HRAF News. Vol. 2018-1
April Board Meeting News, 3 & 5 Year Member Change, and a Global Scholarship Program
Thanks for your suggestions as we change the name of our newsletter! We are getting prepped for new cross-cultural research projects that will be underway at HRAF in the coming year as the new interns arrive. Next month we will also be releasing brand-new cultural collections for researchers, along with exciting multimedia tie-ins on our Instagram channel.

With April's board meeting behind us, we are looking at how much we have accomplished in the past year as well as new programs on the immediate horizons, such as a global scholarship program, a new member category, and great new application features which will be in beta by Fall 2018.
Warfare, Atrocities, & Democracy: HRAF Research
Do participatory polities commit less war atrocities? A cross-cultural study of 46 East African societies suggests that participatory polities are less likely to commit atrocities in the course of internal warfare , and that greater local participation predicts less internal warfare. In the Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research (2018), HRAF researchers C arol Ember, Eric Jones, Ian Skoggard, and Teferi Abbate Adam's retested the Ember et al (1992) model that suggested a cross-cultural association between higher political participation and lower internal warfare. Although the Ember et al (1992) model did not replicate for the East African societies, further analysis with additional variables (including the degree of formal leadership, the presence of state-level organization, and threat of natural disasters that destroy food supplies) suggests that greater local political participation does predict less internal warfare and, furthermore, that participatory polities were less likely to commit atrocities during internal warfare.

Carol R. Ember, Eric C. Jones, Ian Skoggard, Teferi Abate Adem, (2018) "Warfare, atrocities, and political participation: eastern Africa" ,  Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research. https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-05-2017-0290
We are pleased to announce an exciting promotion for institutions new to the HRAF family. In addition to our existing annual and perpetual membership rates, we have launched two new Regular Associate Member categories providing 3- and 5- year membership options with discounted dues.

Did you know that as a small, non-profit organization, Human Relations Area Files services over 500 academic member institutions from around the world ? Anthropologists, archaeologists, social scientists, and cross-cultural researchers from these institutions benefit from full access to our eHRAF Databases. If your institution is not yet a member, we’d like to invite you to join us now.

Our board meeting in April was a great success. We welcomed representatives from leading universities in the USA, the UK, and New Zealand to the HRAF house in New Haven to review the past year of work and plot out new paths for HRAF collections, teaching inititatives, and global presence in the coming year.

At the meeting we discussed future plans for HRAF, including a regional scholarship for HRAF access at institutions in regions with historically low access.

What is a “normal” childhood? Childhood, child-rearing and care-giving are all areas of human development which are largely taken for granted from within a single culture. However, approaches to childhood and children vary greatly across countries and peoples around the world.

Cross-cultural research using the eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology databases allows us to compare and contrast aspects of childhood between cultures.

Coming Soon
We will soon be offering scholarships for eHRAF access to institutions in underserved regions of the world.
We hope to offer a free one-year membership to HRAF for at least one institution in each sub-region, including full support, live help, live webinars, and our top-notch faculty and student research assistance, provided by anthropologists working at HRAF.

If you want to help us get the word out, or would like to provide your input on this project, please feel free to get in touch with us.
HRAF at Yale University| hraf.yale.edu