Dissertation Research: Economics Behavior and Resource Use in Amazonian Peru

这个项目涉及加州大学洛杉矶分校的一名人类学专业学生的论文研究，他研究了秘鲁亚马逊东南部的麦金加印第安人的资源消耗和土地利用的变化模式。在过去的30年里，传教士、非政府组织和政府机构将以前半游牧、以维持生计为重点的麦金加人隔离起来，并将其集中到小村庄中，市场一体化程度越来越高。学生将利用实验经济学的理论来促进我们对产生社会文化变化的传播和决策过程的理解。在方法上，这名学生将进行实验室式的测试，旨在收集印度人在各种经济情况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)收集的数据相媲美。第二，通过详细的民族志调查，学生将探索当前资源利用和劳动力分配的模式，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的背景下做出经济决策的理解。通过系统地比较文化模式与个性化决策模型的关系，以及在这种相对非市场、非资本主义的背景下思想的差异传播，该项目促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.