This year we are pleased to announce two scholarship categories: Institutional (for educational institutions and research organizations) and Individual (for graduate students in master’s degree or doctoral level programs).
Candidates must come from low-income or middle-income countries, as defined by the World Bankand affiliated institutions must be eligible for our special country dues category. The application deadline is December 1, 2019.
A new topical summary onSexuality is now available in Explaining Human Culture, our open access database that summarizes the results of over 1,000 cross-cultural studies.
The purpose of the topical summaries is to overview what we think we have learned about a particular topic, such as sexuality, and to point out some of the things we do not yet know from cross-cultural research.
It is our hope that these summaries will not only be useful for classroom use, but will also stimulate further research to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.
We explore the history of the intellectual debate over comparative methodologies which goes back to a twentieth century split in anthropological theory between two divergent perspectives: early evolutionism and historical particularism.
As demonstrated in the post, comparative anthropology is making a comeback and HRAF continues to be at the forefront.
Towards an Anthropology of Fear, our Halloween post, explores the question: are some things universally terrifying around the world?
From haunted houses to headless horsemen, there are many spooky legends in Western culture. Fairytales tell of evil conjurers lurking in dark forests to capture and deceive innocent children. Hollywood movies feature bloodied cheerleaders stalked by psychopathic murderers.
We searched the eHRAF World Cultures database and found that many folk superstitions are not so far removed from a contemporary horror film. When it comes to horrifying characters, there are certainly a lot of similarities between menacing figures across cultures.
