Category: Culture

Hm. Surprised at the low level of anthropology here. Lots of value judgements on both sides, but not a whole lot of history. OK. The answer is tied up with patrilocality. See for example Why did society shift to patrilocality after the Neolithic agricultural revolution? And Patrilocal residence on Wikipedia. Patrilocality is the arrangement where, […]

Depends on your theology, but mostly, no. The female personification of Wisdom in the Sapiential Books in and out of the Hebrew Scriptural canon (including Proverbs) is as close as Judaism got to a female aspect of divinity. It’s not very close. Spirit in Hebrew is the feminine noun ruach, and if Hebrew had any […]

The photo is a cultural touchpoint as a depiction of harassment of women. It is often cited as such, including on Quora. And people are astonished (including on Quora) to find that the photo was likely not intended as such at all. I’m throwing the question up to see what others think; what I’m finding, […]

American Network TV-specific, Anon. “Fuck” gets used in quite innocuous contexts in Australia. Such as Gogglebox Australia, a show showing couch potatoes yelling at Reality TV shows. (And only the Real Housewives of Melbourne say “fuck” unbleeped.) And in the States, there’s lots of profanity on HBO shows. Walking Dead is cable too, but I […]

Australia during the gold rush? I can’t find online corroboration of this, probably because I read this on a tourist placard somewhere. But apparently when Prince Alfred came to visit Australia in 1868, the streets of Bendigo (or was it Ballarat?) were paved with silver. Gold was too plentiful. Answered 2016-04-29 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-cultures-dont-value-gold/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

Positive Politeness vs Negative Politeness. What say you Wikipedia? Negative politeness: Making a request less infringing, such as “If you don’t mind…” or “If it isn’t too much trouble…”; respects a person’s right to act freely. In other words, deference. There is a greater use of indirect speech acts. Positive politeness: Seeks to establish a […]

The warlike Māori arrived in New Zealand in the 12th century. Around the 16th century, some Māori left and settled in the Chatham Islands. That offshoot is known as the Moriori people. The Chatham Islands are not New Zealand. They are small, and cold, and you can’t grow the crops you are used to as […]

The ranking Gold > Silver > Bronze > Iron (> Lead) dates from Hesiod: see Ages of Man. Bronze for toolmaking in common use is older than Iron; Hesiod was aware of that, which is why his Bronze Age is earlier than his Iron Age. Gold and Silver would have outranked Bronze and Iron, because […]

When I told a colleague years ago that I loved Columbo, his response was a snort: “Columbo. He’s all shtick.” And yes, that’s why Columbo was so successful. Not because of the innovative inverted story telling; that’s just a convention. Not because of the cleverness of the crimes: the cleverness was variable, and much of […]

Brandon Li’s answer of Pharaoh is excellent, but given the Judaeo-Christian context of Pharaoh, I’d argue that a bigger villain in that culture was Judas Iscariot. Tony Wright has argued that for pre-Hitler Australian politics, but I’m sure Judas was invoked much more widely than that: From Judas to Goebbels: when political insult risks dying […]