Day 3: This was a RAG classic, a wonderful ZOOM with the amazing #MornaFinnegan on 'Is there any Body out there? Love and loneliness in anthropology'
She casts a spell, on her experience of touch and corporeal morality, and how #African #hunter-gatherers create systems of power and value through the collective tactile body.
Day 4: an inspiring talk with #HarryJenkinson of #Right2roam. We are a #nomadic species, and our capacity to care for nature depends on our political and cultural rights to be part of it -- not cut off from it.
Day 5: Dr #ToyinAgbetu, (Lecturer in Social and Political Anthropology at UCL) revisits Action Anthropology, arguing although anthropology is centred around the study of humanity, in its applied and military guises, it is not necessarily egalitarian, equitable or activist.
He had us all eating out of his ✋
Day 6: the brilliant #DenizSalali
talks about her decade of fieldwork with BaYaka children and how they become active and autonomous people in an egalitarian #huntergatherer society of the #Congo rainforest.
Day 7: #cedricboeckx, world leading researcher of the neurobiological foundations of the human #language #faculty, gave this fantastic talk on 'Hunter-gatherers of words'
Day 8: a beautiful talk with #kirstyegraham
on the extraordinary #Fongoli #chimpanzee community
Day 9: #HelgaVierich talks about ancient stories from the #Kalahari. This material is super important for anyone who wants to know about #huntergatherer #gender relations.
How do children learn to be human? Adults model behaviour and instruct morals by examples, with the help of the stories. These can be original myths, biblical and folktales, or sometimes parables, coming-of-age adventures, and legends, that illustrate good as well as bad outcomes. Here one such tale is recounted, as told to an anthropologist by a Kua storyteller in the southeastern Kalahari four decades ago. This features the Creator, a termite mound, a Buffalo wife, foolish humans, and poisonous farts. Enjoy.
#13daysofXmas #RAGtoptalks
#egalitarianism #IndigenousCosmology
Day 10: a follow-up talk from #MeganBiesele, world expert on #Ju/'hoan folklore, with the 'Story of the Elephant Girl' -- strongly similar to the Kua Buffalo Wife tale (they are some of the #oldest #stories in the world)
'Helga's story eerily echoes those Megan recorded in northwestern Botswana, also in the 1970s, of the Ju|'hoan Elephant Girl. Both address basic problems of life (e.g. that people's food prominently includes sentient beings). But her retold version appears to answer questions posed by seeming "gaps", puzzling to a western audience, in versions Megan collected.'
#13daysofXmas #RAGtoptalks
#egalitarianism #IndigenousCosmology
Day 11: for all who want to know about egalitarianism, our own #JeromeLewis draws on many years of fieldwork with #Bayaka Mbendjele people in this extraordinary talk on 'Egalitarian Civilisations'
Jerome Lewis presents research tracing the long duration and resilience of a Central African hunter-gatherer 'civilisation'. This civilisation cannot be traced through archaeological evidence, but rather by combining genetic, ethnographic and ethnomusicological studies. These suggest a structural form or style that endures across different 'Pygmy' societies
#13daysofXmas #RAGtoptalks
#egalitarianism #IndigenousCosmology #CongoRainforest #gender
Day 12: in this brilliant talk Dasa Bombjakova describes #moadjo, the #BaYaka theatre of #ridicule run by older #women if some man misbehaves!
'this lecture portrays the role of ridicule and other powerful levelling mechanisms in learning about the normative world of this gender-egalitarian BaYaka hunting and gathering society. How do you teach norms to children in this specific cultural context? What this has to do with the Colin Turnbull’s concept of noise? Dasa Bombjakova will address these questions and raise some tips on future research on norms in an egalitarian hunter-gatherer context.'
#13daysofXmas #RAGtoptalks
#egalitarianism #gender #laughter #IndigenousCosmology #levelling
Day 13: our leading scholar #IanWatts takes us to the heart of #Hadza cosmology by following the zigzag trail of the mysterious entity !o!oko, cannibal grandmother and mantis trickster and transformer.
Stories and beliefs associated to the Mantis among the Hadzabe of Tanzania compare with the well-known figure of the Mantis among the /Xam Southern #San #huntergatherers. This suggests great antiquity of the concepts related to #lunar time.
The word itself -- !o!oko -- is probably very ancient with double alveolar-palatal click (pop sound from taking your tongue quickly away from the alveolar ridge). The -ko ending implies femaleness, but this entity has gender fluidity.
#13daysofXmas #RAGtoptalks
#egalitarianism #gender #trickster #IndigenousCosmology
