scholarly journals Awer Honey-Hunting Culture With Greater Honeyguides in Coastal Kenya

2022 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica E. M. van der Wal ◽  
Isa I. Gedi ◽  
Claire N. Spottiswoode
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Mixed Economy ◽  
Wild Foods ◽  
Coastal Kenya ◽  
Hunting Culture ◽  
Wax Comb

The remarkable mutualism between humans and greater honeyguides (Indicator indicator) is known still to thrive in only a few places in Africa. Here, we report on the honey-hunting culture of the marginalised Awer people in Kenya, historically a hunter-gatherer culture who today practise a mixed economy including significant amounts of foraging for wild foods. As part of a larger effort to document cross-cultural honey-hunting traditions in Africa, we interviewed six Awer honey-hunters to document their cultural practices. The interviewees reported that they depend on wild honey as a source of income, and that they readily seek the cooperation of honeyguides. Honey-hunting skills and the calls/whistles used to communicate with honeyguides are learnt from their fathers and other elders in village. The best time to honey-hunt is in the months following the big rains (August–December), when interviewees go out honey-hunting once a week on average. Honeyguides are not actively rewarded with wax, as it is believed that once a bird is fed it will not cooperate again for some time, and therefore after the honey harvest is complete, all remaining wax comb is buried. Honey-hunting practices are declining in this region, which interviewees attributed to drought and a lack of interest by the youth. These findings expand our understanding of how human-honeyguide mutualism persists across a range of human cultural variation.

scholarly journals The Life History of Learning Subsistence Skills among Hadza and BaYaka Foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo

Human Nature ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheina Lew-Levy ◽  
Erik J. Ringen ◽  
Alyssa N. Crittenden ◽  
Ibrahim A. Mabulla ◽  
Tanya Broesch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Republic Of Congo ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic

AbstractAspects of human life history and cognition, such as our long childhoods and extensive use of teaching, theoretically evolved to facilitate the acquisition of complex tasks. The present paper empirically examines the relationship between subsistence task difficulty and age of acquisition, rates of teaching, and rates of oblique transmission among Hadza and BaYaka foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo. We further examine cross-cultural variation in how and from whom learning occurred. Learning patterns and community perceptions of task difficulty were assessed through interviews. We found no relationship between task difficulty, age of acquisition, and oblique transmission, and a weak but positive relationship between task difficulty and rates of teaching. While same-sex transmission was normative in both societies, tasks ranked as more difficult were more likely to be transmitted by men among the BaYaka, but not among the Hadza, potentially reflecting cross-cultural differences in the sexual division of subsistence and teaching labor. Further, the BaYaka were more likely to report learning via teaching, and less likely to report learning via observation, than the Hadza, possibly owing to differences in socialization practices.

Affective Interpersonal Touch in Close Relationships: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722098837
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Sorokowska ◽  
Supreet Saluja ◽  
Piotr Sorokowski ◽  
Tomasz Frąckowiak ◽  
Maciej Karwowski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Close Relationships ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Interpersonal Distance ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Affective Touch ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Interpersonal Touch ◽  
Regional Temperature

Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual-level factors (sex, age, parasitic history, conservatism, religiosity, and preferred interpersonal distance) and cultural-level factors (regional temperature, parasite stress, regional conservatism, collectivism, and religiosity) in predicting these affective-touching behaviors. Our results indicate that affective touch was most prevalent in relationships with partners and children, and its diversity was relatively higher in warmer, less conservative, and religious countries, and among younger, female, and liberal people. This research allows for a broad and integrated view of the bases of cross-cultural variability in affective touch.

Metal burial: Understanding caching behaviour and contact material culture in Australia's NE Kimberley

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-52
Author(s):  
Sam Harper ◽  
Ian Waina ◽  
Ambrose Chalarimeri ◽  
Sven Ouzman ◽  
Martin Porr ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Contact Material ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Burials

This paper explores identity and the recursive impacts of cross-cultural colonial encounters on individuals, cultural materials, and cultural practices in 20th-century northern Australia. We focus on an assemblage of cached metal objects and associated cultural materials that embody both Aboriginal tradition and innovation. These cultural materials were wrapped in paperbark and placed within a ring of stones, a bundling practice also seen in human burials in this region. This ‘cache' is located in close proximity to rockshelters with rich, superimposed Aboriginal rock art compositions. However, the cache shelter has no visible art, despite available wall space. The site shows the utilisation of metal objects as new raw materials that use traditional techniques to manufacture a ground edge metal axe and to sharpen metal rods into spears. We contextualise these objects and their hypothesised owner(s) within narratives of invasion/contact and the ensuing pastoral history of this region. Assemblage theory affords us an appropriate theoretical lens through which to bring people, places, objects, and time into conversation.

scholarly journals Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (17) ◽  
pp. 4688-4693 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Clark Barrett ◽  
Alexander Bolyanatz ◽  
Alyssa N. Crittenden ◽  
Daniel M. T. Fessler ◽  
Simon Fitzpatrick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Narrow Range ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Moral Assessment ◽  
Mitigating Circumstances

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Although these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment.

scholarly journals The Role of Figurative Complexity in the Comprehension and Appreciation of Advertisements

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 957-991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Pérez-Sobrino ◽  
Jeannette Littlemore ◽  
David Houghton
Keyword(s):  
Significant Variation ◽  
Processing Time ◽  
Consumer Response ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Perceived Effectiveness ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds ◽  
Different Levels

Abstract To date, research in advertising has focussed almost exclusively on metaphor, with linguists and marketing scholars paying very little attention to alternative types of figurative expression. Beyond the finding that metaphor leads to an increased appreciation of advertisements, there has been surprisingly little research into how consumer response is affected by metonymy, or by metaphor–metonymy interactions. In this article, we present findings from a study that investigated the depth to which participants (n = 90) from a range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds (the UK, Spain, and China) were found to process 30 real-world adverts featuring creative metaphor and metonymy in multimodal format. We focus on the cross-cultural variation in terms of time taken to process, appreciation and perceived effectiveness of adverts, and on individual differences explained by different levels of need for cognition. We found significant variation in the understanding of advertisements containing metaphor, metonymy, and combinations of the two, between subjects and across nationalities in terms of (i) processing time, (ii) overall appeal, and (iii) the way in which participants interpreted the advertisements.

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