6,078 articles
Orang Asli
Orang Asli ("original people" in Malay) are the indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia: 18 subgroups in the Negrito, Senoi, and Proto-Malay groups, about 227,900 people in 2025, governed by the Aboriginal Peoples Act 1954 with common-law customary land rights.
Orang Laut
Orang Laut, Malay for "sea people," are boat-dwelling maritime communities of the Thai-Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, historically pillars of the Srivijaya, Melaka, and Johor-Riau kingdoms.
Orange Order
Orange Order (Loyal Orange Institution): Protestant fraternal and parading organization founded after the Battle of the Diamond, 21 September 1795, County Armagh; named for William of Orange; Protestant-only membership; famous for Twelfth of July parades and the Drumcree dispute.
Order of the Eastern Star
Order of the Eastern Star, also called OES, is a Masonic-affiliated fraternal organization for Master Masons and their female relatives, founded in 1850 by Rob Morris, with the General Grand Chapter formed in 1876.
Order of the New Templars
Order of the New Templars (Ordo Novi Templi, ONT, Neutempler-Orden): occult-Ariosophic order founded around 1900 by Lanz von Liebenfels, promoting Aryan racial ideology under Templar symbolism; banned by the Nazis.
Orelha case
Orelha case (Caso Orelha): 2026 Brazilian animal-cruelty investigation after the community dog Orelha of Praia Brava, Florianópolis, was beaten by teenagers on 4 January 2026, sparking national protests and the 'Justiça por Orelha' decree.
Organization
Organization: a social entity with differentiated roles and coordinated activities toward common objectives (formal and informal). Covers Weber's bureaucracy, comparative analysis, organizational design models, new organizational forms, and AI-driven organizational change.
Organization development
Organization development (OD), also called organisational development, is a field of planned, organization-wide change grounded in behavioral science. Traced to Kurt Lewin's 1946 New Britain workshop, the T-group, NTL, and action research; distinguished from change management and HR.
Organizational behavior
Organizational behavior (OB) studies individual, group, and organizational behavior at work, drawing on psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics; its formative episode was the 1924–32 Hawthorne Studies at Western Electric, which launched the human relations movement.
Organizational Objectives
Organizational objectives are formalized statements of the end states an organization or unit intends to reach, the basis of Management by Objectives (Drucker, 1954), SMART goals, and OKRs, and grounded in Locke and Latham's goal-setting theory of specific, difficult goals.
Orgasm (ργασμός)
Orgasm (Greek ὀργασμός) is the climax of sexual arousal, with intense pleasure and rhythmic pelvic muscle contractions. Key facts: no standard definition, Masters and Johnson's four-phase response cycle, and a 22–30 point orgasm gap between men and women.
Orgy
Orgy (Greek orgia): originally secret Dionysiac rites of ancient Greek and Roman religion; the word shifted to mean drunken revelry and, in modern usage, multi-partner group sex, now studied as socially organized group sex cultures.
Origin of the Palestinians
Origin of the Palestinians: ancestry of the Arabic-speaking people of historic Palestine. Traces Canaanite substrate, Arabization and Islamization, HLA genetic affinities with Jews and neighbors, and the modern al-Filastiniyyin identity.
Orla Guerin
Orla Guerin MBE (born 1966, Dublin) is the BBC's Senior International Correspondent, based in Istanbul. Formerly RTÉ and BBC postings in Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Islamabad, Cairo; MBE 2005; RTS Television Journalist of the Year 2018; Ukraine war coverage.
Oromo people
The Oromo people are Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, Cushitic-speaking (Afaan Oromo), known for the Gada governance system, the 16th-century Oromo expansion, and the Irreecha festival.
Orphan
Orphan: a child under 18 who has lost one parent (single orphan) or both parents (double orphan). Covers UNICEF definitions, AIDS-related orphanhood, the history of orphanages, and research comparing institutional and family-based care.
Orphan Train
The Orphan Train Movement relocated roughly 150,000 to 250,000 poor New York children to rural families in the Midwest and West between 1854 and 1929, pioneering American foster care.
Orphanage
Orphanage, also called residential or institutional care, is a facility where children separated from parents live under paid staff. About 2 million children live in such care worldwide, most with living relatives; institutionalization harms development, driving deinstitutionalization toward kinship and foster care.
Orville Gilbert. Brim
Orville Gilbert "Bert" Brim (1923–2016) was an American social psychologist who led the MIDUS national study of midlife well-being and headed the Russell Sage Foundation.
Osage Nation
The Osage Nation (Wahzhazhe, 𐓏𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟) is a federally recognized Dhegiha Siouan tribe in Osage County, Oklahoma, seat Pawhuska. It purchased its 1.47-million-acre reservation in 1872, retains tribal ownership of the Osage Mineral Estate under the 1906 Act with headright royalties, endured the 1920s Reign of Terror, and has had a tripartite constitutional government since 2006.
Osama al-Rifai (أسامة الرفاعي)
Osama al-Rifai (أسامة الرفاعي), Syrian Sufi Sunni scholar born in Damascus in 1944, son of Abdul Karim al-Rifai, leader of Jamaat Zayd, exiled head of the Syrian Islamic Council, and Grand Mufti of Syria since 28 March 2025 under President al-Sharaa.
Ossetians (ирæттæ)
Ossetians (ирæттæ) are an Iranian-speaking people of the central Caucasus, the only descendants of the medieval Alans of Scytho-Sarmatian steppe stock, speaking the Eastern Iranian Ossetic language with Digor and Iron dialects.
Ostjuden
Ostjuden (German for Eastern Jews), Ostjude singular: term for East European, mainly Yiddish-speaking Jews in German-speaking Central Europe; a construct of German-Jewish self-definition and a central anti-Semitic stereotype from the nineteenth century onward.
Ota Benga
Ota Benga (c. 1883–1916), a Mbuti man from the Congo Free State, was exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and in the Bronx Zoo Monkey House in 1906 before settling in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he died by suicide in 1916.
Other Backward Class
Other Backward Classes (OBCs), or Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs), are Indian caste communities listed by the Central Government for 27 percent reservation in central government jobs and educational institutions, subject to creamy layer exclusion, overseen by the constitutional NCBC.
Otherkin
Otherkin are people who identify as other-than-human while recognizing a human body; also called therians when identifying as Earth animals. Online-first subculture coined in 1990 on the Elfinkind Digest, with communities on Usenet, Facebook, Tumblr, and Discord.
Otis Pitts
Otis Pitts Jr. is an American community development leader in Liberty City, Miami, who attracted over $15 million in private investment and won a 1990 MacArthur Fellowship.
Out-of-body experience
Out-of-body experience (OBE), also called astral projection in folk usage: an experience of disembodiment in which the self seems located outside the body, seeing it from an elevated perspective; linked to right temporoparietal junction dysfunction and inducible by brain stimulation.
Outing
Outing is the non-consensual public disclosure of a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. Known from the 1990 OutWeek Malcolm Forbes controversy, outing raises journalism-ethics, legal, school, and digital-privacy issues distinct from voluntary coming out.
Outliers (book)
Outliers: The Story of Success is Malcolm Gladwell's 2008 Little, Brown book arguing success depends on context, birth timing, and culture; it popularized the disputed 10,000-hour rule from Ericsson's deliberate-practice research.