The belief that one’s religion trumps other faiths precipitates the stance that it trumps science too. This psychological process is most likely to operate in regions or countries with low religious heterogeneity.

How a lack of religious diversity in a place engenders fundamentalism.

En-‘chanted’ land is not only land that has been sung to, but land who has had its own song listened to and sung back to it: land that is understood for its own specificity. And through that understanding, the land radiates back in true expression of itself, the same way a child beams when understood—or, when sung to.

It’s not entirely clear when Japanese women began to fear attacks by the spirits of their vengeful aborted fetuses, but it is clear that beginning in the late 1970s, women began requesting and paying for a new religious rite called mizuko kuyō (water child memorial) that Buddhist and Shinto priests had never heard of before.

​This podcast explores the phenomenon of mizuko spirit attacks in 1980s Japan, where middle and high school girls reported hauntings by the spirits of aborted fetuses. It delves into the media’s role in amplifying these stories and examines the cultural and spiritual practices, such as mizuko kuyō rituals, that emerged to address the grief and guilt associated with abortions in Japan.​

Despite the fact that over 80% of parents reported teaching their children how to use chopsticks, a mere 9.7% of children exhibited correct chopstick-holding technique.

While chopstick education is predominantly conducted within Japanese households, the increasing prevalence of nuclear families and dual-income households suggests a decline in intergenerational transmission of chopstick education.

Findings suggest a relationship between socio-cultural-religious values and prosocial behavior in that Thai-Buddhist-affiliative society appears more altruistically-oriented than the American

Premodern rice farming could plausibly create strong social norms because paddy rice relied on irrigation networks. Rice farmers coordinated their water use and kept track of each person’s labor contributions. Rice villages also established strong norms of reciprocity to cope with labor demands that were twice as high as dryland crops like wheat. In line with this theory, China’s historically rice-farming areas had tighter social norms than wheat-farming areas, even beyond differences in development and urbanization.

East Asians and Westerners perceive the world and think about it in very different ways.

To make an idea system pristine you have to contain the contradictions. One way to minimize the contradictions is to build a filtering system so that people don’t get the ‘wrong’ ideas. But if you can relate all the different ideas out there to a framework, that creates a much more resilient idea system because you can account for all the, say, scandals.

A sociology professor talks about his monograph on how ideologies function in society.

This economic situation is also of critical relevance to the ideological context of media content. As the media is funded by commercial (primarily corporate) organisations, the materials which are produced by this system are highly unlikely to be overtly critical of corporate capitalism and consumerism.

An introduction to basic concepts in the theory of mass media and its effects on society.

We follow archaeological research and employ skeletal records of women’s and men’s health from 139 archaeological sites in Europe dating back, on average, to about 1200 AD to construct a site-level indicator of historical bias in favor of one gender over the other using dental linear enamel hypoplasias. This historical measure of gender bias significantly predicts contemporary gender attitudes, despite the monumental socioeconomic and political changes that have taken place since.

We also show that this persistence is most likely due to the intergenerational transmission of gender norms, which can be disrupted by significant population replacement. Our results demonstrate the resilience of gender norms and highlight the importance of cultural legacies in sustaining and perpetuating gender (in)equality today.

Being perceived as a good Buddhist woman worked as a powerful form of career capital for the respondents in the sample, who used their faith to combat gender disadvantage in their work settings.

When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.

What happens after all your culture’s ways of making meaning disappear? How can you move forward when the future is literally inconceivable?

A philosophical meditation on the courageous life of the great Apsáalooké (Crow Indian) Chief Plenty Coups.

For a further teaser, see the review in The Marginalian.

The accession ceremonies comprise the most spectacular and awesome examples of imperial ritual, providing a well-documented and persistent illustration of the ways in which ritual inscribes social, political, and religious meanings

A brief analysis of the 1989 Japanese accession rituals.

90 percent of Canadians [say they] will tell the truth in court. Whereas in other places, it would be crazy to tell the truth. Aren’t you a good friend? How you trade those virtues off has a big effect

On parochialism versus universalism in human societies and how Western culture became so WEIRD.

What was the response of Soto Buddhist priests to the social situation facing Japan at the beginning of the twentieth century? What influence did their religious background have on their responses to the modernization of Japan? This article examines the lives and thought of two Japanese Soto Buddhist priests-Takeda Hanshi and Uchiyama Gudo-both with the same religious training and tradition, yet who chose diametrically opposite responses.

Takeda Hanshi supported Japan’s foreign policies, especially in Korea; Uchiyama opposed Japanese nationalism and militarism, and was executed for treason. What led them to such opposite responses, and what conclusions can be drawn concerning the influence of religious traditions on specific individual choices and activities?

In response to Shintoist criticism of Buddhism in the early 1930s, a group of prominent Buddhists and Buddhologists wrote articles on Buddhism and Japanese spirit for a special issue of Chūō Bukkyo in 1934. They highlighted historical connections between Japanese Buddhism and the state, and drew correspondences between Buddhist doctrines and various Shinto and Confucian concepts that were central to discourses on Japanese culture and the imperial system in the early-Showa period. In drawing those doctrinal correspondences, they aligned Japanese Buddhism with main components of the imperial ideology at that time.

… the history, myth and cult of a Burmese Buddha image standing in the middle of the [Shan] city of Chiang Tung and the ways in which religious visual culture expresses ethnic-religious identity.

Religious art, as a symbol of culture, is inevitably political. And yet, for whatever reasons an icon might be installed, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes adopted by its hosts.

Centuries, minutes later, one might ask
How the hilt of a sword wandered so far from the smithy.

Dharma principles are manifested in the social construction of norms and beliefs and in the ways macro-level social structures and change are founded on micro-level social interactions embedded in mundane moments

… humans exhibit a tendency to identify, adopt, and enforce the norms of their local communities.

… engineering education successfully turns potential critics into agents of cultural reproduction

… during this season we remember and celebrate the lives of all our departed loved ones

A brief introduction to the idea behind the Japanese “ghost” festival.

… care and skill provide blueprints for museums to manage the precarity, obsolescence and impermanence that inflect the techniques and technologies used to make many of their collections, as well as to support the discourses of preservation that underpin traditional definitions of heritage and conservation

… how culture reflects and shapes the mind and behavior of its members

… ways of understanding their [group’s] distinctiveness which challenge dominant characterizations with the goal of greater self-determination

A definitive introduction to the subject.

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

A classic of the “commencement speech” genre and a powerful defense of the importance of inner freedom.

Today, thanks to a Canadian passport, I’m entering my father’s homeland for the first time.

A documentary about Tibetans and the struggle to preserve their culture under Chinese occupation.

Anthropological methods and insights can be transformative, making possible the kinds of empathy and dialogue necessary to solve our global problems. The goal of this textbook is to guide you in this process of transformation as you learn about the cultural lives of the various peoples with whom you share this planet.

You have to live your way into a new way of thinking.

An earnest introduction to humanity.

Primarily intended for young Americans, The Art of Being Human has enough perennial wisdom and charming sincerity to make it an enjoyable read for most.

… how the art world’s hunger for ancient artifacts is destroying a culture

Manipulation only works if its target isn’t aware that they’re being manipulated

An earnest plea for global clarity.

Furtwängler’s Bach is no smug or mindless adaptation of Bach to the style of Wagner. It is a reaffirmation of the presence of Bach in Wagner and the simultaneous, reciprocal presence of Wagner in Bach.

A forceful argument against the modern trend of “historically authentic” musical performances.

The song goes on forever then it stops. Its basic idea is that time can be defeated for an hour if everyone breathes together, but songs are not made out of ideas

… ask whether it is necessary–or wise–to abandon the field of the emotional sublime to the fascists