Recent wc_worldcultures items

No Easy Talk about the Weather: Eliciting “Cultural Models of Nature” among Hai//om

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Nambian Hai//om case study helps to develop a wider notion of culture as “cultivation”: Cultivation in this sense clearly not only applies to the land (things, materials) or to challenges provided by external natural changes such as climate change. Rather, cultivation – in the sense of creating, maintaining and altering cultural categories and the cultural ways of dealing with causalities – seamlessly involves social relationships and man-made conditions. The Hai//om notion of “environment” prototypically includes elements of the man-made environment and seamlessly merges with elements that in elsewhere are considered to be part of the natural environment. For Hai//om there is no reason for separating two categorical domains from the start in that they are intervowen. Cultural models not only differ in their internal categorizations but also in the way in which any cultural model can be expected to be able to structure and shape the world.

Like a Bonsai Tree: Models of Food Production and Nature in the Northern Kanto Plain of Japan

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The initial phase of this project attempted to discover cultural models of nature underlying discourses of food production in central Japan. The results show a pattern calling for human intervention for successful farming. Furthermore, the need for human intervention appears to be underscored by a cultural model that raw nature must be ‘humanized’ on relational terms to be cognizant in the local context.

Fishermen’s Concepts of Environmental and Climate Change in Batangas, Philippines

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This work is based on six weeks of field research at two separate field sites in Batangas, Philippines from March to April, 2014. The primary goal was to investigate cultural model(s) of nature held by full-time and subsistence fishermen in Batangas, Philippines in a very important marine ecological zone, the Verde Island Passage. Questions driving the research included (a) how do fishermen understand human relationships to various elements in the natural environment including weather, climate, fish, animals, and the supernatural, (b) how and why are the climate and natural environment changing (if they are changing) and (c) how and why is food production (fishing) changing.

People in both communities noted many changes in the natural environment and the weather. Many of these changes have had a direct and devastating impact on their livelihood as fishers and cultivators, especially for full-time fishermen who operate larger fishing vessels. While informants...

It Was like Velvet: Cultural Nature in Vinigo (Dolomites)

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Analyzing the relevant issues concerning contemporary Alpine spaces, Vinigo, Italy could be considered one of such intermediate spaces. Vinigo is a mountain village with an elevation of 1,025 m situated in the Belluno province of the Veneto Region, Italy. It is one of the oldest settlements in the Ladin area in the Dolomites, which have been included in the Unesco World Heritage List in 2009. Local Cultural Models include ‘Causal Model of Nature 2’ although it is difficult to locate the place that animals have in this causal model. Not only today families no longer have active stables but our interlocutors, when asked about the activities connected to taking the animals to the higher fields in the past, focused more around moments of sociality with the elderly or with peers or around the heavy work required by collecting hay (to feed the animals once they were taken back in the village) than about narratives centered on the animals.

The Moon Makes Yams Grow: Tongans (Polynesians) and Nature

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Local populations perceive a number of changes in their environment due to climate change and explain them using the knowledge they have and the beliefs they hold about their world; a Cultural Model (CM) of Nature. This CM is a major component of local knowledge and it plays a fundamental role in the perception and interpretation of any phenomena related to changes in the environment, including climate change. This work is about the preliminary results from the analyses conducted on data collected in the Kingdom of Tonga, Polynesia, in search of a Tongan CM of Nature. Tongan communities are deeply affected by changes in the climate such as weather unpredictability (including increasing number of typhoons and length and occurrence of dry and wet seasons), the raising level of the ocean waters, and the variability of fish supplies.

Categories and Cultural Models of Nature in Northern Punjab, Pakistan

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The most widespread model of the natural world by Northern Punjabi farmers appears to leverage a powerful supernatural domain, which includes Allah, as a sole God, plus, various non-human spirits or jinn, who can be both benign and malicious, and a bewildering array of spiritually powerful saints, or pir-fakir, to whom individuals can pray and seek some form of intervention. These pir-fakir do not themselves perform miracles, typically, but they are beloved by Allah and are somehow in a position to sway His actions in some people’s favor. For Barlevi Sunni Muslims, this influence continues even after death, which means that the gravesite of powerful pir-fakir themselves become sites of religious worship and devotion. The remainder of the 'natural' world, including non-human animals, plants, weather and so forth, appear to be part of the benevolent offering from God. There is no evidence to suggest widespread animist models of such...

Lithuanian Farmers, Nature and the Ties that Bind

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Three questions that should be answered in order to understand the reason for writing and the potential importance of this and other studies in this special issue of World Cultures are: What is a cultural model? Why is it important to understand farmer’s cultural models of nature? Are there cultural models of nature particular to farmers? This paper attempts answers with emphasis to view cultural model of nature in terms of a functional relationship between nature and farmer. I regard this perspective as an important one because cultural models must be used in real life and studied as such if they are supposed to be anything but butterfly collections for academic discussion. I hope to show that in using their cultural models, farmers draw upon other cultural models that exist at different levels of abstraction and as part of social identities and particular contexts.

Care for the Soil and Live Respectfully: A Cultural Model of Environmental Change in Andean Northern Ecuador

Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This paper proposes a hypothesis for a cultural model in Cotacachi, Ecuador that contains both 1) causality that occurs in nature, and 2) dimensionality of the essence of life. At the foundation of this research—of exploring humans, plants, animals, the supernatural, weather, and features of the landscape/environment—the question was: In the minds of our informants, of what does Nature’s core consist when considering the six domains we chose. In this case, preliminary results suggest that Nature can exist without cities as part of the core, and Nature can exist without the Christian God at its core. This splitting of the spirit world between Christian spirits and Mother Nature (and other spirits), as well as the splitting of humans into urbanites and rural dwellers undoubtedly creates some cognitive dissonance, and may partially be influenced by the common Christian and Western/urban dualisms. However, these differentiations between kinds of spirit worlds and kinds of human...

Introduction: Primary Food Producers, Climate Change, and Cultural Models of Nature

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Climate change is one of the most challenging issues we collectively face insofar as it threatens the survival of our species. Before long, extensive action will have to be implemented worldwide to minimize its potential and disastrous effects (such actions have already been initiated in the last two decades). The populations keenly aware of and most at risk from the effects of climate change are obviously those whose livelihood depends on daily contact with the changing physical environment. Primary food producers best represent these populations: farmers, fishermen, herders, and hunter-gatherers. Of course all humans are at risk and we will eventually be obliged to change our behavior to make our presence on the planet sustainable (see Moran, 2006, 2010). However, primary food producers’ daily and close contact with the environment makes them most directly affected by climate change. Besides, they will likely be asked to implement whatever new and/or radical remedial policies...

On Brothers and Sisters: South Asian and Japanese Idea Systems and their Consequences

Sun, 1 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The role expectations of cross siblings varies across culture. Such expectations, while not rigidly prescribing actual behaviors nevertheless influences relations between brothers and sisters in observable ways. In South Asia, a cultural rhetoric of sororal sacrifice and support coupled with fraternal protection are commonplace. While such noble sibling roles are regularly transgressed they remain powerful idioms of the relationship and transgressions require appropriate cultural justification. In contrast, Japanese rhetorical roles lack such explicit sacrifice-protection expectations between cross sibling interactions and instead include more competitive and conflictual idealized models of cross sibling behaviors. Looking at narrative accounts of cross siblings in ancient texts in South Asia and Japan as well as contemporary rituals and observed sibling interactions, this paper argues that the cross sibling relationship must be understood as part of an assemblage of cultural...

Group marriage: Morgan was not wrong

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It is argued that the commonly asserted non-existence of group marriage arises solely from an abandonment of Morgan’s (1877) definition of marriage and that the commonly accepted alternative to that definition lacks ethnographic generality. As defined by Morgan group marriage has been practiced by over one-third of the hunter-gatherers listed in Murdock (1971).

Darkness in Academia: Cultural Models of How Anthropologists and Journalists Write About Controversy

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The aim of this paper is to systematically explore a large collection of documents pertaining to the allegations made in Patrick Tierney’s Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon (2002) for lexical patterns that indicate how key terms were used to analyze and report the allegations, thus forming cultural models of the Darkness in El Dorado controversy. The purpose of this paper is not an analysis of the validity of the allegations in Tierney’s book or to take sides with any of the stakeholders in the controversy. Rather, by conducting a systematic analysis of terms used to write about the controversy, the variation in the cultural models of various actors (e.g., journalists and anthropologists) is described and compared.

Methodological Individualism and Generosity

Sun, 20 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Today a convergence between the fields of anthropology and economics has re-emerged after decades during which the dictates of methodological individualism, as strikingly elucidated by Kenneth Arrow, had seriously limited and hampered effective scholarship in studies of economic and social development in developing countries. A new generation of development economists represented by Spolaori and Wacziarg (2013) and (Spolaori 2016) has reopened the possibility of fruitful cross-disciplinary interaction, enabling economists and anthropologists to investigate those many social structures wherein resources are jointly held and wherein social goals are the product of interests held by groups, rather than exclusively by pairs of individuals stripped of a context of ethics.

The continually expanding data of Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (Murdock and White 1969) provide a wide range of variables that make it possible to test theories regarding development and causality in human...

Making Sense of Male-Female & Husband-Wife Equalities & Inequalities

Sun, 8 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The three sections of this article illustrate why cross-cultural research has not worked for some key social science questions and has worked for others. The three sections involve interpretation of causality from correlations, causality not based on correlations, and maps pertinent to understanding aspects of male-female and husband-wife equalities and inequalities.

Monogamy

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Monogamy is ethnographically peculiar as an ethical ideal and emerged in the Early Middle Ages as a form of sexual repression imposed by the Church and employed by secular authorities to decompose powerful elite lineages. In its continued modern form, the independent and isolated monogamous household has been advanced as socially optimal by economists and as essential to civilization by anthropologists. Although marriage, as a rightful claim on the sexuality of a woman, is a nearly universal institution, recent legislation and judicial opinion in both Europe and the United States have abrogated this basic marital right with the new crime of “marital rape”, thereby undermining the essential and defining characteristic of marriage. It is argued herein that these changes reflect the loss of relevance and significance of the domestic household to contemporary systems of capital accumulation; and it is in this new context that same-sex...

Cross Cultural Comparison of Attitides towards Aging and Physical Activity

Mon, 26 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

An online cross-sectional survey was used to examine 475 adults (239 men and 236 women) on physical activity level, barriers to physical activity participation, and attitudes towards personal aging. Participants were grouped, by citizenship and residence, as Indians in India, Indians in the United States, or Americans in the United States. Cross-cultural differences were observed on self-rated general health, occurrence of preventive examinations, and several barriers to physical activity. Physical activity level was positively correlated with self-rated general health, and with optimism regarding aging, suggesting that enhanced physical activity may hold the key to a higher evaluation of personal health, and more positive expectations of aging.

A measure of technological level for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample

Fri, 23 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Technology differs from other features of culture in that the Boasian stance of cultural relativism seems less binding: one can argue that the technology of one society is superior or inferior to the technology of another. This comparison is possible because technological change—as described by S.C. Gilfillan, Clarence Ayres, and Jane Jacobs—operates through the process of combining existing elements of technology to create new elements. Technology is therefore cumulative, so that a more advanced technology contains more elements than a less advanced. We exploit this cumulative nature of technology to create a measure of technological level for the 186 ethnographically known societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

The Standard Sample: Introduction

Wed, 2 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This article introduces the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

STDS00.COD

Wed, 2 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This is the Annotated Cumulative Codebook: Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

VOLUME1#1: 2013 INTRODUCTION

Wed, 2 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This article discusses the web version of the first issue of World Cultures.

The Interplay of Multiple Identities of Individuals Across Multiple Domains

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The current study explores multiple identities of individuals, particularly youth, and the importance as well as interrelations of those identities in particular social domains in Sri Lankan society. Participants consisted of 96 Sri Lankans live in Sri Lanka. Participants completed seven self-statements (who am I), and closed ended questions, regarding five major identities: nationality, religion, ethnicity, caste, and occupation (university student). Explanations of the self-statements, analyzed by using a fourfold coding scheme, indicated that university student status is the most common social attribute among other social attributes in self-interpretations of individuals. Religion and nationality were second and third most common social attributes whereas caste was the least common. This is consistent with results of the importance of social identities. The importance of each social identity was different when it associated with different social domains, depending on how...

Instrument selection for a study of sub cultural differences in Peru

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The interest and appreciation of the differences in cultural values between sub groups within countries is becoming relevant for Latin America due to rising urbanization, social tension and the effects of foreign investments and industrialization. However, few studies have sought to differentiate sub cultural values within Latin American countries, with industry and business academia largely relying on studies that use national measures based on mean scores. This paper, through reviewing the extant cross cultural business literature and Peru’s social history, determines the factors necessary for high quality cross cultural research and the issues will be required to be addressed when selecting or developing a suitable research instrument for sub-cultural studies within a nation state. These issues include defining the sub cultures, instrument sensitivity within a national cultural emic, responsiveness to subject’s response styles and an ability to measure the dimensional constructs...

STDS08.COD: Climate Data from Weather Stations

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This file describes codes for variables v179-v199 of the SCCS data set. They are from previously unpublished codes done by John W. M. Whiting, originally referenced in "Winter temperature as a constraint to the migration of preindustrial peoples" Whiting et al. American Anthropologist 84:279-298 (1982). The weather data are cited as coming from Walter, H., and H. Leith (1964) Klimadiagramm-Weltatlas, Jena: Gustav Fischer.

STDS07.COD: Sexual Attitudes and Practices

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This file describes codes for variables v159-v178 of the SCCS data set. These codes are from Gwen Broude and Sarah J. Greene. 1976. Cross-Cultural Codes on Twenty Sexual Attitudes and Practices. Ethnology 15:409-429.

STDS06.COD: Cultural Complexity

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This file describes codes for variables v149-v158 of the SCCS data set. These codes are from George P. Murdock and Caterina Provost. 1971. Measurement of Cultural Complexity. Ethnology 12:379-392.

STDS05.COD: Division of Labor

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This file describes codes for variables v99-v148 of the SCCS data set. These codes are from George P. Murdock and Caterina Provost. 1973. Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross Cultural Analysis. ETHNOLOGY 12:203-225.

STDS04.COD: Political Organization

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This file describes codes for variables v81-v98 of the SCCS data set. These codes are from Arthur Tuden and Catherine Marshall. 1972. Political Organization: Cross Cultural Codes 4. ETHNOLOGY 11:436-464.

STDS03.COD: Settlement Patterns and Community Organization

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This file describes codes for variables v61-v80 of the SCCS data set. These codes are from George P. Murdock and Suzanne F. Wilson. 1972. Settlement Patterns and Community Organization: Cross Cultural Codes 3. ETHNOLOGY 11:254-295.

Contents1#1