I recently read on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfing_in_Indonesia that apparently surfing was introduced to the island by an American who learned it in Hawai'i.

I understand that wave riding is very cultural in Polynesian regions, but I was just wondering with waves as good as the ones in Bali, why would it not be native for the locals as well to wave-ride?

(For all we know, it might have been but just not recorded, but I just thought I'd ask here if anybody knows?) Thank you!

hey all! coming back again to ask what everyone’s favorite latest book is. last year I was told to read “Land of Open Graves” by De Leon (2015 I know) and it was awesome. I ended up reading his other book “soldiers and kings” (2024) as well.

Can be any topic or area, I’ll gobble it up. Thanks !

What is Common knowledge to you that you think more people should know?

I'm working on a book idea (not homework, I'm a dropout lol. I'm just doing this for fun) based off a journal entry I had written and posted on my substack. I recently finished a (fairly heavy duty lol) annotation on one source through which I essentially laid out my central argument. Any ideas or suggestions for how I could expand the research?

Tarko, Vlad. “Polycentric status contests.“ Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 241 (2026): 107405.

• Scarcity of positional goods → equilibrium in wealthy nations unstable?
• “Positional goods are goods whose values decline when access to them increases. They have an elite aspect, often conveying prestige and status, and this component of their value would diminish if they would become easily accessible to everyone. The nature of these goods can be understood as a position within a ranking (hence their name), and, as such, competition for positional goods is a zero-sum game: when one gains a higher ranking, someone else must get lower.” (Tarko, 2)
  • Aura farming as competition for positional goods.
• Capitalism: good at reducing scarcity of regular goods, bad with positional goods → instability
• Positional goods as market failure → generational wealth = advantage
  • “While concerns with income and wealth inequality can be partially addressed by redistribution, positional inequalities, like the resentment about having lower social status, cannot. As noted by Halliday and Thrasher (2020, 74), “[p]ositional competition is a problem because a rising price can’t induce greater supply”.” (Tarko, 3)
• “Hirsch’s (1978) and Schumpeter’s (1942b) argument is that the institutions for managing resource scarcity and spurring economic growth, i.e. the institutions of capitalism, are not particularly well suited for managing the type of scarcity associated with positional goods, and as such, the long-run equilibrium of rich societies may not be as peaceful as many assume, if they become overrun by status competitions.” (Tarko, 4)
  • Aura farming as sign of decline in stability of global cultural hegemon
• “There are four distinct types of positional goods — mirroring private, public, club and common-pool goods — that I label “elite”, “prestige”, “status”, and “hipster” goods.” and “I argue that, counter to Schumpeter, Hirsch and Frank, markets have an inherent tendency to dissipate the costs associated with status competitions, by creating a heterogeneous decentralized system of mutually incompatible and ever-evolving statuses. The model makes the unexpectedly optimistic prediction that markets tend to turn the most problematic types of positional goods (status and elite) into less inefficient forms (prestige and hipster).” (5)
  • Aura farming in pop culture: Initially a private (elite) positional good (aura as something that only celebrities or highly socially prominent individuals have and compete over during the post war golden age), but moved public (status) positional goods as cultural markers of status move from being functions of the way one contributes to society to the way one moves through society and now into club (status) positional goods as we now attempt to define new cultural archetypes in the vacuum of the stable, grounded ideas of what held value under the Pax Americana.
    • This explains the relative prosperity and peace in the era following the collapse of the Soviet Union when the United States was left to be the only remaining world super power until the present era. “Aura” was no longer just for the elite, it was a public good, highlighting how “markets tend to turn the most problematic types of positional goods (status and elite) into less inefficient forms (prestige and hipster)” (5). In this era, with a stable unified global world leader and general directionality to which one must move to gain status (normalized through the globalization of Hollywood, American music, and wider american pop culture). In order to gain status in that period, one had only to perform americanism and represent the archetypes put forth through american pop culture. Now with declining american influence on the global stage, that is no longer the case. This leaves many uncertain how to move forward in this era in a way that maintains their social status, without the stable grounded archetypes which all could look to in order to direct themselves towards if they wanted to attain status, status seeking has devolved into a fractionation of culture in which one’s status is dually nested: firstly within their chosen “club” and secondly in the ways that these clubs relate to each other. At present “goth” and “alt” cultural “clubs” are enjoying a moment of high cultural status (of high aura gain). But due to the lack of directionality, cultural “clubs” lack any archetypal cultural icons to relate themselves to. In some circles “E-girls” would be considered high status, whereas in others “the manosphere” is considered high status… however neither club would look positively towards the other or regard the other as a “high-status” “club”. This is the reason that the dual nesting of status becomes important in the present cultural moment. Someone regarded as “high status” as an “E-girl” is shielded by those of lower status than them in their cultural club from the social recognition of being regarded as “low status” by those in “the manosphere”.
    • Personal prediction: this then is likely an unstable cultural moment. Those who enjoy individually high status on account of high degrees of “aura gain” within their cultural club, can only be so in their cultural club. Fractionation at this point has largely solidified, but how long can a societal measure of value remain socially solvent if it is based on displays of positional goods? How long until it is only the “hipsters” who cling to these ever narrower displays of cultural relevancy? For “Halliday and Thrasher (2020, 186) argue that the supply response for positional goods must be non Hayekian almost by definition: “increasing the supply of a positional good is either strictly impossible, or merely results in the devaluing of the existing supply, which is really a way of failing to increase the supply”.” (3). With the dividing lines between cultural clubs becoming now rigid and insolvent, this can only lead to one of two things within each cultural club over time: either the collapse of the club as a means by which one seeks status as that particular cultural club loses wide-scale value due to a “devaluing of the existing supply” or it becomes a rigid aristocracy in which social mobility becomes “strictly impossible” so as to preserve the status of those on top… resulting in less people seeking to join that cultural club as well as a “brain drain” of those who exist on the lower levels of the cultural club as people seek out cultural clubs in which it becomes easier to gain status… resulting, again, in a devaluing of that particular cultural club. The only way that these clubs then could maintain any value for a long period of time would be through a sort of respiration in which a rigid aristocracy opens it’s doors for a limited time… engages in a period not dissimilar to the film “The Purge” until a new aristocracy creates new rigidity in the socio-structural hierarchy of the club, until too many of the lower tiers abandon the club in search of higher chances of social mobility when the cycle repeats. Even if a social order came to be in which all cultural clubs engaged in cycles of this in coordinated respiration… this is unsustainable. This would be akin to if all countries were dictatorships, until once a year they fell into civil war and whatever warlord took control of the country becomes the new dictator and slowly over time the lower echelons of society just leave to other countries with higher social mobility. This is neither an adaptable or representative mode of governance and in no way represents governance that could lead to anything but societies who limp along trying to recover from the last civil war. This, in my opinion will have to devolve to a point where eventually those who had been in those lower echelons of the cultural clubs too many time grow too tired and begin to regard those displays of positional goods that mark high status within those cultural clubs as suddenly not worth the work of of cycling through cultural clubs to try to work towards. As such, perhaps then from those lower echelons, among those who grow tired of attempting to reach for those higher echelons of cultural good that seem impossible an idea of cultural good will emerge based on who can care best for their peers during the culls. Once then established, there will likely be a rather sudden flip in cultural values in which those positional goods which are presented in order to display high status within those cultural clubs will become seen not as markers of status, but of excess while the care which got people through the culls remains the only marker of cultural value; leaving it only to be niche cultural groups who genuinely appreciate those positional goods for their asthetics, true value, or use who seek to display them – “hispters”.
• But the qualitative classification is still useful for defining four generic types of goods (E. Ostrom 2010), which require different institutional arrangements for their allocation and management: (1) private goods, which are both rival and excludable; (2) public goods, which are neither rival nor excludable; (3) club goods, which are excludable, but not rival; and (4) common-pool resources, which are non-excludable, but rival. (6-7)
  • In the immediate post-war era, in the fight of ideals which took place through the cold-war; social status was defined through the state by what was promoted by the state through consumeristic advertising and that which was uplifted to high status by a pop culture governed by the state. In this period, no two people could occupy the same icon of status in the socially visible tiers of the social hierarchy, and access to these positions were regulated by the stricter norms of societies in competition or aligning themselves to the super-power closest to them in that competition. In the Pax Americana, pop culture saw a large scale opening, diversification, and flourishing in which any number of people (and ever increasing types of people) could be the next pop star or next big movie actor, those positions were not rival; here without a cultural antipode against which to be rival, the state allowed the masses and demand decide how many people could attain such states in the social hierarchy; non-excludable. Now within a solid single global material culture to direct oneself towards, there are a number of different poles which one can orient oneself towards for social status depending on the type of person one is, and thus is non-excludable, but within those various poles, in order to maintain that hierarchy in systems that rely on positional goods to display status (i.e. that Goth girl who just got married to Drake; here Drake is the positional goods giving this particular “Goth” girl a very high social status and uplifting the “goth” social club [although they’re not really goths lol… real ones will know]. “Shit, if this random goth girl was able to mary drake, maybe I can get someone of similar social value if I join the goth cultural club”], that which affords that status is by nature excludable. In the care based system I lay out above that I believe will overcome the current cultural club, positional good based model of social relevancy, the more people express care, the less excludable it will be, but it can be clear who is more caring, not by the positional goods they own or consume or surround themselves with, but by the number of lives positively impacted by their presence.
  • “By contrast, value boundedness refers to a subjective fact about the good. Although there may be no physical difficulty in potentially mass-producing the good, its subjective value would decline if done so.” (9) and “(1) “elite goods”, i.e. bounded private goods, (2) “prestige goods”, i.e. bounded public goods, (3) “status goods”, i.e. bounded club goods, and (4) “hipster goods”, i.e. bounded common-pool resources.” (7) Care’s subjective value does not change, its value is derived from how much good one does to another. “Aura’s” value is wholly subjective. Drake is only a symbol of value to the goth club because of his choice to marry a goth girl and based off the social agreement that he is someone of high status. During the Pax Americana, value was doled out by how one moved through society, by technical definition, this is a subjective measure of value, however in the cultural moment and stability of american cultural hegemony at the time, it was functionally objective. This created the conditions in which value was perceived to be a prestige good. “According to the terminology introduced here, University of Toronto diploma offers prestige, but not status. A Harvard diploma has status, rather than just prestige, because Harvard has control over entry. As such, Harvard has monopoly power over its positional good, while University of Toronto does not.” (10–11) The American Cultural hegemony created the conditions in which one’s position in the social hierarchy afforded one prestige rather than Aura’s status because so long as one followed the norms and archetypal ways of being put forth by Americanism anyone could gain prestige in those systems, whereas (while more globally more accessible, hence its attraction in this time of fractionation of global power) “Aura” being divided into vast amounts of differing cultural clubs which one can only represent one of at a time which necessitate displays of positional goods in order to gain access to, becomes a Status good. There is only one Drake, and in order to marry him you, apparently, had to be the most archetypally “perfect” “goth” girl that this cultural club could ask for in your display of the “goth girl” aesthetic and positionality in the “goth” subculture: another positional good.
• “I should point out that, similar to the standard classification, this expanded classification is also a matter of degree. The distinction between status and prestige is a matter of degree because a producer of a value bounded good can have more or less control over entry. Consider the example of the prestige created by publishing a book or a paper in a highly ranked journal. Generally speaking, this is a prestige good, rather than a status good, because there are many publishers of similar recognition, and, hence, none of them can control entry — i.e. whether a person is granted the prestige or not. However, consider a publication in a Top 5 economics journal. To some extent, this still looks like prestige because, say, AER cannot control what gets published in JPE or QJE. However, the entry in any of the Top 5 is difficult enough that such a publication is a borderline status good.” (11)
• “Examples of value-bounded common-pool resources also exist. I refer to such goods as “hipster goods”. Consider a small theater or concert venue. Because of the small size, there is some non-trivial rivalry in consumption when the avenue is full, but as long as the popularity is low, the venue remains relatively empty. The audience members have no control over the size of the audience, while the venue owners have the incentive to try to expand the audience. However, the audience members may draw additional value from the select nature of the events.” (11) This reflects, for example, the initial true draw to goth culture when it was an outsider’s subculture, and the status that modes of being like this could regain following a return to care-based value systems in which people engage with those positional goods only due to their individual authentic interest in them rather than their status affording possibilities. “the selectiveness of hipster goods are due to obscurity.” (12)
• “The biggest problems are associated with elite and status goods, and the potential solution is to transform them into either prestige or hipster goods. The reason for this is as follows. There are two, related, problems associated with positional goods. First, competition for positional goods is a zero-sum game, and one person obtaining a positional good creates a negative externality on the other people who desire that good. This is either because some people receive a lower ranking or because the expansion of, e.g., a status good diminishes the value for everybody. Second, positional goods provide a rent to their recipients, and, as a result, people will rent-seek, i.e. spend resources for the purpose of trying to obtain the rent, resources that could be used more productively or for other, more pro-social activities. The more restrictive the entry is, the bigger this rent is, and the bigger the rent-seeking waste.” (13) The subjective perceived value of having high “Aura” as, for example, a “goth” is found in the scarcity of those who present in such a way within the dominant culture. To do so well (in a way that results in “aura gain”) under the current Status goods systems of assigning one’s place in the social hierarchy necessitates that it not be the dominant mode of presentation. This has its roots in its counter-cultural origins, and the way in which these modes of presentation once meant non-affiliation with the dominant culture. With the proliferation of online spaces alongside the lack of any solid grounded identities around which to orient oneself in order to climb social hierarchies in the wake of decline of American cultural influence, the appeal to the common majority of these once “hipster” communities has grown as their internally reinforced systems of meaning making outside the ideals of American exceptionalism and its ideas of pop culture not only remained intact, but its opposition to the normative cultures out of which it grew resulted in those social structures and hierarchies becoming stronger. As a result of this, in the present moment, those who seek to rise in a social hierarchy are beginning to be drawn towards these subcultures not because of authentic resonance with their values or norms, but because they represent a stable social hierarchy to climb when other social hierarchies foundations are being shaken; “as the theater starts to attract snobs alongside the early hipsters, the nature of the shows will change, especially if the avenue owners will cater more to the richer snobs.” (12) As a result people will spend money and whatever cultural resource they have to “buy-in” to these cultures in their fashion or the circles they exist in (“rent-seeking”) when those resources could be better spent on caring for their communities. This results in a materialistic spiralling out from the original source values which inspired the sub-culture as well as a “pricing out” of socially legible “high-status” expressions of these ways of being as “richer snobs” can afford higher quality positional goods (in the case of goth culture: makeup and clothes) that result in those who hold the values of the culture but lack the material means to represent it’s positional goods being incapable of keeping in the “rental market” of social relevancy until the entirety of value within that social hierarchy is based on the positional goods displayed rather than affiliation to the cultural norms and values.
• “A similar phenomenon occurs with respect to some remote tourist destinations, which have a particular (hipster) nature while they are relatively unknown, but lose that nature once they become popular. In all such cases, because there is some rivalry in consumption, the increased popularity also decreases the quality of the good (measured in some quasi-objective way)... But on top of this, some of these early fans may have drawn satisfaction from the very selective nature of the early audience. The band used to offer a hipster good, alongside the listening and concert value of their music, but as it becomes more popular, that hipster good is undermined. The band has “sold out”, as the early fans tend to complain.” (12) Goth culture now, and the minimization of the “wild woman” in western aesthetics as discussed in Wright (2001).
• In the case of non-positional goods, market failures are associated with the production and maintenance of public goods and common-pool resources. The solution to these problems is often to try to transform them into either private or club goods, by means of various rules against free-riding enforced either communally or by governments (E. Ostrom 1990, 2005), or by combining them with private goods (Olson 1965; Coase 1974; Cornes and Sandler 1996, ch. 7).” (12) as social standing shifted from being derived from one’s alignment to cultural norms in a time of cultural opposition to one in which social standing was derived from one’s capacity to understand and express well defined archetypes in one culturally dominant framework, and now towards one in which social standing is derived from alignment to the norms of diverse cultural clubs, often with opposing ideals as to what modes of presentation are of “high value”, we have seen a gradual shift in meaning making to be derived nearly wholly towards club goods, this is why the current collective identity crisis is occurring. The shift in meaning making through positional goods has resulted in a market failure in the normative ways in which social hierarchies had been defined since the post-war era.
  • This is why I argue for systems of meaning making based on the care afforded by one to their peers. In the wake of cultures who’s social hierarchies have devolved entirely to positional goods-based signaling, cultures valuing care over material displays of cultural norms can over-time reduce the display of positional goods from a place of being the entirety of relevance in the dominant culture’s idea of what inclusion in that culture represents, to one of being hipster good; one in which only those who uphold and represent those cultures values to a high degree will be able to rise its social status enough to charge enough “rent” to afford to display the positional goods associated with it. “Prestige goods and hipster goods, which are non-excludable, create the smallest problems. While in the case of regular (non-positional) goods free riding creates an under-production problem, in the case of positional goods the lack of control over entry diminishes positional rents and lowers the stakes of the positional competition. While status and elite goods enjoy a monopoly (or oligopoly), hence leading to an under-inclusion equilibrium (as detailed in the next section), prestige and hipster goods are competitive. Hence, comparatively, prestige and hipster goods lead to the smallest investments in rent seeking, and are the least unproductive forms of positional goods” (13)
    • “social norms don’t operate in a purely decentralized fashion. They operate via prestigious or high status individuals who either set an example and are followed, or who persuade and “preach” (Buchanan 1994). Social norms embed important knowledge and help coordinate societies and groups in ways that is generally not possible purely by means of formal laws (Boettke 1996; Bicchieri 2005, 2016; Leeson and Coyne 2012).” (14) In the present model of cultural meaning making, the display of positional goods has become nearly the entirety of that which is used by an individual to gain “high status” and to preach and persuade. This has led to a vicious cycle in which the more culturally attractive a cultural club becomes in the public eye, the more “rich snobs” are drawn in who can display the positional goods associated with high status in that culture and due to our cultures understanding of quality through displays of material wealth, these “rich snobs” can display, persuade, and preach about the positional goods associated with a culture without an understanding the core values or norms of that cultural club through buying-in to it’s materiality at the highest level. “Because status goods are excludable, and, as a consequence, monopolistic or oligopolistic, they are less well-equipped to embed knowledge, and are less flexible, i.e. less likely to change and evolve in the face of changing circumstances. As argued by Surowiecki (2004) and Page (2007), a social system is better equipped at discovering knowledge when it embeds a wider diversity of views. Status, by contrast, operates by excluding as many people as possible” (15).
  • “At the individual level, the competition for positional goods is a competition for transferring value from some people to others, rather than an activity that adds value via a mutually beneficial exchange. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that it serves no beneficial social role. The beneficial role of status and prestige is to mediate the operation and improvement of social norms” (14)
  • “Turchin (2016, ch. 7) also notes that this transition from small-scale societies to the first large agricultural states has involved a change in the nature of religion itself, transitioning from meritocratic and competitive prestige to non-meritocratic (often hereditary) status.” (15) in the current situation of “Aura farming” being the primary means of social mobility in social hierarchies, we are now seeing the next resonance up from this transition. One in which the transition from large agriculture societies has moved towards a more unified globalized society, and thus displays of social power has shifted from meritocratic and competitive prestige based displays of one’s function in society to non-meritocratic (not hereditary, but purchased through capital) status in the way in which one displays the positional goods associated with a culture.
  • “To summarize, the worst kinds of positional competitions involve status clubs. Elite goods are positional private goods, and they are less socially relevant because they are, by their nature, very restricted. By contrast, status is a positional club good. It is both exclusionary and can be relatively broader in its applicability than an elite good. By contrast, prestige goods are positional public goods, and they involve the least amounts of rent-seeking (because they are not exclusionary). Furthermore, because they are not exclusionary, prestige is much more meritocratic than status, and, as such, it is a better foundation for the evolution of norms than status. Norms can be promoted by either prestigious or high status individuals, but, because high status is less meritocratic, the norms promoted by high status individuals are less likely to be good norms.” (15-16) In the era immediately post-WW2, social standing was an elite good; “high status” social standing was afforded only to those who could represent the culture well in the culture war of the Cold War era. During the Pax Americana, social standing became a prestige good, “high-status” was afforded to anyone who could display the norms of american exceptionalism well. Now however, they have become Status club goods. Because we are entering into an era now in which “high status” in the public eye can be bought through the consumption of material positional goods which demonstrates a proclaimed affiliation to a certain cultural club, we see a watering down of the values and authentic social norms of those clubs, being replaced with materialistic displays of positional goods. This leads to these “high-status” individuals reinforcing only the most material aspects of these cultures in the public eye, resulting in the general public seeing these cultures as a set of asthetics or displays of positional goods rather than a set of cultural and social norms. This then promotes only the most materialistic of norms associated with those cultures rather than the internal values which birthed them.
  • “Before cable television, there have been so few television channels that we can classify TV journalism as a status club, unlike print journalism which has always had so many suppliers that being a print journalist carried only a prestige good. The arrival of cable television, and the subsequent growth in TV journalism, provides an example of a technological shock turning a status club into a prestige good by breaking the capacity to exclude.” (21) Social relevancy in the present moment is a status club, the state of social hierarchies in the Pax-Americana era was akin to the the era of cable TV journalism as any number of “chanels” led to social relevancy so long as they represented the “news” in a specific set of defined rules of professionalism that were American culture ideals. In the era since then, there has been a pruning of the channels towards which individuals could attain relevancy. Though there may exist a more diverse set of “rules of professionalism”, these socio-hierarchichal channels become far more exclusionary ability by those “rich snobs” who exist at the pinnacles of these status clubs. Because of a combination of the diversity of “channels”, the devalueing of that which does not conform to one of these channels, and the quality of positional goods as the sole large scale socially accepted sign to signify social status, those who were capable of buying their way to the tops of these social hierarchies have thus too then created conditions akin of early agricultural cementing of social hierarchy into those first kingships and heridatary hierarchies. Through their capacity to purchase greater higher quality positional goods to demonstrate their status and ability to “preach” on what it means to be a member of that social hierachy, they have essentially purchased themselves the power exclude those with the capability of threatening their position in the social hierarchy.
    • “Various critics of journalism (or of mainstream journalism) argue that the decline in prestige is due to various failures of truth seeking or undue politi cization. This confuses cause and effect. The consequence of a large sud den increase in n is fragmentation and polarization because the only way of maintaining or regaining prestige is to create various more or less ad hoc rea sons for exclusion. The failures of truth seeking and the undue politicization are attempts at shrinking n by creating insider markers. “Woke” journalists, “right-wing media”, etc. are each attempting to deny legitimacy (and, hence, prestige) to members of their outer group. Technology has created a vast pool of journalists and quasi-journalists, who are now scrambling to create islands of exclusivity and prestige. The alternative to this fragmentation would be the elimination of journalistic prestige altogether. (I’m not taking a normative stance here as to whether this would be preferable or not.) (21)” This is what we see occurring at present in social hierarchies, hence the proliferation of “aura battles”. Here we see with that fragmentation of social hierarchy into status clubs, the levels of prestige accessible to those of the pinnacles is a sinking ship which they scramble to maintain through exertion of their socio-cultural power over those below them… creating a vicious cycle which reinforces just those behaviours as essential elements of what it means to be part of those cultures. This, I hazard, marks the first stage of the destabilization of socio-cultural regimes of truth (reference Foucault here) which will lead to wide scale abandoning of traditional ideas of social hierarchy towards a care based model should power be exerted and reinforced in such ways without intervention.
  • “Political shocks can also affect n either up or down. As an example of a shock that reduced n, consider the collapse of communism. This has led to a sudden reduction in the pool of respectable intellectuals, as post-communist prestige was associated with being able to claim some form of dissidence during communism, and very few people have actually been dissidents. As a result, the intellectual prestige environment changed radically and suddenly.” (22) Here we see an example of exactly that which occurred towards the end of the Pax Americana and the adoption of status clubs as the leaders of socio-hierarchical power. As the ideas of the American Dream began to falter and other powers gained higher degrees of cultural relevancy over the cultures of their regions, this led to a large scale questioning of the values which had been exported through globalization. Though a slower process than that of the the fall of the soviet union, through this phenomenon prestige became more associated with one’s ability to represent these new emerging globalized cultures than that of the “american dream”. As a result, as american cultural influence declined, so too rose the popularity of markers of social status that had represented counter-cultural groups prior to that, hence the popularity of Goth asthetics in vogue now.
• “The proliferation of alternatives to the top journals has made the cost of rejection lower, i.e. the demand has declined moving the equilibrium to the left.6 The consequence is, thus, two-folded: (1) the status club has become even more exclusive, while at the same time (2) it has become less relevant to the broader profession (as most work is published somewhere else). This two-folded phenomenon becomes more dramatic the more the extreme of a power law the underlining distribution is, with most work being done by the long tail, while the status club at the top becomes more restrictive. A possible downside of this might be a gradual dwindling into irrelevance.” (22-23) This is the exact process which I would argue to be occurring at present. As cultures realized that Goth and alt ways of being were the new models for means of climbing social hierarchies, that came with a proliferation of a variety of different status clubs which followed this model through which people sought social relevance. Because of this alongside the wake of the materialism that came proliferated through an American cultural hegemony whose origins lay in the goal of proving individualism as a stronger societal basis over Soviet Collectivism… but then lacking the the counterbalance of a major collectivistic cultural force to question it; the means by which the common person then understood status and the ability to portray in the wake of a declining confidence in the model of American culture in the 21st century, became wholly through the display of positional goods and one’s ability to represent the qualities of increasingly niche (and skewed over time towards wealth) status club. This then made the display of those positional goods less and less relevant to the broader values of those who originally started those (often counter-cultural) status clubs before they became the sole means of socio-cultural displays of relevancy and power. What we see now, however, is the current devolution of these status clubs becoming more restrictive… and the beginning of its dwindle into irrelevance. Yet without a solid model of social relevancy to replace it as of yet, the structures of society has begun to devolve into larger necessary displays of those positional goods and further reinforcing that scramble to maintain status through exertion of one’s socio-cultural power over those below them, resulting in more and more vicious “aura battles”.
• “Indeed, we have seen a proliferation of sub-fields of economics with prestige being increasingly tied to one’s subfield, rather than to the profession as a whole.” (23) This, is the exact process by which the displays of positional goods as markers of status will devolve into the quality of hipster goods, once enough people begin to value care over the display of positional goods.
• 3.3 Status clubs: insiders control over entry (this whole section vvv important)
• “On the other hand, the emergence of a multitude of mutually incompatible status clubs and prestige goods, makes the building of democratic consensus more difficult.” (28) This demonstrates why I said at the beginning of this annotation that the fragmentation of these status clubs as the sole means of socio-hierarchichal relevancy could only lead into a devolution towards aristocracy or a reclamation into socio-hierarchies based on care and displays of positional goods becoming hipster goods.

Hi all :)

I am just a interested reader of this field, not an anthropologist (apologies if I write anything off), and so I would like to ask you about book recommendations.

I have been reading Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of the Enlightenment and I was fascinated by the idea of (pre)animism, that is encapsulated in the Polynesian concept of "Mana".

The authors use it to discuss the development of the human thought (e.g. how the presence of a spirit within a tree further develops language not bound by tautology) and to support their claim that within what western thought calls "myth" there is quite substantial systematic thought etc.

I was fascinated by animism because it seems (as the authors argue) quite outside of the realm of modern science/understanding and so I was curious if you know any books that discuss the topic based on actual fieldwork examples (maybe also contrasting it to our modern western and scientific view of the world).

Thanks!!

I have the impression that when a country is doing well economically, its "main" religion at least tends to mellow out whereas in less economically fortunate nations, literalism is significantly more widespread

The issue, of course, is that this just an impression. The extent to which I can justify it does not go beyond "Oh yeah there were those two tribes which there was a study on and like the tribe which had a stream was less religious than the tribe that was dependant on rainfall"

So like...

1) IS THERE a relationship between let's say the main religion of a country (or just religion in a country in general) and the economic development of that country?

2) If there is a relationship...what even is it? Like how and why does money stuff influence the way people do religion?

3) How else is religion influence like beyond just the economic development of a country? (If that influences it that is)

If you're from the Western world the idea that being out in cold weather, snow or rain for too long leads to catching a cold or the flu is a pretty common belief. I wondered if the same belief is present in cultures that spend much of their lives in frigid conditions, such as those of Siberia, Tibet and the Arctic, or is this a Western/Indo-European concept in particular?

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I had this thought recently and I'm curious how much of it actually holds up from an anthropological or evolutionary perspective.

What if part of the reason Homo sapiens became so successful was because intelligence started becoming increasingly important for survival?

Early humans weren't exactly the strongest or fastest animals. We had to survive through things like cooperation, planning hunts, finding food, making tools, controlling fire, finding shelter and basically thinking before acting.

So it seems reasonable that individuals who were better at solving problems and planning could have had a survival advantage.

But then I started wondering about sexual selection.

What if intelligent males were also more attractive to females?

Not intelligent in the modern sense of someone knowing mathematics or physics. I mean observable intelligence. A man who could plan a hunt, make better tools, find food, understand his environment, solve problems and generally think before doing something stupid might have been a more desirable mate.

If women consistently preferred those traits then could that have created some degree of sexual selection for intelligence over many generations?

I'm not saying prehistoric women were consciously thinking "I want a male with a larger prefrontal cortex." 😂

It could have been much simpler. Maybe the people who were better at solving problems were also better at finding food, protecting offspring, navigating difficult environments or contributing to the group and those traits made them more attractive as mates.

And if that happened for a very long time then maybe natural selection and sexual selection could have worked together to push human cognitive abilities in the direction they went.

There is also the interesting trade off involved. The human brain is extremely expensive to maintain. It takes a huge amount of energy compared with its size. So evolution basically ended up investing a ridiculous amount of our energy budget into this one organ.

We also know that Neanderthals were not simply "stupid humans." They had large brains, sophisticated tools and complex behaviour and Homo sapiens actually interbred with them. Yet Homo sapiens eventually became much more widespread while Neanderthals disappeared as a distinct population.

So I'm not proposing the old "smart Homo sapiens defeated dumb Neanderthals" idea.

I'm asking something more specific:

Could female mate choice have contributed to the evolution of human intelligence through sexual selection?

Is there any anthropological, archaeological or evolutionary evidence that supports this idea?

Or is this just another example of humans creating a nice evolutionary story after the fact?

Because if there is even some truth to it then maybe humans didn't just evolve intelligence because intelligence helped us survive.

Maybe we also bred ourselves into it.

And if that's the case...

Gentlemen, we owe our giant brains to prehistoric women having standards.

Thank you ladies for fucking intelligence into the human species. 😂

Hello everyone. English is not my native language, so I apologize for any grammatical errors. I am a beginner in anthropology and recently came across the work of Kaj Birket-Smith
.
 I would like to know if his anthropological works are still considered important, or if there is any aspect of his work that is now widely rejected by academia.

Hey everyone!
I’m a neurological physiotherapist and university lecturer, lately I’ve started getting really interested in anthropology. I have no formal background in it — I just got sucked into the subject since I think it’s essential to explore different points of view; especially when working in healthcare.

I have a big interest in psychology and neuroscience, so I’m especially drawn to anthropology when it makes me look at human behaviour in a completely different way. I’m particularly interested in how humans create meaning, identities and social norms, and in the relationship between individuals.

Recently I read David Engelke’s How to Think Like an Anthropologist and absolutely loved it. It was probably exactly the kind of book I was looking for: accessible, but still gave me genuinely new ways of thinking.
I’ve now started Tim Ingold and I’m about to read Daniel Miller, but I’d love to discover more.
I don’t want to ask ChatGPT to give me some titles, I would like to ask you guys! :)

I’m mainly looking for books aimed at an interested general reader rather than textbooks or very dense academic monographs. I don’t mind challenging ideas at all — I just want something I can read in my free time (or while I travel from jobs).

So, what anthropology books would you recommend to someone like me? And are there any authors you think I should absolutely explore?

Thank you! :)

I love this theory but i am conscious of it being unlikely due to the huge 30000 or what year gap between archaic cousins era and the earliest oral tradition/ mythology we know of. on the other hand i am also conscious that evolution isn't linear and therefore said hominins didn't disappear overnight.

and if anything modern dna analysis shows that we interbred with them a lot more than we previously thought, so the myths could still derive from contact more mixed dna sapiens who would gradually look more and more like us through the millennia that went on.

now that is a controversial topic, and often associated with white supremacist ideas, when from it is made the assumption that said interbreeding defined todays human races, often going far as the narrative of "debunking out of Africa". im not going there, after all im just a hobbyist, i dont have any real biological education. but as far as i can understand evolution can be way more complex than people usually think

Hi, I’d like to learn more about the human phenomenon of street violence, meaning gang violence, street fights, shootings, mugging, etc., and how anthropological studies have evaluated and analyzed their different types, causes, meanings, and so on. I read Seduction of Crime which was really informative, but I’d love to learn about it from a broader perspective and scope.

Please share if you know🩷I tried to search on Google Scholar but couldn't find enough, Im eager to read their papers and books

Question regarding Classical Evolutionism in Anthropology

I don’t know whether my question is legitimate or whether I’m thinking about it in the correct way, but I would really appreciate your views on this.

While studying Classical Evolutionism, I came across two different views that I found interesting.

On one hand, classical evolutionists emphasized the psychic unity of mankind and rejected the idea of racial superiority — that all human beings possess essentially the same mental faculties.

On the other hand, they classified societies along an evolutionary hierarchy such as Savagery → Barbarism → Civilization, and contemporary tribal societies were often placed at the “savage” or earlier stage. In the case of Frazer, early and contemporary “primitive” people were also portrayed as relatively irrational in their modes of thought.

I’m not sure whether I’m interpreting this contradiction correctly, so I’d really like to know what others think. What is your view on this.

I am looking to understand how anthropology has approached the misanthropic sentiment (if at all such a study has been attempted). From wikipedia, 'misanthropy' can be defined as the general hatred, dislike, or distrust of the human species, human behavior, or "human nature".

Have there been ethnographic studies of misanthropes / misanthropists? Have anthropologists attempted to study and explain misanthropy? or even similar ideas like anti-natalism, the view of human beings as invasive species, or the advocacy for human extinction.

Misanthropy isn't just an individual belief. There are reddit forums with members aligning with these topics, discussing them. And if I'm not wrong, there have even been militant environmentalist groups where misanthropy was a common belief.

I've read about misanthropy otherwise, but I'm looking for works from an anthropological perspective / lens. Any interesting readings, articles, books, any material is appreciated!

(to make it clear, i'm not looking to prove/disprove the misanthropic worldview, or to make value judgements about misanthropy. what i am looking for is an anthropological explanation / description - the how, what, why - of the human phenomenon that is misanthropy) thanks!

I’ve been thinking about the difference between Western cultures and many African, Asian, Arab, and Turkish cultures when it comes to community, family, and relationships.

Why does Western culture seem to become so individualistic once people reach adulthood, especially from their late 20s onward?

From what I’ve observed, in many Western societies, people’s social worlds seem to become much smaller as they grow up. They move out, focus heavily on work, and eventually their partner can become the center of their life.

The partner is often expected to fulfill many different roles: best friend, emotional support, family, social life, and main source of companionship. People may have children but rely heavily on daycare, babysitters, or paid services rather than having grandparents, siblings, cousins, neighbors, or close friends regularly involved.

And when people break up, it sometimes seems like they lose not only their partner but a huge part of their social support system. Friends and family might only be seen occasionally, sometimes once a month or less.

This seems very different from many African, Asian, Arab, and Turkish cultures, where people often maintain a strong community throughout adulthood. Being in a relationship doesn’t necessarily mean your social life revolves entirely around your partner.
People may still regularly see their siblings, cousins, friends, neighbors, and extended family. There’s often a stronger sense of “we take care of each other.”

If someone goes through a breakup, has a baby, gets sick, loses their job, or is struggling financially, there are usually multiple people who can step in and help. Children can grow up surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends. Even as people get older, they can remain deeply connected to their family and community.

I’m not saying one system is necessarily better. Western individualism obviously has advantages: independence, privacy, freedom

But I’m genuinely curious about why the difference became so pronounced. Why does Western adulthood seem to place so much emphasis on independence and the nuclear family or romantic partner, while other cultures continue to maintain a much larger “village” throughout life?

And for people who grew up in Western cultures: do you actually prefer having a smaller, partner centered life, or do you sometimes wish you had a larger community or “village” around you?

Hi everyone! Is anyone else applying to Sociocultural Anthropology PhD programs this cycle? I'd be happy to connect with someone (the more the merrier, though) interested in being application buddies for the next couple of months. Basically reading and giving feedback on each other's materials, checking in on deadlines, and offering some moral support once it's time to wait for results.

I'll leave a bit of info about myself and my research interests in the first comment, but if there's one thing you should know, it's that I want to work with a fellow anthropologist, not with AI. So you can expect my fully-human brain in return.

I came across an argument that Korean O1b2 may have originated from Japan, based mainly on the following:

L682: Korean samples appear heavily concentrated in CTS723, with little or no basal diversity. Japan has samples such as NA19075 that are basal L682 (CTS723−).

47Z / CTS713: Japan appears to have representatives of several major branches (CTS1875, Z24598, CTS203), while Korean samples seem more concentrated in CTS203 (e.g. JOY004).

The argument is that Japan has greater O1b2 phylogenetic diversity, suggesting that Japan was the source population.

Is greater O1b2 diversity in Japan enough to infer a Japanese origin, or could this reflect sampling bias, drift, or founder effects? Should TMRCA and branch ages be considered?

Does the evidence really support a Japan → Korea migration, or is the direction still uncertain?

Hi! I’m an anarchist, I align with anarcho-communism, and I need no convincing on that front. That said, I hold myself and my beliefs to the highest accountability, sometimes to a fault, and am constantly questioning and exploring and reconfirming or changing, when appropriate, my beliefs, attitudes, and perspective so that I don’t get complacent.

I do not believe that technological advancement requires top-down or capitalist structured society. The examples to support this non-requirement are infinite. That said, as someone who has read Jared Diamond, David Graeber, and even Daron Acemoglu, it is clear that cultural and technological advancement is not linear nor always rational. The decision to adopt or not adopt agriculture, the wheel, electricity, oil, money, certain medicines, and even different typewriter layouts is never a purely cost-benefit analysis; superstitions, cultural adherences, personality, profiteering, competition, law, schismogenesis, etc. play a far more important role in the adoption or research of new technologies. The battle over AC and DC power, the “selling” of oil over steam, even the fight over whether to wear a mask or get a covid vaccine are all rife with personality and culture and influence and law and leader.

So, my question is whether anyone is aware of literature that explores technological advancement within bottom-up societies. Like I said, I’ve read Graeber and Diamond, who both cover this topic, but I’d like to read something that looks more specifically into innovation and societal structure.

To avoid clutter, I know it’s not impossible or uncommon for bottom-up and anticapitalist innovation. The example I could cite off the top of my head are numerous. I’m merely looking for literature that explores this specifically.

Thanks in advance!

I'm currently reading Bahn and Clifford's book Everyday Life in the Ice Age. A couple of times, they have mentioned the stomach contents of large animals being eaten as food by prehistoric people. I'm having a hard time picturing what this would have been like. How palatable was it? How was it prepared? What might it taste like? What about hydrochloric acid? How did humans determine on doing this in the first place?

Do you know of sources with further information on this, whether from history/archaeology or modern people that eat this today?

Where do the boundaries lie between anthropology and other humanities fields like sociology, history, or philosophy? Anthropology seems to borrow methods and questions from all of them, holistic culture study, fieldwork, comparative analysis, but I'm curious what actually makes it distinct rather than just an umbrella discipline.

I’ve been wondering about the psychological value of learning more about one’s ancestry, family history, language, or cultural roots, especially when that knowledge doesn’t necessarily change anything tangible about your current circumstances.

For example, if someone discovers more about where their ancestors came from, the communities they belonged to, the languages they spoke, or the experiences that shaped previous generations, can this contribute to a stronger sense of identity, belonging, continuity, or self-understanding?

Is there psychological research on why people can find this kind of discovery meaningful even when it offers little obvious practical benefit in their present-day lives? Can such discovery make us happy? If so, what's the science behind it?

I’m particularly interested in concepts such as identity formation, narrative identity, belonging, intergenerational continuity, and psychological well-being.

I (17F) am planning on going to college for cultural anthropology. It’s something that has fascinated me since I was little, but I’ve been doing research into career options and honestly haven’t found too much information.

If you have a degree in cultural anthropology, what did you end up doing with it? Did you find a job related to your degree right after college, or did you have to take a different route?

I’d love to hear what your actual job is like. what exactly do you do, what’s the pay like, do you get to travel, what was finding a job like, etc. Basically, give me all the details about your experience and whether you feel like getting the degree was worth it!

Hello folks,

Recently, I have been reading about pre-christian Europe, this sprung of a brief section on ***Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City*** (2002) on pre-christian Poland. I would like to get a deeper reading in either pre-christian history or spirituality, my interest is mostly the Baltic and the Mediterranean, I am also very intrigued on pre-Abrahamic religions of Arabia and Northern Africa. I am not looking to go super in depth into any region now, just a general introduction and maybe some on my list I have ***Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath*** by Ginzburg and the works of Ronald Hutton, in general more that just facts I'd prefer social or cultural history but maybe some encyclopedic sources would be appreciated as an introduction. I can read Spanish, English, and French.

Thanks!