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Anthro Log

Category: General Anthropology

  • Myth, Ritual, and Identity: The Anthropology of Religious Festivals

    One of my favorite areas in anthropology is exploring how religious festivals shape identity, memory, and community cohesion. Rituals are not just symbolic; they’re social glue. I mean why else would cultural traditions remain such an important part of human societies given the technological and social advancement we’ve made since the inception of these rituals?

    Take, for instance, festivals tied to harvests, lunar calendars, or historical remembrance. Anthropologists study how these rituals reproduce collective narratives: who we are, our origins, our values. They also mark liminality -times when ordinary social structures loosen, allowing inversion (e.g. carnival traditions), renewal, or transformation.

    I’ve observed in case studies (across Latin America, Africa, Asia) that festivals often serve double roles: maintaining continuity (tradition, ritual forms) and offering space for innovation (performance, new participants, hybrid practices). When diasporic communities celebrate traditional festivals in new countries, those rituals become sites of negotiation: between heritage, adaptation, assimilation.

    From theology, ritual is also sacramental: material, sensory, textual. They overlap how people feel, sing, eat, pray, and that matters deeply. Festival anthropology helps us see religion not only as belief but embodied practice.

  • Matrilineal vs. Patrilineal, What’s the Difference?

    Matrilineal and Patrilineal are ways of categorizing family lineage and are commonly foundational parents of societies. Matrilineal societies trace descent or kinship through the female line, while Patrilineal ones trace them through the male line.

    The linguistic roots of both of these words can be traced back to the Latin words for mother and father, matr and patr (also spelled mater and pater), and the English word lineal referring to one’s lineage. The United States and many other modern societies, for example, are considered a Patrilineal society, since familial ties are based on the male line. 

    So why do Anthropologists care so much about Matrilineal vs. Patrilineal categorization? Identifying whether or not ancient societies were patrilineal or matrilineal tells a lot about a society. Unlike the vast majority of societies today, Matrilineal societies center women at their cores. Women in these societies inherit family property, and all children belong to their mothers’ lineages rather than their fathers. Identifying whether or not societies are centered around a patriarch or matriarch gives important insight into human behavior and kinship. 

    In 2019, Siobhan Mattison, an assistant professor at UNM’s Anthropology Department, and some of her colleagues released an extensive study and opinion piece on the importance of women in matrilineal societies titled  “The expendable male hypothesis”. The study discusses the general definition of materiality in both human societies and animal species, problematic assumptions about matriliny, and what she calls “The expendable male hypothesis” on how men interact with family structures. 

    A part of the study I found particularly interesting and relevant to the discussion on why the distinction between matrilineal and patrilineal matters was this particular quote: “Glass ceilings can invoke scientific findings to justify constraining women to roles related to mothering, but women do just about everything in some societies – planting, harvesting, childcare, politicizing – you name it. If nothing else, our study shows the vast flexibility in a human family and economic system, undermining any claims about universal differences in men’s and women’s capabilities and roles.”