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，对亚马逊小规模社会中的男性社会等级进行研究。尽管社会地位差异在所有人类社会中都很常见，但人类地位差异的根源仍不清楚。哪些特质使个人能够在特定的文化中获得更高的地位，哪些潜在的好处会激励他们寻求地位？现有的关于男性地位的民族志倾向于只探索一种特定特征与社会地位之间的联系，或者缺乏一种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洞察。这位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个月的田野调查。照片排名、访谈、体检和集体行动实验将被用来比较几种社会地位的衡量标准(例如，小团体领导力和整个社区的影响力)，几种决定地位的因素(例如，年龄、狩猎技能、个性、收入和近亲数量)，以及几种地位获得的结果(例如生育率和健康)。在以前的田野赛季中收集的数据将被用来评估在特定特征上的投资可能会或可能不会导致随后的地位获得。这项研究将扩展到四个齐马尼村庄，这些村庄的规模和适应程度不同，如受教育程度和物质财富。这项研究是唯一同时考虑不同地位决定因素的社会地位量化分析之一，也将是第一批评估非工业、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，调查一个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。资助这项研究还支持社会科学家的教育。

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.