Anthropologists on Witchcraft

Take a peek inside the life of the people who get to peek inside the lives of others. This week I talk with two anthropologists about what it's like to go and live in an extremely different culture. We talk about shamanism, leadership, witchcraft and what past health care and court systems might have looked like. Zach Garfield is an evolutionary anthropologist who investigates how behaviors such as leadership and followership, decision-making, and economic strategies are related to group-level pressures such as network dynamics and alliance patterns, sociopolitical structures, group context, and cultural norms. https://anthro.vancouver.wsu.edu/people/zgarfield/ Manvir Singh Cognitive & evolutionary anthropologist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse his research program aims to explain why societies develop complex, recurrent traditions such as shamanism, witchcraft, origin myths, property rights, sharing norms, lullabies, dance music, and gods have appeared in human societies everywhere, from nomadic hunter-gatherer bands to complex, industrial, mega-urbanized states. https://www.manvir.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices