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

论文研究：快速适应的亚马逊社会中男性社会地位的决定因素和结果

• 批准号: 0921429
• 负责人: Michael Gurven
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Barbara
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2011-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0921429&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Determinants; Outcomes; Male

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.

加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的研究生克里斯托弗·冯·鲁登将在迈克尔·古尔文博士的指导下，对亚马逊河流域一个小规模社会中的男性社会等级制度进行研究。 虽然社会地位差异是所有人类社会所共有的，但人类地位差异的起源仍然不清楚。在特定的文化中，什么样的特征能使个人获得更高的地位？什么样的潜在利益能促使他们追求地位？现有的男性地位民族志倾向于探索一个特定的特征和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。在迅速消失的小规模社会中填补这一知识空白至关重要，部分原因是这些社会为人类寻求地位行为起源的祖先社会生态提供了独特的见解。研究人员将在玻利维亚亚马逊地区的Tsimane觅食园艺家中进行为期12个月的实地考察。照片排名，访谈，体检和集体行动实验将被用来比较社会地位的几个措施（如小团体的领导和社区范围内的影响力），地位的几个决定因素（如年龄，狩猎技能，个性，收入和近亲的数量），以及地位获取的几个结果（如生育和健康）。在以前的领域季节收集的数据将用于评估如何在特定性状的投资可能会或可能不会导致随后的状态收购。研究将扩展到Tsimane的四个村庄，这些村庄在规模和文化适应程度上各不相同，例如获得教育和物质财富的机会。这项研究是唯一一项同时考虑不同地位决定因素的社会地位定量分析，也是第一个评估非工业化小规模社会中社会地位健康结果的研究。跨村庄的研究设计将提供一个独特的机会，调查社会内部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社会科学家的教育。