Where Have All the Comparisons Gone?, a recently published series from the Society for Cultural Anthropology, revisits a longstanding topic in the social sciences: the debate over the value of comparative cultural studies. In this…
There are few signifiers of culture more potent and recognizable than food. Edibles and cultural identity share a deep-seated connection. Food, and especially our preferences for preparing, cooking and eating it, are about far more…
What do you do when a child throws a temper tantrum? Enabling young children to control their emotions – especially anger – is a challenge that all parents face. From deciding the “right” or “wrong”…
Jeffrey Vadala Throughout history, humans have collected and buried groups of objects together, whether for ritual purposes (e.g., offerings to the gods) or pragmatic reasons (e.g., for secret stores of food). Today, many cultural groups…
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.…
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…
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…
![Fieldnotes: Traditional Basarwa (San) dancing in Botswana [Video]](https://hraf.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/san-dancing-feature.png)
HRAF anthropologist Ian Skoggard visited Botswana last year. In this post, he shares his experiences along with some video footage from his trip. Last September 2016, my wife and I had the privilege to visit…
The Trobriands, a Melanesian people who live primarily on four islands in Milne Bay Province, northeastern Papua New Guinea, are one of the over 300 cultures covered in the eHRAF World Cultures ethnographic database. Fifty-seven documents…
Carol R. Ember has authored a summary of cross-cultural knowledge about Altered States of Consciousness for HRAF’s open access resource Explaining Human Culture. Nearly all societies are known to engage in practices that lead to…