Doctoral Dissertation Research: Food Sharing in Lamalera, Indonesia: Tests of Adaptive Hypotheses

印度尼西亚的拉马莱拉人是靠海洋觅食为生的人，他们在公海上捕猎大型猎物，也用小船钩、线和网捕鱼。食物的分配遵循着一套复杂的规范体系，根据个人在生产中的作用将分享权分配给他们。一旦股份被分配，股东进一步将部分股份分配给其他家庭。这种食物资源的重新分配在村庄的家庭之间建立了一个食物分享关系网络。这篇论文的研究项目由文化人类学家试图从进化和经济的角度来理解这样一个系统是如何发展的，以及由此产生的共享网络如何与其他地方社会机构相关。其目的是测试来自人类行为生态学的假设，这些假设着眼于亲属关系对共享模式的影响，共享如何随着时间的推移改善收成的变化，并防止严重资源短缺的危险，以及如何将共享用作一种社会策略，以获得更好的声誉和其他人的青睐。学术价值：人类学家长期以来一直认为食物分享是一种重要的社会和进化人类制度。在重建我们物种的行为进化过程中，食物分享通常被视为定义原始人类谱系的一系列相互关联的适应的一部分，并被视为更复杂的合作行为的先驱。然而，以行为者为代价而使另一个个体受益的合作行为，对进化来说是很难产生的。分享食物就是这样一种行为，从进化的角度解释人类为什么分享食物已经成为人类行为生态学研究的重要焦点。由于在人类身上观察到的其他一些合作形式也面临类似的障碍，理解食物分享行为有助于我们更广泛地理解人类的合作和社会性。更广泛的影响：理解自给经济中粮食生产和分配的本质有助于我们理解发展中国家许多贫困人口所拥有的物质和社会资源。粮食分享网络，如在拉马莱拉看到的网络，在自给经济中很常见。这些网络影响个人获得粮食和非粮食资源的机会。因此，这项研究所产生的知识可能对发展项目的设计、粮食援助的分配、救灾的执行或其他情况产生影响，在这些情况下，人们担心地方机构如何影响获得外部机构提供的资源。此外，该项目还促进了青年社会科学家的教育。

The people of Lamalera, Indonesia are subsistence marine foragers who practice open sea hunting of large prey as well as small boat hook and line and net fishing. The distribution of food follows a complex system of norms that assigns share rights to individuals according to their role in production. Once shares are distributed, shareholders further distribute portions to other households. This redistribution of food resources creates a network of food sharing relationships among households in the village. This dissertation research project by a cultural anthropologist seeks to understand from an evolutionary and economic standpoint how such a system may develop and how the resulting sharing network relates to other local social institutions. The objective is to test hypotheses derived from human behavioral ecology, which look at the effects of kinship on patterns of sharing, how sharing serves to ameliorate variation in harvests over time and guards against the hazard of a serious resource shortfall, and how sharing can be used as a social strategy to gain improved reputation and favor from others. Intellectual Merit: Anthropologists have long recognized food sharing as a socially and evolutionarily important human institution. In reconstructing the behavioral evolution of our species food sharing has often been viewed as part of a suite of interrelated adaptations that define the hominid lineage, and as a precursor to more complex cooperative behaviors. However, cooperative behaviors that benefit another individual at a cost to the actor can be difficult for evolution to produce. Food sharing is such a behavior, and explaining why humans share food from an evolutionary point of view has become an important focus of research in human behavioral ecology. Because some other forms of cooperation observed in humans face similar obstacles, understanding food-sharing behavior helps us understand human cooperation and sociality more broadly.Broader Impact: Understanding the nature of food production and distribution in subsistence economies helps us understand the material and social resources available to the many impoverished peoples of the developing world. Networks of food sharing, such as that seen in Lamalera, are common in subsistence economies. These networks shape individuals' access to both food and non-food resources. Knowledge generated by the study may therefore have implications for the design of development projects, the distribution of food aid, the execution of disaster relief, or other situations where there is concern about how local institutions may shape access to resources provided by outside agencies. In addition the project advances the education of a young social scientist.