
Young mother at home rocking baby to sleep with lullaby by wundervisuals from Getty Images Signature
Men Doing Volunteer Works for Relief Cause, by RDNE Stock project from Pexels
Museo Charcas Anthropological Museum (University Museum) in Sucre, Bolivia by Andrey X.
Traditional House of Papua New Guinea by Elsie Konni