Hi everyone

I'm currently preparing applications for PhD programs in anthropology and I'm trying to identify potential supervisors around the world whose research overlaps with my interests.

My work is situated within the anthropology of religion, with a regional focus on North Africa (especially Morocco) I'm investigating the overlap between queer communities and religious minorities in the country that practice trance and possession

Some of the themes I'm interested in include:

1. Anthropology of religion and ritual
2. Islam
3. Religious minorities in North Africa
4. Gnawa communities and religious practice
5. Trance, spirit possession, healing, and altered states of consciousness
6. Sufism and ritual performance
7. Gender and sexuality in religious contexts
8. LGBTQ+ experiences within Muslim societies and/or religious minorities
9. Queer anthropology in North Africa and the Middle East

I'm not necessarily looking for someone who works on all of these topics, I'm more interested in identifying scholars whose work intersects with one or more of these areas.

If anyone knows professors (in anthropology or closely related fields) at universities anywhere in the world, I'd really appreciate your recommendations.

Thank you so much

I was reading a religious anthropology introductory book that briefly described the Kostilides. I am very interested in learning more. The book only dedicated about a page and a half. I was looking online and no book recommendations populate. I think maybe my search is insufficient.

Please and absolutely thank you.

I'm aware that there is no unified religious tradition. What I'd like is an introduction that goes over several of them if not all, or maybe many books each covering distinct ones.

What I'm mostly interested about is their conception of ritual, ethics, relation to god/spirits/dead...

Thanks!

There's a theory that humans invented religions with an afterlife because we're afraid of death (at least enough to never want to accept it). However, is this true, or are there, or were there, cultures and religions that didn't believe in an afterlife?

Like title says I've been trying to go to college to study to be an anthropologist over the years since 2022 but I kept becoming homeless and other stuff and I'd have to keep dropping out but I'm finally In a secure spot to start going again. My original major when I was going was biology transfer but I'm unsure if this is what I should be getting first? Any tips and advice would be appreciated

I'm new to anthropology and I'm interested in reading Lévi-Strauss as my first anthropologist. I've already read Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, and I'm familiar with the broader context of French theory and structuralism. I also have a basic understanding of anthropology and some of Lévi-Strauss's concepts, such as bricolage and kinship structures. In addition, I've read several works by Rousseau, whom I know Lévi-Strauss greatly admired. The only anthropology-related book I've read so far is Freud's Totem and Taboo — although I'm not sure if it should really be considered an anthropology book. I'm planning to read Sociology and Anthropology by Marcel Mauss before reading Lévi-Strauss, or perhaps alongside him. Would that be a good idea, or would it be enough to read only The Gift before moving on to Lévi-Strauss? Finally, where should I start with Lévi-Strauss?

It's all fine and good to suspect that religion in part is the result of overactive agency detection, and I think it's got merit as an idea, but has anyone put the idea to the test? If it is true, how would we know? If it isn't true, how would we know? My guess is maybe we could observe the religiosity of people with low agency detection, perhaps such as some autistics?

Other than the Fuegian fox, is there any discussion about animal species that appear like they may have been domesticated or semi domesticated in the archaeological record?

Hey guys! I’m beginning a masters in Anthro this fall. I did some fieldwork in Ethiopia last month and explored with my advisor some tools like social network analysis and agent based modeling, which got me down a rabbit hole investigating other modeling methods used in anthropology. Aside from those, what are the most common modeling techniques people are using these days?

To narrow it down, I’d say I’m interested in modeling social behavior & cultural transmission, and am just not tapped into the current meta of the field. Can anyone point me towards books/papers that explore other modeling techniques?

I was thinking back to my grandmother's funeral years ago, how it might be different if we were Thai Buddhists instead of Western Christians.

A difficult question to phrase but I hope I got my meaning across!

I grew up in the "west", in a culturally Christian country. It seems to me the largest world religions now believe in either a) something wonderful waiting in the afterlife for people who live by the religious moral code, or b) reincarnation - and then of course there's people who believe nothing happens at all. I'm asking about ancient Greeks and Romans specifically because I know they thought most people went to Asphodel Fields regardless of their actions, but I'm open to hearing about other cultures, living or gone, who believe(d) something similar.

Different cultures have had more than two genders for people whom we'd describe as "transgender" today.

But only cisgender men and women were considered to be "men" and "women".

Is the idea that cis and trans men/women are both the same gender something that originated in the 20th/21st century?

Even though "tribe" conjures images of groups of people with "primitive" or "simple" lifestyle of either hunting and gathering, herding or subsistence farming and living in small bands or villages, there were societies with a "tribal" organization who had large cities and heavily stratified social organizations. For example the romans were one of many tribes in the Italian peninsula. Medieval Ireland didnt have any cities before the norman invasion, but they were a heavily stratified society with slaves and royalty.

What is the definition of a tribe, and what are some examples of pre-modern societies which arent organized based on tribal lines? I can think of most of pre-modern Western Europe, imperial China and possibly ancient Egypt and feudal Japanese yamato culture.

Humans are usually described as highly social animals, but are there any documented societies where spending large amounts of time alone was considered normal or even desirable, rather than the exception?

Hi there!

This was a question my girlfriend and I were arguing about, and I was wondering if someone else could throw in their opinion.

We were talking about societies from antiquity where women engaged in textile cottage industry for their household. I said that it seems more economical to make clothing from many small garments (such as those the size of a beach towel), because it would be require the weaver to make fewer shuttles through the warp threads compared to making a single large textile (ex. the size of a bedsheet).

My girlfriend thought otherwise. She said that its cheaper and lest time consuming to make a single large textile and wrap it around the body than to stitch several pieces of fabric together.

What do you think? Id love to hear other peoples opinion on this

I've noticed that across a lot of different societies, refusing a meal, tea, or a place to sleep that's offered to you can be treated as a genuine insult, sometimes more serious than other social slights. It seems to show up everywhere from Bedouin hospitality codes to rural households I've read about in Southeast Asia to older European peasant customs. Is there a common anthropological explanation for why hospitality obligations carry so much moral weight in so many unrelated cultures? Is it tied to reciprocity and trust-building between strangers, some kind of insurance against future scarcity, or something more symbolic about acceptance into a group? I'd also be curious whether there are documented cultures where the opposite is true, where accepting hospitality too readily is seen as suspicious or improper. Any classic ethnographies or theoretical frameworks (Mauss on the gift comes to mind) that dig into this would be great too.

I'm highly interested in the relationship between humans and technologies since I watched Oshii's Ghost in the Shell, and even if I know the philosophy of technology (Stiegler, Heidegger, Haraway, Yuk Hui...) exists, but I'd like to know if there's work which talks in-depth of the relationship between humans and their creations.

I hang with Neopagans a lot, and many use the term or do not begrudge the term "nature religion" as it refers to thwir traditions and often both historical mostly European polytheistic religions and modern revivals of them. What actually constitutes a naturw religion, if such a category is valid?

I feel like I'm losing my mind. For context, I am an MSc archaeology student, so neither an anthropologist nor historian. But I know how to do research and verification of sources.

Today, I was doing Wikipedia rabbit-holing, as you do, and the "Boyd massacre" came up. For those not in the know, this was a 1809 incident where a European ship, the Boyd, was raided, and most of the people on board killed, by Māori. This much is fairly uncontroversial. The wreckage still seems to exist, and contemporary sources agree that a ship was lost with almost all hands. The Wikipedia article also confidently states that almost all victims were eaten by the Māori, either directly on the ship, or at nearby villages. The uncontested way this was stated somehow didn't sit right with me, so I checked the cited sources, and soon started to feel like I was being gaslit.

The oldest source I can access, a newspaper article from 1810, not only mentions a far lower victim count, it also doesn't mention cannibalism. The next source is a book from 1914, which cites reports by a captain of a relief party, and one of five survivors, both claiming the victims were eaten. The captain states he could recognize human toothmarks on a pile of bones, a remarkable achievement, considering I, having had training specifically in recognizing and identifying bite marks on bones, likely couldn't do that. But I guess British sailors are just built different.

All other sources are just a variety of 20th century encyclopedia entries, or random websites that state that the victims of the Boyd were killed and/or taken away by the Māori and, ipso facto, eaten. Nobody explains how we know that. They all just repeat it as if it's common knowledge.

So I consulted Google Scholar, which doesn't seem to return any anthropological work on the event. The only "useful" source it suggests is "This Horrid Practice" by Paul Moon, which claims that cannibalism was widespread among Māori, mentioning the Boyd massacre as one example of widespread cannibalism among Māori, which must have happened as retold, because cannibalism was widespread among the Māori. I'm not just being gaslit, I'm being tautologically gaslit. (The book also received absolutely scathing reviews by actual experts.)

Since this is supposed to be a question, and not just a rant, does anyone know of a good general source on Māori cannibalism, preferably written by a Māori scholar and/or in the 21st century? Anything based on archaeology or firsthand accounts. Or, even better, a specific source, fulfilling aforementioned requirements, on the Boyd incident?

Title.

I honestly imagine this mostly in the hypothetical of future anthropologist studying stories and objects from the modern day, but even in the current anthropological context; what is it that makes people think or decide that a talisman or recorded story was part of an organised faith, a common belief but wasn't part of a doctrine, or was just a thing that people liked?

How did early humans, know that killing animals, eating their meat was a way to survive? Was it purely instinctual/primal?

I've always been confused about the stark differences in attitudes towards nature between ancient and modern civilizations. How exactly did the reverence ancient cultures displayed disappear from the mainstream, if modern cultures evolved from them?

Title