scholarly journals Moralistic Gods and Social Complexity: A Brief History of the Problem

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Grant Purzycki ◽  
Ryan McKay
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
History Of

A cluster of persistent and contentious questions in the scientific study of religion concern when and why so-called “moralistic traditions” developed and how they have shaped human relationships. Is there an association between moralistic gods and the size and/or complexity of the society that might worship them? How cross-culturally ubiquitous are such traditions? Are people more willing to engage in cooperative behavior when they believe their god cares about morality? This chapter focuses on how these questions have arisen and how generations of researchers have struggled to address them. We first briefly examine the intellectual history of the problem, pointing to some of the troubling aspects of early observations of traditional societies and subsequent anthropological positions. We then address how early observations of small-scale peoples have populated cross-cultural resources that have informed and driven contemporary empirical projects. We finish by pointing to ways in which we might go about ensuring that the conversation continues with clarity and consistency.

Cross-Cultural Aesthetic Contrasts and Implications for Aesthetic Evolution and Change

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Richard L. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Market Value ◽  
Culture Contact ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Dynamic Processes ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Neolithic Cultures

In contrast to small-scale societies, philosophies of art in complex societies tend to be relatively explicit, produced by specialists, and densely textured—a pattern exemplified by the differences between the aesthetic systems of Aboriginal Australian versus pre-Columbian Aztec societies. These differences may parallel the gradual changes in aesthetics that occurred as some small, pre-neolithic cultures evolved into complex states. Also, when traditional societies undergo the shock of culture contact, their previously profound aesthetic systems, whether explicit or implicit, tend to be replaced by concerns about craftsmanship, intensiveness of work, and market value—as exemplified by pre- and post-contact Aztec culture. Also discussed are possible future developments in each of these dynamic processes, respectively designated “bary-evolution” and “ocy-evolution.”

Cross-Cultural Contexts of Modern Muslim Intellectualism

2007 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 264-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Michael Feener
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Analytical Frameworks

AbstractAttempts at understanding the development of Islam in the modern period through its intellectual history demand new analytical frameworks to be brought to bear on both Muslim religious thought and the academic study of religion. There is a need for innovative approaches to modern Muslim intellectualism that can build upon the traditional strengths of Islamic Studies while also taking into account contemporary realities which add new dimensions of complexity to the processes of producing and transmitting knowledge. Aside from the formal contents of legal, theological, and social texts texts, approaches to Muslim thought in the modern period also require paying attention to the dynamics of new educational and publishing structures, new forms of media, and cross-cultural contexts of discussion, all complemented by a theoretically aware methodological flexibility that self-consciously moves back and forth between text-specific and broader cultural dimensions of analysis. In this article these issues are raised in the course of reflections on recent work in mapping an intellectual history of Islam in modern Indonesia.

Tutankhamun in West Germany, 1980–81

2018 ◽  
Vol 141 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-58
Author(s):  
Mario Schulze
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Cultural Understanding ◽  
History Of

This essay tells the diplomatic history of the Treasures of Tutankhamun touring exhibition, the most successful exhibition of all time, and its engagement in West Germany. It argues that the exhibition ascribed an ambassadorial role to its objects and used them as a tool of diplomatic propaganda. While the visit of the objects was promoted as an attempt at cross-cultural understanding, the interpretation and commodification of the exhibits also served to justify the West’s appropriation of Egypt’s natural and cultural resources.

To give and to give not: The behavioral ecology of human food transfers

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Gurven
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Ecology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Life History Evolution ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Costly Signaling ◽  
Sexual Division Of Labor ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
Sharing Patterns ◽  
Sharing Behavior

The transfer of food among group members is a ubiquitous feature of small-scale forager and forager-agricultural populations. The uniqueness of pervasive sharing among humans, especially among unrelated individuals, has led researchers to evaluate numerous hypotheses about the adaptive functions and patterns of sharing in different ecologies. This article attempts to organize available cross-cultural evidence pertaining to several contentious evolutionary models: kin selection, reciprocal altruism, tolerated scrounging, and costly signaling. Debates about the relevance of these models focus primarily on the extent to which individuals exert control over the distribution of foods they acquire, and the extent to which donors receive food or other fitness-enhancing benefits in return for shares given away. Each model can explain some of the variance in sharing patterns within groups, and so generalizations that ignore or deny the importance of any one model may be misleading. Careful multivariate analyses and cross-cultural comparisons of food transfer patterns are therefore necessary tools for assessing aspects of the sexual division of labor, human life history evolution, and the evolution of the family. This article also introduces a framework for better understanding variation in sharing behavior across small-scale traditional societies. I discuss the importance of resource ecology and the degree of coordination in acquisition activities as a key feature that influences sharing behavior.

scholarly journals Reassessing Shamanism and Animism in the Art and Archaeology of Ancient Mesoamerica

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 394
Author(s):  
Eleanor Harrison-Buck ◽  
David A. Freidel
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Vital Matter ◽  
Analytical Tools

Shamanism and animism have proven to be useful cross-cultural analytical tools for anthropology, particularly in religious studies. However, both concepts root in reductionist, social evolutionary theory and have been criticized for their vague and homogenizing rubric, an overly romanticized idealism, and the tendency to ‘other’ nonwestern peoples as ahistorical, apolitical, and irrational. The alternative has been a largely secular view of religion, favoring materialist processes of rationalization and “disenchantment.” Like any cross-cultural frame of reference, such terms are only informative when explicitly defined in local contexts using specific case studies. Here, we consider shamanism and animism in terms of ethnographic and archaeological evidence from Mesoamerica. We trace the intellectual history of these concepts and reassess shamanism and animism from a relational or ontological perspective, concluding that these terms are best understood as distinct ways of knowing the world and acquiring knowledge. We examine specific archaeological examples of masked spirit impersonations, as well as mirrors and other reflective materials used in divination. We consider not only the productive and affective energies of these enchanted materials, but also the potentially dangerous, negative, or contested aspects of vital matter wielded in divinatory practices.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Randall
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Thought

The changed conception of conversation that emerged by c.1700 was about to expand its scope enormously – to the broad culture of Enlightenment Europe, to the fine arts, to philosophy and into the broad political world, both via the conception of public opinion and via the constitutional thought of James Madison (1751–1836). In the Enlightenment, the early modern conception of conversation would expand into a whole wing of Enlightenment thought. The intellectual history of the heirs of Cicero and Petrarch would become the practice of millions and the constitutional architecture of a great republic....

Craft Beer's Unlikely Alchemist

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 78-90
Author(s):  
Theresa McCulla
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Assembly Line ◽  
The United States ◽  
Risk Tolerance ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Intellectual Curiosity ◽  
Brewing Industry ◽  
Washing Machine ◽  
Craft Beer ◽  
History Of

In 1965, Frederick (Fritz) Maytag III began a decades-long revitalization of Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco, California. This was an unexpected venture from an unlikely brewer; for generations, Maytag's family had run the Maytag Washing Machine Company in Iowa and he had no training in brewing. Yet Maytag's career at Anchor initiated a phenomenal wave of growth in the American brewing industry that came to be known as the microbrewing—now “craft beer”—revolution. To understand Maytag's path, this article draws on original oral histories and artifacts that Maytag donated to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History via the American Brewing History Initiative, a project to document the history of brewing in the United States. The objects and reflections that Maytag shared with the museum revealed a surprising link between the birth of microbrewing and the strategies and culture of mass manufacturing. Even if the hallmarks of microbrewing—a small-scale, artisan approach to making beer—began as a backlash against the mass-produced system of large breweries, they relied on Maytag's early, intimate connections to the assembly-line world of the Maytag Company and the alchemy of intellectual curiosity, socioeconomic privilege, and risk tolerance with which his history equipped him.

Indian Sex Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Durba Mitra
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Global History ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indentured Servitude ◽  
History Of

During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics—deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. This book shows how deviant female sexuality, particularly the concept of the prostitute, became foundational to this knowledge project and became the primary way to think and write about Indian society. The book reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, widowhood and inheritance, women's performance, the trafficking of girls, abortion and infanticide, industrial and domestic labor, indentured servitude, and ideologies about the dangers of Muslim sexuality. British authorities and Indian intellectuals used the concept of the prostitute to argue for the dramatic reorganization of modern Indian society around Hindu monogamy. The book demonstrates how the intellectual history of modern social thought is based in a dangerous civilizational logic built on the control and erasure of women's sexuality. This logic continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia and the postcolonial world. Reframing the prostitute as a concept, the book overturns long-established notions of how to write the history of modern social thought in colonial India, and opens up new approaches for the global history of sexuality.

Study of Diabetic Mellitus and Knowledge of Lotion Foot Care on the Community

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hariyadi DM ◽  
Athiyah U ◽  
Hendradi E ◽  
Rosita N ◽  
Erawati T ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Glucose ◽  
T Test ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Scale Production ◽  
Foot Care ◽  
Diabetic Mellitus ◽  
Glucose Levels ◽  
Blood Glucose Levels ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of

The prevention of Diabetic Mellitus (DM) and its complications is the main aim of this study, in addition to the training of lotion foot care application and the development of small scale industry. The research team delivered knowledge in the form of training on Diabetic Mellitus, healthy food, treatment and prevention of complications, and small-scale production of cosmetic products. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between training on diabetic and lotion foot care application as preventive measures against diabetic complications on the patient's blood glucose levels in the community of residents in Banyuurip Jaya, Surabaya. It was expected from this training that the knowledge of the residents increases and people living with diabetic undergo lifestyle changes and therefore blood sugar levels can be controlled. The parameters measured in this research were blood glucose levels, the anti diabetic drug types consumed, and compliance on diabetics. This study used the data taken from 60 patients with DM over a period of one month. Questionnaires and log books was used to retrieve data and changes in blood glucose levels in diabetic patients. The results showed the demographic data of patients with type 2 diabetic of 85% female and 15% male, with the range of patients aged of 61-70 years of 46.67% and had history of diabetic (90%). The history of drugs consumed by respondents was anti diabetic drugs such as metformin (40%), glimepiride (33.37%) and insulin (6.67%). In addition, the increased knowledge of DM patients after being given the training compared to before training was shown in several questions in the questionnaire. A statistical analysis using t-test analyzed a correlation between training provided in order to enhance understanding of the patient, as well as correlation with blood glucose levels. A paired T-test showed that there was a relationship between the knowledge of trainees before and after training (p less than 0.05). An interesting result was that there was no relationship between blood glucose levels before and after training provided (p> 0.05).

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