Dissertation Research: Economics Behavior and Resource Use in Amazonian Peru

该项目涉及加州大学洛杉矶分校一名人类学学生的论文研究，研究秘鲁亚马逊东南部Machiguenga印第安人资源消费和土地使用的变化模式。 在过去的30年里，传教士、非政府组织和政府机构将以前以半游牧为生的Machiguenga集中到小村庄，并日益融入市场。学生将借鉴实验经济学的理论，以促进我们对产生社会文化变革的传播和决策过程的理解。 从方法上讲，学生将进行实验室式的测试，旨在收集印度人在各种经济环境下如何推理和反应的数据。 这些数据将与从完全商业化的发达社会（如美国）收集的数据相当。 其次，通过详细的民族志调查，学生将探索当前的资源使用和劳动力分配模式，重点是文化传播。 这项研究很重要，因为它将促进我们对人类如何在不同环境下做出经济决策的理解。 通过系统地比较文化模式如何与个性化的决策模型相关联，而不是在这个相对非市场，非资本主义的背景下思想的差异传播，该项目推进了我们对人类经济行为基本原理的理解。

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.