Dissertation Research: The Determinants and Outcomes of Male Social Status in a Rapidly Acculturating Amazonian Society

加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的研究生Christopher von Rueden将在Michael Gurven博士的指导下，在一个小规模的亚马逊社会中进行男性社会等级的研究。虽然社会地位差异在所有人类社会中都是普遍存在的，但人类地位差异的起源仍不清楚。在特定的文化中，什么样的特质能让个人获得更高的地位？什么样的潜在利益能激励他们追求地位？现有的男性地位人种学倾向于只探索一种特定特征与社会地位之间的联系，或者缺乏纵向设计来正确评估因果关系。在快速消失的小规模社会中填补这一知识缺口至关重要，部分原因是这些社会提供了对人类寻求地位行为起源的祖先社会生态的独特见解。研究人员将在玻利维亚亚马逊地区的提斯曼采摘园艺师中进行为期12个月的实地调查。照片排序、访谈、体检和集体行动实验将用于比较社会地位的几种衡量标准（如小团体领导和社区范围的影响力）、地位的几种决定因素（如年龄、狩猎技能、个性、收入和近亲数量）以及地位获得的几种结果（如生育和健康）。在以前的油田季节收集的数据将用于评估对特定性状的投资可能或可能不会导致随后的地位获得。研究将扩展到四个Tsimane村庄，这些村庄在规模和文化适应水平上存在差异，例如获得教育和物质财富的机会。这项研究是对社会地位的唯一定量分析之一，同时考虑到地位的不同决定因素，并将是第一个评估非工业小规模社会中社会地位的健康结果的研究之一。跨村研究设计将提供一个独特的机会来调查社会中的社会经济变化如何塑造社会等级的决定因素和结果。资助这项研究也支持了社会科学家的教育。

University of California, Santa Barbara graduate student, Christopher von Rueden, with the guidance of Dr. Michael Gurven, will undertake research on male social hierarchy in a small-scale Amazonian society. While social status differentials are common to all human societies, the origin of human status differentials remains unclear. What traits enable individuals to achieve higher status in a given culture, and what potential benefits motivate their status-seeking? Existing ethnographies of male status tend to explore the link between only one particular trait and social status, or lack a longitudinal design to properly assess causal relationships. Filling this knowledge gap in fast-disappearing small-scale societies is critical, in part because these societies provide unique insight into the ancestral socio-ecologies in which human status-seeking behavior originated. The researcher will conduct 12 months of fieldwork among the Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of the Bolivian Amazon. Photo-ranking, interviews, medical exams, and collective action experiments will be used to compare several measures of social status (e.g. small-group leadership and community-wide influence), several determinants of status (e.g. age, hunting skill, personality, income, and number of close kin), and several outcomes of status acquisition (e.g. fertility and health). Data gathered in previous field seasons will be used to evaluate how investments in particular traits may or may not have led to subsequent status acquisition. Research will extend across four Tsimane villages, which differ in size and level of acculturation, such as access to education and material wealth.This study represents one of the only quantitative analyses of social status to consider different determinants of status simultaneously and will be among the first to evaluate the health outcomes of social status in a non-industrial, small-scale society. The cross-village research design will provide a unique opportunity to investigate how socio-economic changes within a society shape the determinants and outcomes of social hierarchies. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.