Resources and Life Course Management Among Rural Pastoralists

该奖项是对一个试点项目的奖励，该项目涉及博茨瓦纳的两名人类学教授和一名研究生。该项目将研究田园社会中男性的经济和生殖战略；采访母亲对婴儿性别差异的看法，试图解释对男性婴儿死亡率的戏剧性性别偏见；并制定一种方法来分析男性和女性、成人和儿童在工作努力方面的差异。这项先导性研究对于帮助研究人员制定大规模研究程序，以研究生殖成功等生物学目标与维持父系关系等文化目标之间的冲突，具有重要意义。了解文化传播如何转变生物动机，对于理解如何维持生物福祉非常重要。

This award is for a pilot project involving two anthropology professors and one graduate student in Botswana. The project will study the economic and reproductive strategies of men in a pastoral society; interview mothers about their perceptions of sex differences in infants to try to explain a dramatic sex bias in mortality against male infants; and develop a methodology for analyzing the differences in work effort of men and women, adults and children. This pilot research is important to help the investigators develop their procedures for a large scale study of the conflict between biological goals, such as reproductive success, and culturally defined goals such as maintenance of the patrilineage. Understanding of how cultural transmission transforms biological motives is important in understanding how to maintain biological well-being.