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…
By Francine Barone An insightful publication by Fulco Scherjon, Corrie Bakels, Katharine MacDonald, and Wil Roebroeks in the June 2015 issue of Current Anthropology sheds new light on present-day and historical fire setting practices among…
The Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale University is pleased to announce a one-year internship in Melvin Ember’s name. Melvin Ember was President of HRAF from 1987 until his death in 2009. The intent…
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…
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…
How often do events have to occur for humans to plan for them? Do unpredictable hazards lead to different cultural transformations than do more predictable hazards? Under what conditions are contingency plans overwhelmed in the…