Deliberation in Hunter-gatherer Cultures: A Systematic Review of the Ethnographic Record Using the Electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF)
(2026) Sage Research Methods — Vol. XX, p. XX (2026)
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- Abstract
- This case study discusses a systematic review of published ethnographic records retrieved from the electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF) World Cultures. The review formed part of my PhD project that dealt with the question why people deliberate. Relying on evolutionary psychology, I hypothesised that people share an evolved psychological mechanism that triggers deliberation upon the detection of specific environmental inputs (i.e. ingroup political disagreement). The underlying premise was that deliberation formed the default way to deal with ingroup political disagreement among our ancient ancestors who lived as (semi-)nomadic hunter-gatherers. To probe the plausibility of this premise, I conducted a systematic review of ethnographic records available through eHRAF to study how people in historically-documented (semi-)nomadic hunter-gatherer cultures dealt with political disagreements. In this case study, readers will learn how to set up and execute such a review –from getting to know the eHRAF environment and formulating a reproducible search query to the systematic selection of a (manageable) sample of records and the coding and analysis of selected records. Readers will also learn about key limitations, most notably that it may be difficult to (quantitatively) test (situational) hypotheses about political behaviour using published ethnographic records retrieved through eHRAF. Finally, readers will learn how to verify the quality of the data produced through such a systematic review and come to know how they can deal with missing data issues.
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van der Does, R. (2026). Deliberation in Hunter-gatherer Cultures: A Systematic Review of the Ethnographic Record Using the Electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF). Sage Research Methods, XX, XX. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/280545 (Original work published 2026)