[Paper Spotlight] Learning to Survive Ecological Risks among the Sidama of Southwestern Ethiopia

A new paper by Samuel Dira and Barry Hewlett entitled Learning to Survive Ecological Risks among the Sidama of Southwestern Ethiopia published in the Journal of Ecological Anthropology explores how Sidama farmer teenagers learn to mitigate environmental risk.

Read more here.

Abstract: Sidama farmers rely on rain-fed agriculture and experience a highly variable natural environment. Recurrent drought, erratic rainfall, and crop and livestock loss are common in mid and lowland areas, but local people are not passive victims of the changing environment: they use accumulated knowledge and skills to respond to and buffer ecological changes. Based on freelists and in-depth interviews with 70 adults and 50 adolescents, this paper describes how the Sidama conceive of ecological risks, survive difficult times, and learn to be resilient. The results indicate that food shortage and drought are salient risk factors. While local people think the future is unpredictable, they have diverse and complex knowledge about saving, trading and farming that help them cope with environmental challenges. Fifty adolescents interviewed reported that they learned diverse survival strategies from parents, fellow adolescents, and other adults. Interviews with adolescents and adults indicate that the Sidama use multiple methods, including teaching, to transmit cultural knowledge and skills about how to survive ecological risks.

[In The News] When it’s playtime, many kids prefer reality over fantasy

Our work, as well as that of our research affiliate Dr. Adam Boyette, was mentioned in an article on children’s play in ScienceNews!

Read the article, by Bruce Bower, here.

[Paper Spotlight] Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen

Polly Wiessner’s paper entitled Embers of Society in PNAS described how evening storytelling among the Ju/’hoansi serves as an important setting for transmitting social norms.

Read it here. 

Abstract: Much attention has been focused on control of fire in human evolution and the impact of cooking on anatomy, social, and residential arrangements. However, little is known about what transpired when firelight extended the day, creating effective time for social activities that did not conflict with productive time for subsistence activities. Comparison of 174 day and nighttime conversations among the Ju/’hoan (!Kung) Bushmen of southern Africa, supplemented by 68 translated texts, suggests that day talk centers on economic matters and gossip to regulate social relations. Night activities steer away from tensions of the day to singing, dancing, religious ceremonies, and enthralling stories, often about known people. Such stories describe the workings of entire institutions in a small-scale society with little formal teaching. Night talk plays an important role in evoking higher orders of theory of mind via the imagination, conveying attributes of people in broad networks (virtual communities), and transmitting the “big picture” of cultural institutions that generate regularity of behavior, cooperation, and trust at the regional level. Findings from the Ju/’hoan are compared with other hunter-gatherer societies and related to the widespread human use of firelight for intimate conversation and our appetite for evening stories. The question is raised as to what happens when economically unproductive firelit time is turned to productive time by artificial lighting.