equality
Chewong Economic and Social Changes [anthology chapter review]
Anthropologists have characterized many hunting and gathering societies as “immediate return,” a phrase that describes people who consume their food immediately since they have no way of accumulating and storing surplus. Such foraging societies often lack competition and are highly egalitarian. The Chewong certainly fit that description. In contrast, “delayed return” societies, especially peoples who […]
Peaceful Societies Exemplify Ecocentric Living [Panel presentations, part 2]
Alberto Gomes suggests that new images of social and economic relations are needed, ones which abandon human-centered paradigms and focus, instead, on the interdependence of people with the natural environment. Equality, sustainability, and peacefulness, in the new model proposed by Gomes, are intertwined. He demonstrates his arguments with numerous examples from the Orang Asli (“Original […]
Birhor Girls Take Up Boxing
Birhor girls living in the Indian village of Chalkari are learning, as the Deccan Herald delicately put it on Saturday, how to fight “for a better life.” The paper reported that numerous girls living in the village, located in the Dhanbad District, Jharkhand State, have taken up the sport of boxing. Several sources reported nearly […]
Play among the Batek
For nearly a year, Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College, has been adding posts to a blog that is hosted by the popular magazine Psychology Today. On October 1, he began a series of fascinating entries on the value of play to the development of children, and last week he expanded […]
Gender Equality Among the Batek [book review]
Kirk M. Endicott and Karen L. Endicott have just published an exciting new book on the egalitarian gender relationships among the Batek. As an added bonus, they have included a 37 minute DVD by Kirk showing life in a Batek band in 1990. The authors define gender equal societies as ones where neither sex controls […]