HRAF News Vol. 2021-7
Complete set of 186 SCCS cases in eHRAF World Cultures
HRAF is pleased to celebrate that the eHRAF World Cultures database now contains documents matching all 186 cases from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS). A new topical summary of Marriage and Family has been added to Explaining Human Culture, making it our 11th summary of what we have learned from cross-cultural research about patterns of cultural variation. Our featured HRAF Global Scholar this month is Dr. Loreen Maseno of Maseno University in Kenya. Finally, meet the participants for our first of three NSF-supported Summer Institutes for Cross-Cultural Research.
Switch to the new design of eHRAF World Cultures today
Our new design will be launching in Fall 2021. Authenticated users from member institutions can switch to the enhanced application today by following the prompts in the pop-up window upon entering the eHRAF World Cultures database. We hope that you will take the opportunity to opt-in to the new design as soon as possible.
The Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale University is pleased to announce that eHRAF World Cultures now contains matching focal documents for all Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS) cases.

The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample was created in 1969 by George Peter Murdock and Douglas R. White. The SCCS consists of 186 anthropologically described societies chosen by the sample's creators to be representative of the world's cultures. The sample of largely nonindustrial societies tried to minimize cultural relatedness, so only one society was chosen from a given culture area. In addition, each society was pinpointed in time and space. Researchers coding variables for this sample are expected to adhere to the specified time and place focus.

A new topical summary on Marriage and Family is now available in Explaining Human Culture (EHC), our open access database that summarizes the results of over 1,000 cross-cultural studies. 

Cross-cultural research based on diverse worldwide samples of societies has concentrated on variation in the functions and concepts of marriage and family, social norms and familial expectations, the dissolution of marriage, and various forms of families and households.

The Marriage and Family summary can be downloaded as a PDF file or ePub (ebook). The summary provides more in-depth information to supplement the Marriage and Family teaching exercise available on Teaching eHRAF. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF), in a grant to the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), is supporting three years of Summer Institutes for Cross-Cultural Anthropological Research (BCS #2020156).

These Summer Institutes will train faculty, researchers, and advanced graduate students in the theory and state-of-the art methods for conducting regional and worldwide comparative research. The aim is for these methods to be incorporated into educational courses and cross-cultural research using anthropological data.

The first three-week Summer Institute will be held virtually from July 19, 2021 to August 6, 2021. The program will include lectures, discussion, and hands-on exercises. Each participant will design and execute a pilot project during their time at an Institute.

Our featured HRAF Global Scholar this month is Loreen Maseno, Senior Lecturer, Department of Religion, Theology and Philosophy at Maseno University in Kenya.

Loreen received her PhD from the University of Oslo, Norway in an interdisciplinary academic program covering kinship studies, theology, and gender. Her graduate research focused on ethnographic studies among the Abanyole people of rural Western Kenya. Since her return to Kenya, she has been challenged by limited access to online databases. The HRAF Global Scholars program has provided Loreen with much welcomed access to an extensive repository of ethnographic and archaeological information. Loreen uses materials from the eHRAF database for citations in research publications and for teaching graduate courses at Maseno University.

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