Headhunting – the practice of acquiring human heads for ritual purposes – was historically widespread around the world. We hypothesize that headhunting represented a cultural response to frequent ...inter-tribal warfare and served as a mechanism to train warriors ready to defend their community. The practice was effective since, first, it allowed verification of warrior quality based on performance in headhunting raids and, second, it offered a system of rewards for men to develop and refine warfare skills. We use phylogenetic comparative methods and ethnographic data to empirically investigate this hypothesis in a sample of preindustrial Austronesian societies. Headhunting turns out to be substantially more prevalent in societies exposed to frequent warfare, accounting for shared cultural ancestry and a host of potentially confounding characteristics. Furthermore, Bayesian estimation of correlated evolution models suggests that, consistent with our hypothesis, the adoption of headhunting typically followed increases in warfare frequency and the decline of this practice was preceded by reduced intergroup conflict.
The purpose of the article is to study preliminaring (involvement in work through practical training and internship of promising young professionals) as the latest method of finding and selecting ...employees in enterprises. The scientific works of many researchers are analyzed, the main problems faced by managers of organizations in the field of personnel administration are considered, namely: staff shortages in many areas of activity, which leads to the search for new methods of recruitment. Analyzing the most popular technologies for finding personnel, it should be emphasized that, unfortunately, preliminaring is not a popular way of recruiting, as the labor market develops and becomes more saturated, and therefore companies want to lure only qualified workers with many years of experience who can quickly start working. Therefore, as a result of the study, the main advantages and disadvantages of preliminaring are outlined. The key stages of this process are described, as well as the main tasks that preliminaring solves, and the conditions under which it is advisable to use it. The authors determine in percentage terms the use of various recruitment methods by modern enterprises, among which should be highlighted the following: headhunting, direct search, screening, recruiting, and preliminating. The main actions on the part of both enterprises and educational institutions to accelerate the use of preliminating in most organizations are described. Ways to improve the use of preliminaring and prospects for its development are proposed. It is identified that this process is mutually beneficial for students and businesses who have the opportunity to train interns in accordance with their management style. Further development of preliminaring can improve the socioeconomic indicators of society, including the level of employment, wages, quality of life.
Since the Joy of the Court of Erec and Enide, the motif of knight’s heads cut off and displayed on stakes appears regularly in theversified novels in the thirteenth century. Men’s heads, always cut ...by another knight, most often at the request of a lady or young lady to punish an offence, sexual fault or bankruptcy, or to prove to a lover her virile and martial value. But to this detour of the courteous love/prouess dyad are added beheadings without apparent motive, collections of heads initiated by men, or damsels who decapitate their prey themselves. What is the meaning of this motif in the Arthurian verse literature ? Is it still reminiscent of courtesy codes, or is it necessary to look for another definition ?
Debates on the relevance of repatriation of indigenous human remains are water under the bridge today. Yet, a genuine will for dialogue to work through colonial violence is found lacking in the ...European public sphere. Looking at local remembrance of the Majimaji War (1905–7) in the south of Tanzania and a German–Tanzanian theatre production, it seems that the spectre of colonial headhunting stands at the heart of claims for repatriation and acknowledgement of this anti-colonial movement. The missing head of Ngoni leader Songea Mbano haunts the future of German–Tanzanian relations in heritage and culture. By staging the act of post-mortem dismemberment and foregrounding the perspective of descendants, the theatre production
Maji Maji Flava
offers an honest proposal for dealing with stories of sheer colonial violence in transnational memory.
Women executives face many barriers to career advancement, which then limits the advancement of women lower down the hierarchy. This study looks at the secretive and elite world of executive search ...(headhunting) as a gatekeeping system that hinders women's career advancement in China. Interviews were carried out with headhunters in China, including two in Taiwan to test transferability. Findings of this study show that executive women in China face more stark barriers than their western peers. Headhunters report little influence over clients, but they help profile jobs that emphasize technical and masculine views of leadership, ‘fit’ and ‘chemistry’ in hiring decisions, reinforce stereotypes, and do not support candidates. Our findings reflect the convergence of Confucianism, a highly competitive economic model, and a closed political system with limited space to promote women's interests. Headhunting, an imported practice, illuminates western individualist models of feminism rather than China's traditional collectivism and local models of feminism.
Women remain under-represented in leadership positions in many countries. Since executive search consultants (also known as headhunters) act as gatekeepers in the hiring process, headhunters’ biases ...might influence the female under-representation. There is preliminary evidence that suggests headhunters favor men, but direct evidence is missing. Thus, this study directly tested this assumption using implicit and explicit measures (an implicit association test and a gender role attitudes survey), completed by 123 German executive search consultants. Although neither measure showed an anti-women bias (with the explicit measure being compared to a match sample from a representative survey using propensity score matching), the implicit association test showed an in-group bias (i.e., male headhunter had a stronger association of men and competence than of women and competence). The latter is worrisome because the majority of consultants in this business are men. Thus, organizations interested in more female managers need to carefully consider who they hire as their executive search consultants.
This is a commentary article on existing anthropological views on headhunting practices. Its focus is an article by Mikkelsen (2017) in this journal, ‘Facehunting: Empathy, Masculinity and Violence ...among the Bugkalot.’ The commentary article sees value in Mikkelsen’s critical stance on the issue of extreme violence, such as headhunting not entailing a prior dehumanization of the victim. ‘Headhunting as Reflexive Violence’ addresses an issue of ‘selective empathy,’ and concludes that in light of the Bugkalot ethnography and impulsive headhunting, the discussion point could be one, following Persson and Savulescu (2017), of ‘reflexive empathy.’ The article argues that attention should be given to the material, plastic, and tonal practices celebrating and possibly even eliciting the kill. These might provide us with a rare window into the way cultural techniques can embellish violence.
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