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

印度尼西亚Lamalera的人们是自给自足的海洋觅食者，他们在公海捕猎大型猎物，也在小船上用钩、线和网捕鱼。粮食的分配遵循一套复杂的规范体系，根据个人在生产中的角色将份额分配给他们。一旦分配了股份，股东们会进一步将部分分配给其他家庭。这种食物资源的再分配在村里的家庭之间建立了食物共享关系网络。这篇由文化人类学家撰写的论文研究项目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是如何与其他当地社会机构联系起来的。其目的是检验来自人类行为生态学的假设，该假设考察了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，并防范严重资源短缺的危险，以及共享如何被用作一种社会策略，以获得更好的声誉和他人的青睐。智力价值：人类学家早就认识到食物分享是一种社会和进化上重要的人类制度。在重建人类物种的行为进化过程中，食物分享通常被视为一系列相互关联的适应的一部分，这些适应定义了原始人的谱系，并被视为更复杂的合作行为的先驱。然而，以牺牲参与者为代价而使另一个个体受益的合作行为可能很难在进化中产生。食物分享就是这样一种行为，从进化的角度解释人类分享食物的原因已成为人类行为生态学研究的重要焦点。因为在人类中观察到的一些其他形式的合作面临着类似的障碍，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。更广泛的影响：了解自给经济中粮食生产和分配的性质有助于我们了解发展中国家许多贫困人民可用的物质和社会资源。食物共享网络，如在拉马莱拉看到的，在自给经济中很常见。这些网络塑造了个体获取食物和非食物资源的途径。因此，这项研究产生的知识可能对发展项目的设计、粮食援助的分配、救灾的执行或其他有关地方机构如何影响获得外部机构提供的资源的情况产生影响。此外，该项目还促进了年轻社会科学家的教育。

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.