Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Children's subsistence contributions to pastoral households in the drylands of East Africa

这篇论文的研究将调查东非旱地牧民的子女如何、何时以及对自己的食物产生什么影响。它将衡量儿童对他们自己、他们的同龄人和他们的家庭的自给自足捐款的价值和影响。许多社会的儿童有时在很小的时候就开始为家庭生产做出贡献，这取决于他们所在社会的生存模式和他们所处的环境。农学家和最近在狩猎-采集者中对儿童对生存的贡献进行了研究。这将是第一批研究牧民儿童贡献的研究之一。这项研究结合了营养、健康和人种学方法。早先对维持生计战略的研究发现，回报不仅应与粮食采购的能源成本有关，还应与文化和环境背景下的营养回报和健康后果有关。因此，研究人员将盘点儿童的工作，并对他们和他们的家庭进行拟人化测量，以衡量他们的发展并监测他们的健康状况。人类学中对生存风险管理研究的荟萃分析显示，缺乏实证数据来检验模型。该项目将收集经验数据，以开始严格测试关于儿童在家庭和社区中的角色、儿童觅食的原因，特别是在非觅食社会中的原因以及风险管理的假设。这项研究的结果将对人类学理论的发展和帮助政府和非政府组织制定关于儿童、教育、粮食安全和旱地牧民发展的政策具有重要价值。

This dissertation research will investigate how, when, and to what effect the children of pastoralist herders in the drylands of East Africa forage for their own food. It will measure the value and effects of children's subsistence contributions for themselves, their peers, and their households. Children in many societies sometimes begin to contribute to household production at early ages, depending on the subsistence mode of their society and the environment in which they live. Children's contributions to subsistence have been studied among agriculturalists and more recently, among hunter-gatherers. This will be one of the first studies to study the contributions of pastoralist children. This research combines nutrition, health, and ethnographic methodologies. Earlier studies of subsistence strategies found that returns should be measured not only in relation to energy costs of food procurement, but also in relation to nutritional returns and health consequences within cultural and environmental contexts. Therefore, the researcher will inventory children's work and also take anthropomorphic measurements of them and their families to measure their development and monitor health over time.Meta-analyses of subsistence risk management research within anthropology reveal a lack of empirical data with which to test models. This project will collect empirical data to begin the process of rigorously testing hypotheses about children's roles within households and communities, the reasons children forage, especially in non-foraging societies, and risk management. Results of this research will be valuable to the development of theory in anthropology and to assist government and non-government organizations producing policy for children, education, food security, and development among dryland pastoralists.