Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Exposing Evolution's Influence, Robert G. Parr

History and Government Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Anthropological Study Of Shain Library: Uses, Perceptions, And Recommendations, Ingrid Brudvig, Casey Corn, Reed Harris, Brendan Kempf, Sophie Marx, Nick Mercer, Lauren Moran, Erich Roberts

Anthropology Department Student Projects

In the spring of 2009 professor Benoit’s Applied Anthropology class conducted a comprehensive study on Connecticut College’s Shain Library. The class met with the library staff multiple times before deciding how to tackle the project. The research question posed was, how do students use and perceive the library? Does the library satisfy student’s needs, and if not what changes could be implemented to better the student body?

The class began by submitting a proposal of our project to the Institutional Review Board, and then proceeded with the investigation. Though the topic as a whole is an examination of Shain Library …

If You Cannot Whisper: The Performative Language Of Magical Spells, Denice J. Szafran

Denice J Szafran, Ph.D.

Meaning is not primarily what a word has; it is something a word does. The basis of much Slavic folk wisdom is a belief in the inherent power of words: some utterances are taboo, others sacred. Still more words are the province of magic, a culturally contextual conceptual system within which spells, curses, and oaths are the primary vehicles utilized by a practitioner seeking to affect the world around him/her. An analysis of Austin’s and Levinson’s theories of the performative aspects of linguistic utterances can provide an explanation of how folkloric practitioners empowered their spells with conjoined magical words and …

Intergenerational Wealth Transmission And The Dynamics Of Inequality In Small-Scale Societies, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Samuel Bowles, Tom Hertz, Adrian Bell, Jan Beise, Greg Clark, Ila Fazzio, Michael Gurven, Kim Hill, Paul L. Hooper, William Irons, Hillard Kaplan, Donna Leonetti, Bobbi Low, Frank Marlowe, Richard Mcelreath, Suresh Naidu, David Nolan, Patrizio Piraino, Robert Quinlan, Eric Schniter, Rebecca Sear, Mary Shenk, Eric Alden Smith, Christopher Von Reuden, Polly Wiessner

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Small-scale human societies range from foraging bands with a strong egalitarian ethos to more economically stratified agrarian and pastoral societies. We explain this variation in inequality using a dynamic model in which a population’s long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families across generations. We estimate the degree of intergenerational transmission of three different types of wealth (material, embodied, and relational), as well as the extent of wealth inequality in 21 historical and contemporary populations. We show that intergenerational transmission of wealth and wealth inequality are substantial …