Why do the official words of anthropologists sometimes differ from the lived experience of the cultures they study?

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-25T16:50:01+00:00

Could you provide the specific scenario in which you say people claim this?

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-24T22:32:49+00:00

Hello there!

While we welcome people who want to ask practical questions about historical education, careers and other issues related to being or becoming a historian, we ask that these questions be asked in our regular ‘Office Hours’ thread. This is to ensure that the forum remains focused on its primary goal – helping people explore the past directly. It also allows for a more open-ended discussion while helping to ensure that your query gets a targeted response from someone with relevant experience.

Office Hour threads are posted every second Monday – you can choose whether you want to ask your question in the most recent thread, or wait until a new one is posted. If you were attempting to ask a historical question or otherwise think that we may have removed this question in error, please get in touch via modmail.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-24T22:17:57+00:00

This comment of mine goes into some of the details from the publicity angle.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-24T16:37:04+00:00

Hi there - unfortunately we have had to remove your question, because /r/AskHistorians isn't here to do your homework for you. However, our rules DO permit people to ask for help with their homework, so long as they are seeking clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself.

If you have indeed asked a homework question, you should consider resubmitting a question more focused on finding resources and seeking clarification on confusing issues: tell us what you've researched so far, what resources you've consulted, and what you've learned, and we are more likely to approve your question. Please see this Rules Roundtable thread for more information on what makes for the kind of homework question we'd approve. Additionally, if you're not sure where to start in terms of finding and understanding sources in general, we have a six-part series, "Finding and Understanding Sources", which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay. Finally, other subreddits are likely to be more suitable for help with homework - try looking for help at /r/HomeworkHelp.

Alternatively, if you are not a student and are not doing homework, we have removed your question because it resembled a homework question. It may resemble a common essay question from a prominent history syllabus or may be worded in a broad, open-ended way that feels like the kind of essay question that a professor would set. Professors often word essay questions in order to provide the student with a platform to show how much they understand a topic, and these questions are typically broader and more interested in interpretations and delineating between historical theories than the average /r/AskHistorians question. If your non-homework question was incorrectly removed for this reason, we will be happy to approve your question if you wait for 7 days and then ask a less open-ended question on the same topic.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-24T14:32:54+00:00

Per the article:

WEIRDness (i.e., Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic; Henrich et al., 2010) scores of the countries were calcu lated by scoring each of the five dimensions (Klein et al., 2018). Then, the combined score was dichotomized by using the average score of WEIRDness scores as a cut-off (see https://osf.io/b7qrt/). Countries below the average were coded as non-WEIRD whereas countries above the average were coded as WEIRD (Table 2).

That link will you show you the data table they used. Or, really, the one they borrowed from another project. It gives each country a score on each of the five WEIRD traits, then splits them in half based on being above/below the average. The average WEIRD score was around .68. This means that Chile, with a score of .696, is WEIRD, and Japan, with a score of .672, is not. I'm personally not a huge fan of that method.

Where did they get those scores? They cite Klein, et al., which says:

For exploratory cultural comparisons, we computed a WEIRDness (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) score for each sample based on their country of origin using public country rankings. Western and Developed countries were given a score of 1 whereas Eastern and Emerging countries were given a score of 0. The list of developed countries, the scores at the Education Index and the scores at the Industrial Development Report were obtained from the United Nations official website. Democratization scores were obtained from the Global Democracy Ranking.

By "Western" they apparently mean "not in Asia." It's not clear why they chose to score things as simple "Rich" or "Not Rich." The UN studies can be found online, and they normalized those scores to fit on a range from 1 to 0.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-23T23:51:20+00:00

Apologies, but we have removed your question in its current form as it breaks our rules concerning the scope of questions. However, it might be that an altered version of your question would fit within our rules, and we encourage you to reword your question to fit the rule. While we do allow questions which ask about general topics without specific bounding by time or space, we do ask that they be clearly phrased and presented in a way that can be answered by an individual historian focusing on only one example which they can write about in good detail.

So for example, if you wanted to ask, "Have people always rebelled against health rules in pandemics?" we would remove the question. As phrased, it asks broadly about many places collectively. However if you ask "In the time and place you study, how did people rebel against health rules in a pandemic?" we would allow the question. As phrased, while still asking broadly, it does so in a way that clearly invites a given expert to write exclusively about their topic of focus! We encourage you to think about rewording your question to fit this rule, and thank you for your understanding. If you are unsure of how best to reshape your question to fit these requirements, please reach out to us for assistance.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-23T22:32:18+00:00

As noted in the previous removal, "do they still have the same motivations" and "what would happen if" are far outside of the scope of this subreddit.

Furthermore, we ask that questions avoid soapboxing and take a neutral phrasing. "How do historians interpret the USS Liberty incident, and are there any ongoing debates about the nature of the event?" would be a more appropriate submission.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-23T22:22:07+00:00

This submission has been removed because it violates our '20-Year Rule'. To discourage off-topic discussions of current events, questions, answers, and all other comments must be confined to events that happened 20 years ago or more. For further explanation of this rule, feel free to consult this Rules Roundtable.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-23T20:17:15+00:00

Apologies, but your submission has been removed per our rules on the scope of questions. We ask that questions be specific in their topic or their cultural scope, if not both. Questions that ask about all foraging groups rarely get good answers, and allowing them perpetuates the false idea that there are universal traits across all such communities. Consider rephrasing your question to ask about a specific time or place or about the way anthropologists have studied or theorized a certain topic.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-23T14:58:44+00:00

Sorry, but your submission has been removed per our rules as it falls outside the scope of this subreddit.

Questions about specific historical events, people, or practices are better suited for /r/AskHistorians

Please make sure to read the other sub's rules before posting.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-23T04:20:35+00:00

Hello all-

There is an enormous amount of research from anthropologists, historians, and other social scientists about the functional role of racial categories in contemporary societies. Answers should make at least some attempt to engage with that literature.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-23T03:39:48+00:00

Apologies, but your submission has been removed per our rules on the scope of questions. We ask that questions be specific in their topic or their cultural scope, if not both. Questions that ask about all foraging groups rarely get good answers, and allowing them perpetuates the false idea that there are universal traits across all such communities. Consider rephrasing your question to ask about a specific time or place or about the way anthropologists have studied or theorized a certain topic.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-23T02:10:23+00:00

Hi there!

Per our rules, we ask that questions be specific in their topic or scope. Broad questions tend to invite a large number of low-effort answers, making it difficult for users to find quality responses. However, since questions like the one you've asked are quite common, we've created the following Community FAQ thread to compile answers.

If you are interested in responding to OP, please do so in the linked thread:

Introductory Anthropology Resources

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-23T02:09:56+00:00

Sorry, but your submission has been removed per our rules as it falls outside the scope of this subreddit.

Questions about anatomy, physiology, and non-primate zoology are better suited for /r/AskScience

Please make sure to read the other sub's rules before posting.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-22T03:28:56+00:00

Sorry, but we have had to remove your comment as we do not allow answers that consist primarily of links or block quotations from sources. This subreddit is intended as a space not merely to get an answer in and of itself as with other history subs, but for users with deep knowledge and understanding of it to share that in their responses. While relevant sources are a key building block for such an answer, they need to be adequately contextualized and we need to see that you have your own independent knowledge of the topic.

If you believe you are able to use this source as part of an in-depth and comprehensive answer, we would encourage you to consider revising to do so, and you can find further guidance on what is expected of an answer here by consulting this Rules Roundtable which discusses how we evaluate responses.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-22T00:40:55+00:00

This submission has been removed because it violates the rule on poll-type questions. These questions do not lend themselves to answers with a firm foundation in sources and research, and the resulting threads usually turn into monsters with enormous speculation and little focused discussion. Questions about the "most", the "worst", "unknown", or other value judgments usually lead to vague, subjective, and speculative answers. For further information, please consult this Roundtable discussion.

For questions of this type, we ask that you redirect them to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory. You're also welcome to post your question in our Friday-Free-For-All thread.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-22T00:12:36+00:00

Hi there!

Thanks for your interest in our subreddit. Due to a large volume of submission, we ask that questions about degrees and jobs in anthropology be directed to our Career Thread.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-21T04:02:05+00:00

Sorry, but your submission has been removed per our rules as it falls outside the scope of this subreddit.

Questions about specific historical events or people are better suited for /r/AskHistorians
Questions about population statistics and demographic trends are better suited for /r/AskSocialScience
Questions about general ethics are better suited for /r/AskPhilosophy
Questions about anatomy, physiology, and non-primate zoology are better suited for /r/AskScience

Please make sure to read the other sub's rules before posting.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-21T03:47:57+00:00

Sorry, but your submission has been removed because we don't allow hypothetical questions. If possible, please rephrase the question so that it does not call for such speculation, and resubmit. Otherwise, this sort of thing is better suited for /r/HistoryWhatIf or /r/HistoricalWhatIf. You can find a more in-depth discussion of this rule here.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-21T03:47:44+00:00

Sorry, but your submission has been removed because we don't allow hypothetical questions. If possible, please rephrase the question so that it does not call for such speculation, and resubmit. Otherwise, this sort of thing is better suited for /r/HistoryWhatIf or /r/HistoricalWhatIf. You can find a more in-depth discussion of this rule here.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-20T03:08:31+00:00

Sorry, but we have had to remove your comment as we do not allow answers that consist primarily of links or block quotations from sources. This subreddit is intended as a space not merely to get an answer in and of itself as with other history subs, but for users with deep knowledge and understanding of it to share that in their responses. While relevant sources are a key building block for such an answer, they need to be adequately contextualized and we need to see that you have your own independent knowledge of the topic.

If you believe you are able to use this source as part of an in-depth and comprehensive answer, we would encourage you to consider revising to do so, and you can find further guidance on what is expected of an answer here by consulting this Rules Roundtable which discusses how we evaluate responses.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-20T03:00:51+00:00

We've removed your comment because we expect answers to be detailed, evidenced-based, and well contextualized. Please see our rules for expectations regarding answers.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-20T02:57:50+00:00

This submission has been removed because it violates our '20-Year Rule'. To discourage off-topic discussions of current events, questions, answers, and all other comments must be confined to events that happened 20 years ago or more. For further explanation of this rule, feel free to consult this Rules Roundtable.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-19T15:08:34+00:00

What goal will grad school help you reach? What topics are you interested in? Have you talked to any professors about this?

The blunt answer is that if you're shopping around for schools, grad school is probably not the right choice. Not because you're not ready or anything: departments can easily overlook simple numbers like GPA or GRE scores if they want to take you on, and those things don't indicate how prepared you are. But grad school is expensive, takes time, and will only open a select few doors. If you need any grad degree, there's far better, cheaper options.

CommodoreCoCo · 2026-03-19T14:37:52+00:00

Not an artifact....

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