About hrafARC
HRAF Advanced Research Centers (hrafARC) is a research division of the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University. hrafARC aims to promote basic and applied research in anthropology and to encourage and support comparative and cross-cultural research. More specifically, hrafARC aims to further the development of anthropology through comparative knowledge based on testable theory, sound research design and systematic methods for the collection and analysis of data. We seek to fulfill the historic mission of anthropology to describe and explain the range of variation in human biology, society, and culture across time and space.
The main headquarters is at the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) building in New Haven, CT (755 Prospect Street). HRAF is a nonprofit membership consortium affiliated with Yale University. Carol R. Ember directs hrafARC in New Haven and Michael Fischer directs hrafARC in the UK--see http://hrafarc.eu/.
hrafARC Current Research
We are currently working on a 5-year NSF-funded interdisciplinary project “Natural Hazards and Cultural Transformations.” Researchers from cultural anthropology, archaeology, psychology, geography and climatology, are conducting three types of comparisons--a worldwide cross-cultural comparison using ethnographic data, an diachronic archaeological comparison of twelve traditions before and after major severe climate events, and a comparison of countries. We are looking at a broad variety of possible cultural transformations in response to hazards. These range from diet and subsistence diversity, property systems, mutual aid, political economy, and general cultural “tightness." All of these domains have been newly coded for this project. Read more ...
hrafARC Data Repository
Peregrine, Peter N. 2017. “Political Participation and Long-Term Resilience in Pre-Columbian Societies.” Disaster Prevention and Management 26(3). DOI: 10.1108/DPM-01-2017-0013
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Peregrine, Peter N. n.d. "Social Resilience to Climate-Related Disasters in Ancient Societies: A Test of Two Hypotheses" (under review)
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HRAF Services Platform
HRAF is working on a services platform to support the next generation of eHRAF applications to support teaching and research Read more …