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Social anthropology is the subdiscipline of anthropology that investigates the cultural properties of human societies. Topics include cultural norms, morals, laws and customs, and there is a particular focus on the comparative study of non-industrialised societies.
Languages vary in how they carve time, space, kinsfolk, and many other domains into categories. Here, the authors show that languages tend toward symmetry in the number of categories used across domains.
In this Correspondence, Pinto-Venegas and Abarca-Brown discuss the use of psychotropic drugs by youth in Chile, reflecting on historical and social forces, challenging stigma-focused views and urging services to address informal networks and everyday self-medication.
Maria Raquel Lima is based in Brazil, where communities suffer owing to waste colonialism. She explains why polluters must pay and affected communities must lead the solutions.
Formal education systems rarely include the knowledge and skills of hunter-gatherer societies. This can lead to cultural erosion and knowledge decline. For education to be both high quality and sustainable, Indigenous knowledge should be recognized and valued.
