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…
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…
By Francine Barone 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…
By Francine Barone 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…
By Francine Barone 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…
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…
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…
By Francine Barone We are pleased to share information about the Human Relations Area Files’ collaboration with D-PLACE, the Database of Places, Language, Culture, and Environment. D-PLACE is an expandable and open-access database that brings…
HRAF is pleased to announce the release of our two latest resources for teaching and research. The first, Explaining Human Culture (just launched in a beta version at hraf.yale.edu/ehc), is a publicly accessible database containing information on…