Victor C De Munck
Biographic Data
| ID | 84977 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Victor C De Munck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Victor C |
| FAMILY NAME | De Munck |
| SIGNATURE | DE MUNCK V C |
| AFFILIATIONS | SUNY New Paltz |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4548-6772 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 309 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Methods in Cognitive Anthropology
The Cambridge Handbook of Psychological Anthropology
Bringing together contributions from a global team of renowned scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the dynamic field of psychological anthropology. It is divided into five parts and includes a critical updating of the theoretical foundations for psychological anthropology, covering cognitive, psychodynamic, linguistic, and phenomenological views. It provides the first-ever lifespan perspective on human development in culture…
Cultural model theory and consensus analysis: An evolving relationship
Is there a cultural grammar to courtship: A comparison of different courtship styles in the United States
The anthropology of power, agency, and morality: The enduring legacy of F. G. Bailey
Old Discipline, New Trajectories: Theories, Methods and Practices in Anthropology
Going under the title “Old Discipline, New Trajectories: Theories, Methods and Practices in Anthropology”, the conference seeks to provide a “home” for socio-cultural and linguistic anthropologists as well as archeologists and bio-evolutionary anthropologists who identify themselves and seek to connect with scientifically minded anthropologists. It does not neglect the humanistic aspect of anthropology and embraces it as part of the unity implici…
Love, Marriage, Family Organization and the Puzzle of Neolocality in Non-Industrial Societies: A Cross-Cultural Study
In this paper we answer the question, “What features of family organization promote romantic love as a basis for marriage in non-industrial societies?” We also directly address Rosenblatt’s findings and those of a follow up study by Lee and Stone that, counterintuitively, show non-neolocality rather than neolocality to be correlated with love as a basis for marriage. Ember and Levinson and even Lee and Stone have thought this finding to be puzzli…
A Prototype Analysis of the Cultural and Evolutionary Construction of Romantic Love as a Synthesis of Love and Sex
Our goal is to use prototype analysis to distinguish the folk or culturally held understandings of love, romantic love, and sex and to specify, from the obtained data, the semantic relationship among these three associated concepts. By considering the semantic distinctions between these three concepts, we come to an unintended insight: if romantic love is a socio-cultural universal it does not appear to have the same evolutionary history as love …
The Cultural Aspect and Concept of Lithuanian Kinship: Validity of Free List Method for Creating a Representative Kinship Model
The article presents a detailed and methodologically systematic description of the Lithuanian kinship system. A study of kinship relationships was conducted in order to describe the formal and pragmatic structure of the modern kinship system as it is conceptualized by different generations of Lithuanians. We show how this system both remains a formal system, but the salience of kin types changes across different generations. The authors of the ar…
Cultural model theory in cognitive anthropology: Recent Developments and Applications
Cultural model theory versus extensionist and radical extensionist theories of cognition
Accessing the interiority of others: Sufism in Sri Lanka
We combine Hofstadter's description of mutual interior access between persons with theories of interiority presented in ethnographic contexts and in anthropological literature on Sufi rituals. The intersection of these theories with Hofstadter's concepts is applied to three Sufi rituals: an annual village festival presided over by aMaulana(descendant of the Prophet); the devotionaldhikrcircles that meet weekly at the mosque; and a major Sufi fest…
Disciplining Culture: A Sociocognitive Approach
Anthropology has an ambivalent relationship with its core disciplinary concept: culture. Beyond the rather vague but important notion that culture is shared and learned, there is little agreement about how to define and identify something as culture(al). In order to move beyond the "mush stage" of defining culture, we offer a disciplinary framework for considering how culture can be a collective that is individually held and used. Our emphasis is…
The modern Lithuanian kinship system: A descriptive analysis of generational differences in reckoning the saliency of kin terms
Lists of kin terms were elicited from four different generational-status samples: children, young adults, parents, and grandparents. Lists were compared in terms of frequency counts of terms and their respective saliencies. Saliency was measured using Smith’s S, which combines frequency and the rank of terms in a list. Using primarily saliency, we are able to synthesize genealogical and cultural theories for analysing kinship. Genealogy was found…
Romantic Love in the United States: Applying Cultural Models Theory and Methods
We seek to advance cultural models theory by contributing to issues related to theory, methods, and testing the external validity of a cultural model. We propose that cultural models are learned as if they were truly properties of collectivities but have no primary existence except in individual representations of them. The shared aspect of cultural models also implies collective awareness of the if-then entailments of cultural models. We use ind…
Using Theory to Explain Ethnographic Descriptions of Change. Strain Stress and Identity Systems in a Sri Lankan Village
Anthropos , Seite 69 - 82
The Conceptual Relationship Between Love, Romantic Love, and Sex: A Free List and Prototype Study of Semantic Association
Certain methodological techniques blend quantitative and qualitative elements, defying explicit characterization as either. Placing focus on the distinction between methods for data collection and methods for analysis ameliorates this confusion and identifies the occasionally ambiguous quantitative/qualitative designation of highly convergent methods as largely subject to researchers’ goals. We use free listing and prototype analysis, two methods…
A Theory Explaining the Functional Linkage Between the Self, Identity and Cultural Models
Self, identities and cultural models are interactive, dynamic and interdependent systems that connect the biological, psychological, social and cultural dimensions of human life. Identities are the means by which the self engages with the outside world and cultural models are the symbol complexes which the self, via an identity, relies on for generating sensible output and making sense of input. Thus, a theory of the self entails a theory of iden…
A Companion to Cognitive Anthropology
Cross-Cultural Analysis of Models of Romantic Love Among U.S. Residents, Russians, and Lithuanians
Our goal was to detect and describe a common “core” structure of romantic love and to also discover and explain variations due to cultural or gender differences between three national cultures: the United States, Russia, and Lithuania. Our sample consisted of 262 American males, 362 American females, 166 Russian males, 130 females, 102 Lithuanian males, and 135 Lithuanian females—a total of 1,157 people. Our analysis was derived from (a) a 14-ite…
Values and Change Over a Generation: Kelantan, Malaysia
This article presents the results of two semantic differential studies that focus on cultural values and modernization, which were carried out in Kelantan, Malaysia, first in 1969 and the second in 2001.The results of these quantitative psychological anthropology studies, complimented by more than 3 years of traditional fieldwork, provide a finely textured means to assess both the direction and the degree of sociocultural change in what has been …
Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone by Sandya Hewamanne
Wife-Husband Intimacy and Female Status in Cross-Cultural Perspective
This article hypothesizes that in societies where spouses are considered to have relatively equal status, they are more likely to be intimate with one another than in societies where there is spousal status inequality. The authors ask: What are the core attributes of intimacy between husband and wife cross-culturally? And what sociocultural norms and practices are associated with intimate/nonintimate spousal relationships? Five variables are used…
Pirminis, antrinis ir esamas tretinis lietuvių tautinio identiteto suvokimas: Antropologinė Perspektyva
The term 'national identity' implies homogeneity, but field research shows that the members of a nation are very heterogeneous in their conceptions of their own national identity. How then can we speak of a national identity when there is significant diversity among the members of a nation? I rely on concepts of 'first order' and 'second order' components of identity to resolve this question. First order concepts are constructed from the top down…
Valuing thinness or fatness in women
The Cambridge Handbook of Psychological Anthropology
Bringing together contributions from a global team of renowned scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the dynamic field of psychological anthropology. It is divided into five parts and includes a critical updating of the theoretical foundations for psychological anthropology, covering cognitive, psychodynamic, linguistic, and phenomenological views. It provides the first-ever lifespan perspective on human development in culture…
Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology
Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology. H. Russell Bernard. ed. Walnut Creek. CA: AltaMira Press. 1998. 816 pp
Love and marriage in a Sri Lankan Muslim community: Toward a reevaluation of Dravidian marriage practices
I argue that structural and transactional models of Dravidian marriage practices cannot adequately account for the variation in mate selection in situations of arranged marriage practices exhibited among the Sri Lankan Muslims of Kutali. The inadequacy of these models is an outcome of three interrelated problems: (1) the assumption of a normative model for marriage; (2) a dichotomous conceptualization of marriage practices that divides them into …
Disciplining Culture: A Sociocognitive Approach
Anthropology has an ambivalent relationship with its core disciplinary concept: culture. Beyond the rather vague but important notion that culture is shared and learned, there is little agreement about how to define and identify something as culture(al). In order to move beyond the "mush stage" of defining culture, we offer a disciplinary framework for considering how culture can be a collective that is individually held and used. Our emphasis is…
Accessing the interiority of others: Sufism in Sri Lanka
We combine Hofstadter's description of mutual interior access between persons with theories of interiority presented in ethnographic contexts and in anthropological literature on Sufi rituals. The intersection of these theories with Hofstadter's concepts is applied to three Sufi rituals: an annual village festival presided over by aMaulana(descendant of the Prophet); the devotionaldhikrcircles that meet weekly at the mosque; and a major Sufi fest…
Sexual Equality and Romantic Love: A Reanalysis of Rosenblatt’s Study on the Function of Romantic Love
The authors propose that the importance of romantic love as a basis for marriage will occur only in societies that allow both males and females to give or not give love freely. Based on their belief that sexual attraction or passion is a primary criterion of romantic love, the authors hypothesize that there will be a positive correlation between the importance of romantic love and social indicators of sexual equality. Rosenblatt’s 11-point rating…
Romantic Love in the United States: Applying Cultural Models Theory and Methods
We seek to advance cultural models theory by contributing to issues related to theory, methods, and testing the external validity of a cultural model. We propose that cultural models are learned as if they were truly properties of collectivities but have no primary existence except in individual representations of them. The shared aspect of cultural models also implies collective awareness of the if-then entailments of cultural models. We use ind…
Wife-Husband Intimacy and Female Status in Cross-Cultural Perspective
This article hypothesizes that in societies where spouses are considered to have relatively equal status, they are more likely to be intimate with one another than in societies where there is spousal status inequality. The authors ask: What are the core attributes of intimacy between husband and wife cross-culturally? And what sociocultural norms and practices are associated with intimate/nonintimate spousal relationships? Five variables are used…
Contemporary issues and challenges for comparativists: An appraisal
Sir Edward B. Tyler saw ethnology and ethnography as the twin pillars of cultural anthropology. Yet, ethnology has had a marginal role in anthropology compared to ethnography. The inductive comparative approach developed by George Peter Murdock has never been part of mainstream anthropology. The postmodern concern with rooting out the ethnographer's own enculturated and often subconscious biases has placed ethnology at the periphery of the anthro…
Cultural Units in Cross-Cultural Research
Sufi, Reformist and National Models of Identity: The History of a Muslim Village Festival in Sri Lanka
Analyse de la confluence des processus local, national et pan-islamique manifestes lors du festival Burdha Kandhoori dans un village musulman sri-lankais. Si a l'origine, ce festival est issu du soufisme, son importance en tant que rituel islamico-musulman distinguant les villageois de leurs voisins bouddhistes sinhalais a diminue avec le temps : il a cependant ete reetabli apres avoir ete suspendu en 1980
The Fallacy of the Misplaced Self: Gender Relations and the Construction of Multiple Selves among Sri Lankan Muslims
The Conceptual Relationship Between Love, Romantic Love, and Sex: A Free List and Prototype Study of Semantic Association
Certain methodological techniques blend quantitative and qualitative elements, defying explicit characterization as either. Placing focus on the distinction between methods for data collection and methods for analysis ameliorates this confusion and identifies the occasionally ambiguous quantitative/qualitative designation of highly convergent methods as largely subject to researchers’ goals. We use free listing and prototype analysis, two methods…
Cross-Cultural Analysis of Models of Romantic Love Among U.S. Residents, Russians, and Lithuanians
Our goal was to detect and describe a common “core” structure of romantic love and to also discover and explain variations due to cultural or gender differences between three national cultures: the United States, Russia, and Lithuania. Our sample consisted of 262 American males, 362 American females, 166 Russian males, 130 females, 102 Lithuanian males, and 135 Lithuanian females—a total of 1,157 people. Our analysis was derived from (a) a 14-ite…
Sakhina: A Study of Female Masculinity in a Sri Lankan Muslim Community
In a Muslim village in Sri Lanka, one woman, Sakhina, was collectively reviled for committing adultery while other women who had committed adultery were not. This article uses a figured world/cultural models theory to describe and explain both Sakhina’s and the villagers’ behaviour. It shows that additional punishment by society occurs when an individual’s behaviour not only does not conform with cultural norms but with cultural understandings of…
Introduction: Units for Describing and Analyzing Culture and Society
Cross-cultural research currently has refugee status in anthropology. I explain why this is so by briefly tracing history of cross-cultural research from time of Tylor to present. The main problem for ethnologists has been to define and develop adequate and equivalent cultural units for cross-cultural comparison. I argue that this is also problem for ethnographers. I conclude with brief review of articles in this edition, each of which takes diff…
Islamic Orthodoxy and Sufism in Sri Lanka
Anthropos , Seite 401 - 414
Cultural Models of Gendeer in Sri Lanka and the United States
Sri Lankan cultural models of gender are compared with those in the United States. Nineteen questions were given to samples of Sinhala Buddhists, Sri Lankan Muslims, and U.S. residents. Most participants were interviewed about their answers. Consensus analysis was used to determine if there were distinctive cultural boundaries between Muslim, Sinhalese, and U.S. samples. This determined that Muslim and Sinhalese informants shared a more or less c…
The economics of love: An examination of Sri Lanka Muslim marriage practices
Cultural model theory in cognitive anthropology: Recent Developments and Applications
A Theory Explaining the Functional Linkage Between the Self, Identity and Cultural Models
Self, identities and cultural models are interactive, dynamic and interdependent systems that connect the biological, psychological, social and cultural dimensions of human life. Identities are the means by which the self engages with the outside world and cultural models are the symbol complexes which the self, via an identity, relies on for generating sensible output and making sense of input. Thus, a theory of the self entails a theory of iden…
Pirminis, antrinis ir esamas tretinis lietuvių tautinio identiteto suvokimas: Antropologinė Perspektyva
The term 'national identity' implies homogeneity, but field research shows that the members of a nation are very heterogeneous in their conceptions of their own national identity. How then can we speak of a national identity when there is significant diversity among the members of a nation? I rely on concepts of 'first order' and 'second order' components of identity to resolve this question. First order concepts are constructed from the top down…
Primary, secondary and metamagical constituents of Lithuanian identity
Three versions of Lithuanian identity are presented: the first is constructed of primary constituents and is based on official symbols of national identity. This version offers a homogenous view of identity. The second version is derived from the primary life experiences of different segments of the Lithuanian population, and offers a heterogeneous fragmented version of identity. A third, metamagical version of identity is offered which is not ba…
Ritual Efflorescences in a Sri Lankan Muslim community: The interplay of local, national and pan-Islamic identities
This article examines the interplay of local, national, and international historical and contemporary processes as manifested in a Sri Lankan Muslim village festival. The author shows that the festival is a product of the historical isolation of the village and its attempt to establish a distinct Muslim social identity. In contemporary Sri Lanka a separate Muslim identity is no longer in doubt and the festival has become a focal event for competi…
The economics of love: An examination of Sri Lanka Muslim marriage practices
Meeting Points
Cross-sibling relationships and the dowry in Sri Lanka
Studies of Dravidian kinship have neglected the importance of the cross-sibling relationship. A comparative analysis of data gathered in a Sri Lankan Muslim community shows: (1) normative depictions of cross-sibling relationships do not reflect or explain actual behavior patterns; and (2) variation in post-marital cross-sibling relationships is largely accounted for by the presence or absence and use of the dowry. The overarching purpose is to sh…
The Fallacy of the Misplaced Self: Gender Relations and the Construction of Multiple Selves among Sri Lankan Muslims
Ritual Efflorescences in a Sri Lankan Muslim community: The interplay of local, national and pan-Islamic identities
This article examines the interplay of local, national, and international historical and contemporary processes as manifested in a Sri Lankan Muslim village festival. The author shows that the festival is a product of the historical isolation of the village and its attempt to establish a distinct Muslim social identity. In contemporary Sri Lanka a separate Muslim identity is no longer in doubt and the festival has become a focal event for competi…
Sufi, Reformist and National Models of Identity: The History of a Muslim Village Festival in Sri Lanka
Analyse de la confluence des processus local, national et pan-islamique manifestes lors du festival Burdha Kandhoori dans un village musulman sri-lankais. Si a l'origine, ce festival est issu du soufisme, son importance en tant que rituel islamico-musulman distinguant les villageois de leurs voisins bouddhistes sinhalais a diminue avec le temps : il a cependant ete reetabli apres avoir ete suspendu en 1980
Power and Religiosity in a Post‐Colonial Setting: Sinhala Catholics in Contemporary Sri Lanka. R. L. STIRRAT
Love and marriage in a Sri Lankan Muslim community: Toward a reevaluation of Dravidian marriage practices
I argue that structural and transactional models of Dravidian marriage practices cannot adequately account for the variation in mate selection in situations of arranged marriage practices exhibited among the Sri Lankan Muslims of Kutali. The inadequacy of these models is an outcome of three interrelated problems: (1) the assumption of a normative model for marriage; (2) a dichotomous conceptualization of marriage practices that divides them into …
Romantic Love and Sexual Behavior: Perspectives from the Social Sciences
Westerners believe that love makes life worth living; that sex is a natural desire different in kind from love; and that only cynics reduce our love life to a calculation of economic or genetic factors. In this volume, essays explore these and other assumptions about the relationship between romantic love and sex. This represents the first interdisciplinary social science study of love and sex. Contributors ask and answer questions such as: Is lo…
Sexual Equality and Romantic Love: A Reanalysis of Rosenblatt’s Study on the Function of Romantic Love
The authors propose that the importance of romantic love as a basis for marriage will occur only in societies that allow both males and females to give or not give love freely. Based on their belief that sexual attraction or passion is a primary criterion of romantic love, the authors hypothesize that there will be a positive correlation between the importance of romantic love and social indicators of sexual equality. Rosenblatt’s 11-point rating…
Greetings from the new editor
Capital and the Burden of Kinship: Labor Practices in a Sri Lankan Village
Cultural Units in Cross-Cultural Research
Introduction: Units for Describing and Analyzing Culture and Society
Cross-cultural research currently has refugee status in anthropology. I explain why this is so by briefly tracing history of cross-cultural research from time of Tylor to present. The main problem for ethnologists has been to define and develop adequate and equivalent cultural units for cross-cultural comparison. I argue that this is also problem for ethnographers. I conclude with brief review of articles in this edition, each of which takes diff…
Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology
Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology. H. Russell Bernard. ed. Walnut Creek. CA: AltaMira Press. 1998. 816 pp
Science Dehumanizing
Cultural Models of Gendeer in Sri Lanka and the United States
Sri Lankan cultural models of gender are compared with those in the United States. Nineteen questions were given to samples of Sinhala Buddhists, Sri Lankan Muslims, and U.S. residents. Most participants were interviewed about their answers. Consensus analysis was used to determine if there were distinctive cultural boundaries between Muslim, Sinhalese, and U.S. samples. This determined that Muslim and Sinhalese informants shared a more or less c…
Contemporary issues and challenges for comparativists: An appraisal
Sir Edward B. Tyler saw ethnology and ethnography as the twin pillars of cultural anthropology. Yet, ethnology has had a marginal role in anthropology compared to ethnography. The inductive comparative approach developed by George Peter Murdock has never been part of mainstream anthropology. The postmodern concern with rooting out the ethnographer's own enculturated and often subconscious biases has placed ethnology at the periphery of the anthro…
"Galton's Asset" and "Flower's Problem Cultural Networks and Cultural Units in Cross‐Cultural Research Ml (Or, Male Genital Mutilations and Polygyny in Cross‐Cultural Perspective)
Edward Tylor had envisioned anthropology to be comprised of ethnology and ethnography in equal parts, but today ethnography dominates the field. In this paper, we examine two reasons for the refugee status of ethnology. First, we look at the notorious "Galton effect." Second, we examine the problem of defining and using cultural units, particularly when positivistic and static theories and methods of culture have been largely discredited by anthr…
The Moscow School of Quantitative Cross-Cultural Research
In this paper the authors review the tradition of quantitative cross-cultural research in Russia, starting with a review of the qualitative cross-cultural research tradition, both in the world in general and in Russia in particular. Afterwards, the authors discuss in more detail the origins of the Moscow School of quantitative cross-cultural research, as well as the main concrete results obtained by those belonging to it
Valuing thinness or fatness in women
Sakhina: A Study of Female Masculinity in a Sri Lankan Muslim Community
In a Muslim village in Sri Lanka, one woman, Sakhina, was collectively reviled for committing adultery while other women who had committed adultery were not. This article uses a figured world/cultural models theory to describe and explain both Sakhina’s and the villagers’ behaviour. It shows that additional punishment by society occurs when an individual’s behaviour not only does not conform with cultural norms but with cultural understandings of…
Primary, secondary and metamagical constituents of Lithuanian identity
Three versions of Lithuanian identity are presented: the first is constructed of primary constituents and is based on official symbols of national identity. This version offers a homogenous view of identity. The second version is derived from the primary life experiences of different segments of the Lithuanian population, and offers a heterogeneous fragmented version of identity. A third, metamagical version of identity is offered which is not ba…
Islamic Orthodoxy and Sufism in Sri Lanka
Anthropos , Seite 401 - 414
Kinship, Identity and Control in a Sri Lankan Muslim Village
This paper examines how Sri Lankan villagers adapt to the indirect effects of globalization. Historically established local identities have become contested and challenged through global processes not explicitly visible at the village level. It is shown in this paper that the significant increase of capital into the economy has created two distinct leadership structures, has altered cultivation practices and labor relations, and has transformed k…
Sociology (34 works) · Philosophy (24 works) · Psychology (23 works) · Anthropology (18 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Epistemology (16 works) · Political science (14 works) · History (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Social Psychology (12 works)