Anthropos is the international journal of anthropology and linguistics, founded in 1906 by Wilhelm Schmidt, missonary and member of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD). Its main purpose is the study of human societies in their cultural dimension. In honor of Wilhelm Schmidt‘s legacy, the cultivation of anthropology, ethnology, linguistics, and religious studies remain an essential component oft he Anthropos Institute – the organizational carrier of the journal.
This essay explores what one might call the “nihilistic turn”: the structures of intellectual self-destruction that seem to have become embedded in social anthropology. Using the author’s long-term fieldwork in Greenland as a backdrop and from...
This study hypothesizes the emergence of social evolution in northeast Africa, about 70,000 years ago. The combined emergence of syntactic language and collaborative groups generated a process of systematic social change. Spoken language itself and...
In the context of the contemporary debate on religion, let me formulate a thesis on the border of cultural anthropology and sociology as follows: “If the researcher manages to realize his cognitive limitations and at the same time honestly and...
Notwithstanding the fundamental socio-cultural cum religious divergences existing between the Muslims and Hindus, the two religious groups managed to forge bonds of fraternity based on mutual understanding and respect thanks to their centuries-long...
The age-old custom of hereditary chieftainship which was changed into hereditary Gaon Burah (GB) by the British colonial power is still in practice among the Sumi tribe of Nagaland. The article is an attempt towards understanding hereditary...
Nggua Keu Uwi (“Ritual of Areca Nut and Yam”) is a ritual of the Lio people of Detukeli village (Flores, Indonesia) held before planting rice. The main symbols in the Nggua Keu Uwi rite are areca nut and yam, which are linked to the history of...
Low seats in Java have existed since Indian traders came to bring Hindu/Buddhist practices in the 8th century, where only high-caste people sat on low-elevated stone. During the colonial era, ordinary Javanese began using a low wooden...
Among its texts in indigenous languages the British Library owns two manuscript volumes of the New Testament in Quechua, translated in 1824, not long after the Peruvian declaration of independence. It was commissioned by James or Diego Thomson, an...
– In the focus of this collaboration are two stories by the same narrator about the emergence of his shamanic vocation (Secoya, Ecuadorian Amazon). Told a few years apart, the stories show how the process of moving away from the influences of an...
– Since in the 1990s Chile approved – within the framework of recovery of institutional normality – its Indigenous Law, a series of social groups made the decision to identify as “indigenous,” with all sociopolitical consequences and...
The aim of this paper is to explore the role of women as Mennonite workers in Argentina since the Mennonite missionary arrival in the country in 1917 until the 1960s. Mennonites are part of the Anabaptist Christians, a movement which emerged in the...
This article investigates the unintended consequences of community-based ecotourism in the Sierra de Juárez in Oaxaca, Mexico. The state sponsors the implementation of eco-tourism in Indigenous communities to foster economic opportunities,...
This article investigates heroin use in northern Morocco through ethnographic work, exploring the trajectory by mobilizing the concept of becoming in three distinct phases: becoming addicted, becoming sick, and becoming a patient. Starting from the...
German island dialects of the Kirov region are considered to be transmigratory and defined as dying out language forms which are characterized by the special supra-regional formation. The relevance of the study of the island dialects of the Kirov...
The notion of a “survival” in culture, first proposed by E. B. Tylor in 1871, was used extensively for perhaps three decades, and then fell into disfavor, and came to be regarded by many anthropologists as unworthy of further consideration. Yet...
The very widespread occurrence of the trickster figure in myth and folklore has prompted scholars to explain this fascinating character in terms of universal features of the human mind or the human condition. This, however, has the effect of...
Following studies that uncovered an apotropaic meaning and function of Venus figurines, for which a basis was found in bodily processes, this article examines apotropaic iconography from the end of the Late Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic in...
A scholar in the fields of ethnology of religion, African studies, and Polish folk religiosity (researched from ethnological and the study of religion’s perspectives); a member of Anthropos Institute; a lecturer in the field of the study of...