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Leveling Mechanism
In cultural anthropology, a leveling mechanism is a practice in some cultures which acts to ensure social equality, usually by shaming or humbling members of a group that attempt to put themselves above other members. ǃKung practice of shaming the meat One commonly given example of a leveling mechanism is the ǃKung practice of "shaming the meat", particularly as illustrated by the Canadian anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee in his article "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari" (1969). When Lee gave the ǃKung an ox as a Christmas gift, the ǃKung responded by insulting the gift, calling it a "bag of bones" and joking that they would have to eat the horns because there was no meat on it. Lee later asked a man named Tomazo why his gift was insulted in this way. He responded that it was because the gift was arrogant. Lee asked what he meant by this and was told: See also * * Law of Jante * Tall poppy syndrome Tall poppy syndrome is a term that originated in Australia and ...
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Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions. Anthropologists have pointed out that through culture, people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, so people living in different environments will often have different cultures. Much of anthropological theory has originated in an appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local (particular cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of connections between people in distinct places/circumstances). Cultural anthropology has a rich methodology, including participant observation (often called fieldwork because it requires the anthropologist spending an extended period of time at the research location), inter ...
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Social Equality
Social equality is a state of affairs in which all individuals within society have equal rights, liberties, and status, possibly including civil rights, freedom of expression, autonomy, and equal access to certain public goods and social services. Social equality requires the absence of legally enforced social class or caste boundaries, along with an absence of discrimination motivated by an inalienable part of an individual's identity. Advocates of social equality believe in equality before the law for all individuals regardless of many aspects. These aspects include but are not limited to, sex, gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, origin, caste or class, income or property, language, religion, convictions, opinions, health, disability,trade union membership, political views, parental status, mores, family or marital status, and any other grounds. These are some different types of social equality: * '' Formal equality'': equal opportunity for individuals based on merit ...
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Routledge
Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioral science, behavioural science, education, law, and social science. The company publishes approximately 1,800 journals and 5,000 new books each year and their backlist encompasses over 140,000 titles. Routledge is claimed to be the largest global academic publisher within humanities and social sciences. In 1998, Routledge became a subdivision and Imprint (trade name), imprint of its former rival, Taylor & Francis, Taylor & Francis Group (T&F), as a result of a £90-million acquisition deal from Cinven, a venture capital group which had purchased it two years previously for £25 million. Following the merger of Informa and T&F in 2004, Routledge became a publishing unit and major imprint within the Informa "academic publishing ...
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ǃKung People
The ǃKung ( ) are one of the San peoples who live mostly on the western edge of the Kalahari Desert, Kalahari desert, Ovamboland (northern Namibia and southern Angola), and Botswana. The names ''ǃKung'' (''ǃXun'') and ''Ju'' are variant words for 'people', preferred by different ǃKung groups. This band society, band level society used traditional methods of hunting and gathering for subsistence up until the 1970s. Today, the great majority of ǃKung people live in the villages of Bantu pastoralists and European ranchers. Beliefs The ǃKung people of Southern Africa recognize a Creator deity, Supreme Being, ǃXu, who is the Creator and Upholder of life. Like other African High Gods, he also punishes man by means of the weather, and the Otjimpolo-ǃKung know him as Erob, who "knows everything". They also have Animism, animistic and Animatism, animatistic beliefs, which means they believe in both personifications and impersonal forces. Amongst the ǃKung there is a strong ...
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Richard Borshay Lee
Richard Borshay Lee (born 1937) is a Canadian anthropologist. Lee has studied at the University of Toronto and University of California, Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. He holds a position at the University of Toronto as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology. Lee researches issues concerning the indigenous people of Botswana and Namibia, particularly their ecology and history. Known best for his work on the Ju'/hoansi, Lee won the 1980 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his book ''The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society''. With Irven DeVore, Lee was co-organiser of the 1966 University of Chicago Symposium on "Man the Hunter". Lee co-edited with Richard Daly ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunter-Gatherers'', which was first published in 1999. In 2003, ''Anthropologica'', the journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society, dedicated an issue to Lee's oeuvre. In 2011 he co-authored the children's book ''Africans Thought of It: Amazing Innovations'' with Bathseba O ...
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American Museum Of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain about 32 million specimens of plants, animals, fungi, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The museum occupies more than . AMNH has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually. The AMNH is a private 501(c)(3) organization. The naturalist Albert S. Bickmore devised the idea for the American Museum of Natural History in 1 ...
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Law Of Jante
The Law of Jante ( ) Norwegian , ; ; ; ; . is a code of conduct originating in fiction and now used colloquially to denote a social attitude of disapproval towards expressions of individuality and personal success. Coined by the Danish- Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose, it has also come to represent the egalitarian nature of Scandinavian countries. The "Law" was first formulated as ten rules in Sandemose's satirical novel ''A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks'' (, 1933), but the attitudes themselves are older. Sandemose portrays the fictional small Danish town of Jante, modelled upon his native town Nykøbing Mors in the 1930s where nobody was anonymous, a feature of life typical of small towns. Definition There are ten rules in the law as defined by Sandemose, all expressive of variations on a single theme and usually referred to as a homogeneous unit: ''You are not to think you're anyone special, or that you're better than us.'' The ten rules state: # You're not to think '' ...
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Tall Poppy Syndrome
Tall poppy syndrome is a term that originated in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s that refers to people with notable public success, who excessively promote their own achievements and opinions. Intense scrutiny and criticism of such a person is termed as "cutting down the tall poppy". Etymology The phrase "tall poppies" originates from Livy's account of the tyrannical Roman king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. He is said to have received a messenger from his son Sextus Tarquinius asking what he should do next in Gabii, since he had become all-powerful there. Rather than answering the messenger verbally, Tarquin went into his garden, took a stick and swept it across his garden, thus cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies that were growing there. The messenger returned to Gabii and told Sextus what he had seen. Sextus realised that his father wished him to put to death all of the most eminent people of Gabii, which he then did. Earlier stories with the same theme are fou ...
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Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions. Anthropologists have pointed out that through culture, people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, so people living in different environments will often have different cultures. Much of anthropological theory has originated in an appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local (particular cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of connections between people in distinct places/circumstances). Cultural anthropology has a rich methodology, including participant observation (often called fieldwork because it requires the anthropologist spending an extended period of time at the research location), inter ...
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