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

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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.