Join us November 20-23 in Tampa, Florida for the 2024 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. The meeting will take place at the Tampa Convention Center. The theme of this year's meeting is, "Praxis". The word "Praxis" suggests the combination of "practice" and "action". This conference aims to apply praxis to our communities and our work, encouraging the anthropological discussion of reimagining, creating, questioning, and debating an anthropological approaches to praxis. The theme supports the ethical and equitable treatment of the communities we work and live in.

Carol Ember and Matthew Longcore will be in attendance at the AAA meeting. If you are attending the meeting, please visit HRAF at Booth #215 in the exhibit hall to learn about the eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology databases. We will be giving away free trials of the databases, signature tote bags, and are offering exclusive discounts to those in attendance.

Click here to read about the AAA Annual Meeting in Tampa

HRAF researchers are presenting papers on November 20th at the AAA Annual Meeting as part of a panel entitled "Cross-Cultural Studies of Societal Effects of Exogenous Forces." Presenters include Teferi Abate Adem, Carol Ember, Michael Fischer, Samantha King, Stefania Becerra Lavado, and Ian Skoggard.

Four papers discuss possible cultural transformations in response to natural hazards in a global sample. The papers consider variation in the frequency and emotionality of rituals, food conventions and etiquette, unilineal descent and kinship tightness, and differences that may result from food-destroying versus nonfood-destroying hazards. One methods paper describes recent measures of hazards, looking at hazard dimensions such as frequency, severity, predictability, or slow or fast-onset. Another methods paper describes how new digital methods used to analyze ethnographic text in eHRAF World Cultures may help identify cultural processes.

Click here for the AAA Meeting Schedule and Program

December 3, 2024 is #GivingTuesday: a global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world.

We hope you will consider joining the Friends of HRAF for #GivingTuesday. We welcome a helping hand in promoting anthropology, cross-cultural research, and the understanding of cultural diversity. The Friends of HRAF offers our supporters the opportunity to directly contribute to the development of HRAF and thereby ensure its continuing place at the heart of anthropology and cultural research.

Contributions enable us to advance our mission of understanding cultural diversity through scholarly research and education. Our funding priorities include the HRAF Global Scholars program and our open access resources (Explaining Human Culture, Teaching eHRAF, eHRAF Workbooks, and our online introductory course).

The Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization and eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions.

Join the Friends of HRAF today in honor of Giving Tuesday!

What kinds of exciting studies are being done using the data from eHRAF World Cultures, eHRAF Archaeology, Teaching eHRAF, and other HRAF resources?

In the latest edition of the Academic Quarterly, we are excited to share new research on bride price and harm, community resilience to disasters, female drug use, the universality of lullabies, witchcraft beliefs, climate change and housing, and varieties of love.

Publications from HRAF staff this quarter include three articles by Ian Skoggard covering his studies on the varieties of love- a follow up to the paper he presented at the International Institute of Love Studies conference in January 2024. Also featured is Carol Ember's research on climate, climate change, and the global diversity of human houses.

The Academic Quarterly, written by Dr. Francine Barone, is a great way to catch up on cross cultural research, reviews on ethnographic literature, and examples of how ethnographic research can challenge quantitative research.

Don't forget to sign up to receive updates! 

Click here to read the current Academic Quarterly