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

研究生Siobhan Mattison在Eric奥尔登史密斯博士的指导下，将对中国西南部母系Na族的亲属关系和父亲投资进行研究。迄今为止，中国现存的最后一个母系人口--那族被描绘成一个没有父亲或丈夫的社会。有人说，男子强调自己作为叔叔和兄弟的角色，因此对姐妹篇的孩子比自己的孩子照顾得更多。然而，中国游客对这种不寻常的社会制度的迷恋影响了纳的经济，并增加了对汉族（占多数）中国价值观的接触。这可能是最近的证据表明，现在纳族的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。研究者将使用人类行为生态学的进化理论框架来研究个体的养育决定和不断变化的血统系统之间的关系。她将对两个不同的纳族社区进行家庭普查和民族志调查，一个社区有很强的旅游业，另一个没有。她还将采用系统的行为观察技术，如焦点跟踪，系统地和定量地评估男性对后代的投资。她的数据将允许她测试七个假设的原因和后果的变化，在父亲的照顾，包括是否出现了市场经济，从民族旅游收入的形式，影响资源的分配，和合作的偏好，纳男子。这项研究很重要，因为它是第一次定量分析个人层面的属性如何与当地市场相互作用，影响亲属关系和家庭的做法。这项研究将通过澄清社会和经济因素在生育和养育决定中的作用，为关于人类家庭组成性质的辩论提供信息。研究结果也将有助于解决有关纳族社会组织的争议。 这项研究也将大大有助于社会科学家的教育。

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.