Society and Culture Atlas
Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.
87 statements marked Debated.
Inuit, Population Estimateapproximately 180,000
Inuit, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Estimate
Currently States approximately 180,000
Inuit populations are counted separately across Canadian, Greenlandic/Danish and Alaskan U.S. census systems using differing ethnic categories, so aggregate totals are approximate.
Source Wikipedia: Inuit (people)
Kurds, Population Estimateestimated 30 to 45 million
Kurds, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Estimate
Currently States estimated 30 to 45 million
No Kurdistan-wide census exists, and Turkey, Iran and Syria's national censuses do not reliably report Kurdish ethnic self-identification, so estimates rely on language-survey and demographic extrapolation.
Source Wikipedia: Kurds
Kurds, Population Band (category)Over 10 Million
Kurds, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Band (category)
Currently States Over 10 Million
Source Wikipedia: Kurds
Liminality, Core ClaimArnold van Gennep first identified liminality as the middle phase of a rite of passage in the early twentieth century; Victor Turner, working from his Ndembu fieldwork, developed it further but reserved the term itself for small-scale ritual settings, coining "liminoid" for comparable features of complex modern societies rather than extending "liminality" itself to them.
Liminality, Social Theory and Concepts
Standing
Concerns Core Claim
Currently States Arnold van Gennep first identified liminality as the middle phase of a rite of passage in the early twentieth century; Victor Turner, working from his Ndembu fieldwork, developed it further but reserved the term itself for small-scale ritual settings, coining "liminoid" for comparable features of complex modern societies rather than extending "liminality" itself to them.
Debated rather than attested: Turner has been criticized for limiting liminality to small-scale tribal societies; Agnes Horvath (2013) countered that the term itself, not only Turner's "liminoid," can and should be applied to concrete historical events. See the dissent and open question recorded alongside this entry.
Source Wikipedia: Liminality
Maasai, Population Estimateapproximately 1.5 to 2 million
Maasai, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Estimate
Currently States approximately 1.5 to 2 million
Estimates vary because Maasai population figures are drawn from national censuses in both Kenya and Tanzania using different ethnic-classification methods, and many pastoralist households are undercounted.
Source Wikipedia: Maasai
Maasai, Population Band (category)1 to 10 Million
Maasai, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Band (category)
Currently States 1 to 10 Million
Source Wikipedia: Maasai
Manifest and Latent Functions, Origin Year1922
Manifest and Latent Functions, Social Theory and Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1922
This entity's own live entity-description credits Robert K. Merton's 1949 Social Theory and Social Structure with formalizing the manifest/latent distinction as a sociological analytic term; the Wikipedia source cited here instead dates the underlying concept to Bronisław Malinowski's 1922 Trobriand fieldwork. Both attributions are real and not reconciled by either source; 1922 (the earlier of the two) is recorded as the value, with this note naming the 1949 Merton attribution the entity's own description already carries.
Source Manifest and Latent Functions and Dysfunctions (Wikipedia)
Mapuche, Population Estimateapproximately 1.7 to 2 million
Mapuche, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Estimate
Currently States approximately 1.7 to 2 million
Chilean and Argentine census figures on Mapuche self-identification have varied significantly between survey years and methodologies.
Source Wikipedia: Mapuche
Mapuche, Population Band (category)1 to 10 Million
Mapuche, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Band (category)
Currently States 1 to 10 Million
Source Wikipedia: Mapuche
Marriage, Emergence PeriodDocumented in some form in every known society and treated by most anthropologists as reaching into deep prehistory, predating written records entirely; because the institution is defined differently by competing anthropological frameworks (Westermarck's relational account, a legitimacy-of-offspring account, and Leach's ten-rights account), no single origin point can be dated, since dating an origin first requires settling which definition is being dated.
Marriage, Institutions and Social Structures
Standing
Concerns Emergence Period
Currently States Documented in some form in every known society and treated by most anthropologists as reaching into deep prehistory, predating written records entirely; because the institution is defined differently by competing anthropological frameworks (Westermarck's relational account, a legitimacy-of-offspring account, and Leach's ten-rights account), no single origin point can be dated, since dating an origin first requires settling which definition is being dated.
Debated because the disagreement is definitional as much as historical: scholars agree the practice is ancient and near-universal but not on which relational configurations should count as marriage at all.
Source Wikipedia: Marriage
Maya peoples, Population Estimateapproximately 6 to 7 million, across more than two dozen distinct Mayan-language groups
Maya peoples, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Estimate
Currently States approximately 6 to 7 million, across more than two dozen distinct Mayan-language groups
'Maya' comprises numerous distinct contemporary ethnolinguistic groups (K'iche', Yucatec, Kaqchikel, Q'eqchi' and many others) whose individual and combined totals are drawn from differing national censuses across Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.
Source Wikipedia: Maya peoples
Maya peoples, Population Band (category)1 to 10 Million
Maya peoples, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Band (category)
Currently States 1 to 10 Million
Source Wikipedia: Maya peoples
Nuclear Family, Typical RegionLong treated as normative in Western, especially Anglo-American, family sociology since mid-twentieth-century comparative studies such as George Murdock's survey of 250 societies found some form meeting the definition of family in every one; a 4,600-year-old German burial site is the earliest known archaeological example of a two-parent, multiple-child family unit.
Nuclear Family, Kinship and Family Systems
Standing
Concerns Typical Region
Currently States Long treated as normative in Western, especially Anglo-American, family sociology since mid-twentieth-century comparative studies such as George Murdock's survey of 250 societies found some form meeting the definition of family in every one; a 4,600-year-old German burial site is the earliest known archaeological example of a two-parent, multiple-child family unit.
Whether the nuclear family is the historically and cross-culturally dominant or "natural" human family form is disputed rather than settled: the source itself states that some sociologists and anthropologists consider the extended family, not the nuclear family, to be the most common family structure in most cultures and at most times for humans, and cautions that the German burial-site evidence does not establish the nuclear family as a universal or the most ancient institution.
Source Wikipedia: Nuclear Family
Pashtun, Population Estimateestimated 50 to 60 million
Pashtun, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Estimate
Currently States estimated 50 to 60 million
Neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan has conducted a full, undisputed ethnic census in recent decades, so Pashtun population totals are estimated from partial surveys and are politically sensitive.
Source Wikipedia: Pashtun
Pashtun, Population Band (category)Over 10 Million
Pashtun, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Band (category)
Currently States Over 10 Million
Source Wikipedia: Pashtun
Patriarchy, Emergence PeriodOne view holds that patriarchal social structures did not develop until after the end of the Pleistocene, following the rise of agriculture and domestication; whether this describes a genuine historical origin or only a hardening of an already-present pattern is itself part of the wider dispute over patriarchy's universality.
Patriarchy, Institutions and Social Structures
Standing
Concerns Emergence Period
Currently States One view holds that patriarchal social structures did not develop until after the end of the Pleistocene, following the rise of agriculture and domestication; whether this describes a genuine historical origin or only a hardening of an already-present pattern is itself part of the wider dispute over patriarchy's universality.
Debated rather than attested because the timing claim is entangled with the unresolved question of whether patriarchal structure is a human universal at all; see the open question minted alongside this entity.
Source Wikipedia: Patriarchy
Power/Knowledge, Origin Year1975
Power/Knowledge, Social Theory and Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1975
The term is most closely associated with Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975) and the later compiled volume Power/Knowledge (1980); no single coining sentence was found in the fetched sources, so the earlier work's year is recorded rather than an invented single date.
Source Discipline and Punish (Wikipedia)
Quechua, Population Estimateestimated 8 to 10 million
Quechua, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Estimate
Currently States estimated 8 to 10 million
Quechua identity spans numerous distinct regional communities across five Andean countries with differing census methods, so cited totals vary by source.
Source Wikipedia: Quechua
Quechua, Population Band (category)Over 10 Million
Quechua, Social Groups
Standing
Concerns Population Band (category)
Currently States Over 10 Million
Source Wikipedia: Quechua
Quinceanera, Documented Year1865
Quinceanera, Ethnography and Cultural Practices
Standing
Concerns Documented Year
Currently States 1865
Contested: the cited source ties the contemporary form to the Second Mexican Empire (1864-1867), but the same article also names a competing origin story crediting the Duchess of Alba in Spain, so the date is one candidate, not a settled fact.
Source Wikipedia: Quinceanera