Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Tourism and Changing Paternal Investment among the Matrilineal Na

研究生西沃恩·马蒂森将在埃里克·奥尔登·史密斯博士的指导下，对西南中国的母系亲属关系和父系投资进行研究。到目前为止，中国现存的最后一个母系人口--纳人，一直被描绘成一个没有父亲或丈夫的社会。有人声称，男人强调自己作为叔叔和兄弟的角色，因此比起自己的孩子，他们更关心姐妹的孩子。然而，中国游客对这种不同寻常的社会制度的迷恋影响了韩国的经济，并增加了对汉族(占多数)的中国价值观的接触。这可能是最近的证据表明，现在的Na父亲确实为他们的亲生子女提供照顾和经济支持的原因之一。研究人员将使用人类行为生态学的进化理论框架来研究个体育儿决定和不断变化的血统之间的关系。她将进行家庭普查，并对两个不同的纳族社区进行人种学调查，一个社区有很强的旅游业，另一个没有。她还将使用系统的行为观察技术，如焦点跟踪，系统和定量地评估雄性对其后代的投资。她的数据将使她能够检验七个假设，这些假说是关于育儿方式多变性的原因和后果，包括以民族旅游收入的形式出现的市场经济是否会影响纳族男性的资源分配和伴侣偏好。这项研究很重要，因为它是关于个人层面的属性如何与当地市场相互作用以影响亲属关系和家庭习俗的第一批量化分析之一。这项研究将通过澄清社会和经济因素在生育和育儿决策中的作用，为关于人类家庭构成的性质的辩论提供信息。这一发现也将有助于解决有关纳社会组织的争议。这项研究还将对社会科学家的教育做出重大贡献。

Graduate student Siobhan Mattison, supervised by Dr. Eric Alden Smith, will conduct research on kinship and paternal investment among the matrilineal Na of Southewest China. Heretofore, the Na, China's last existing matrilineal population,have been portrayed as a society without fathers or husbands. It has been claimed that men emphasize their roles as uncles and brothers and therefore take greater care of their sisters' children than of their own. However, Chinese tourists' fascination with this unusual social system has affected the Na's economy and increased exposure to Han (majority) Chinese values. This may be one reason that recent evidence suggests that now Na fathers do indeed provide care and financial support for their biological children. The researcher will use the evolutionary thoretical framework of human behavioral ecology to examine the relationship between individual Na parenting decisions and changing descent systems. She will conduct household censuses and do ethnographic surveys of two different Na communities, one with strong exposure to tourism and the other without. She also will employ systematic behavior observation techniques, such as focal follows, to systematically and quantiatatively evaluate male investment in their offspring. Her data will allow her test seven hypotheses about the causes and consequences of variability in paternal care, including whether the emergence of a market economy, in the form of income from ethnic tourism, affects the distribution of resources by, and partnering preferences of, Na men. The research is important because it is one of the first quantitative analyses of how individual-level attributes interact with local markets to affect kinship and family practices. This research will inform debates about the nature of human family composition by clarifying the roles of social and economic factors in reproductive and parenting decisions. The findings also will help resolve controversies about Na social organization. The research also will contribute significantly to the education of a social scientist.