HRAF Celebrates World Anthropology Day
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In celebration of
World Anthropology Day 2020
, HRAF hosted the UConn Stamford Anthropology Society for the new club's inaugural event. From March onwards, we will be featuring our
2019-2020 HRAF Global Scholars
that your donations to the HRAF Global Scholarship Fund have graciously enabled us to support. Our first featured scholar is Getnet Tibebu Alemayehu of Ethiopia. We are also happy to announce the addition of an
Art module
to Explaining Human Culture. If you are seeking the elusive luck of the Irish this St. Patrick’s Day, check out our latest post that takes an
anthropological approach to luck and chance
featuring Rural Irish folklore.
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A message to our members
As we continue to navigate the challenges of the COVID-19 global crisis, HRAF would like to express our heartfelt wishes for the health, safety, and well-being of students, faculty, librarians, and researchers around the world. While we all adjust to unprecedented circumstances, HRAF will seek to provide as much support to our members as possible. We are continuing to handle ongoing membership activities, and will engage with you on our
homepage
and via social media. For students and faculty in a period of transition to online learning, our social media channels are always open to you. Over the coming days and weeks, we will seek to do our part to help with this transition with enhanced guides to our eHRAF databases, as well as our open-access resources, all of which can support and accommodate e-learning. Please do not hesitate to contact
Matthew Longcore
.
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This was the inaugural event for the new student club, which is based at the University of Connecticut in Stamford. The club’s advisor is
Matthew Longcore
, HRAF's member services manager who also teaches Anthropology at UConn.
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Is belief in luck a cultural universal? How can anthropologists understand the concepts of magic, fairies, or witchcraft alongside luck and chance? The latest post by
Fran Barone
exploring Irish folklore and legends is a great place to begin. eHRAF's
Rural Irish collection
contains 2,347 expertly curated pages of ethnographic data.
In understanding the power of fairies as depicted in local folklore, anthropologists may conclude that a belief in “fairy magic” is not entirely about invisible beings or their quirky personalities. Instead, the interconnected cosmology of magic and chance can represent a societal coping mechanism for dealing with economic risk and uncertainty.
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Art in some form occurs in all cultures, but varies dramatically in form, content, and who produces it. While many think of art as largely a product of individual expressiveness, art shows clear cultural patterns. Cross-cultural researchers try to explain both cultural universals and patterned differences. Some of the strongest findings relate to societal differences in social inequality, modes of subsistence, and child-rearing. This summary focuses particularly on visual art, music/song, dance, and folktales.
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HRAF is pleased to announce our new monthly feature showcasing the research of
HRAF Global Scholars
. This month we are featuring
Getnet Tibebu Alemayehu
, a PhD candidate at Addis Ababa University. His thesis topic is language politics in African literature. Getnet is using eHRAF World Cultures to further facilitate his study of Africa.
Getnet’s research seeks to compare and contrast African political systems with Western systems, as well as those in other parts of the world. He is committed to social justice and gender equality. We wish him continued success with his research.
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