Dissertation Research: Economics Behavior and Resource Use in Amazonian Peru

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This project involves the dissertation research of an anthropology student from UCLA studying the changing patterns of resource consumption and land use among the Machiguenga Indians of the southeastern Peruvian Amazon. During the past 30 years missionaries, NGOs and government agents have sedentized and centralized the previously semi-nomadic subsistence-focused Machiguenga into small villages with increasing market integration. The student will draw upon theories from experimental economics to advance our understanding of the transmission and decision-making processes that produce socio-cultural change. Methodologically, the student will administer laboratory style tests aimed at gathering data on how the Indians reason and respond under various economic circumstances. This data will be comparable to data gathered from people in fully commercialized developed societies, such as the US. Second, through detailed ethnographic investigation, the student will explore current patterns of resource use and labor allocation with a focus on cultural transmission. This research is important because it will advance our understanding of how humans make economic decisions in diverse contexts. By systematically comparing how cultural patterns relate to individualized decision models as opposed to differential transmission of ideas in this relatively non-market, non-capitalist context, the project advance our understanding of the fundamentals of human economic behavior.