Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ritual Feasting and Redistribution in Rural Fiji: Empirical Tests of Evolutionary Hypotheses.

博士生John H.Shaver(康涅狄格大学)将在Richard Sosis博士的指导下，从事人类合作行为和资源重新分配给他人的研究。人类为什么会赠送有用的资源，如食物和物质财富，这一直是人类学家感兴趣的问题。相当多的研究考察了人类学模型在食物分享、劳动、觅食、战争和其他社会行为领域中解释资源转移的能力。这项拟议的研究旨在扩展这些经验发现，并检查一个经济体系，在这个体系中，公共宴请和再分配事件的贡献是常见的。具体地说，该项目将评估五种社会科学理论解释为什么在传统社会中个人捐赠到集体池中用于宴会和重新分配的能力。研究将在斐济瓦努阿列沃南部海岸的三个农村进行。将采用定量和定性的方法，数据收集将包括：与再分配盛宴有关的资源转移的定量数据、人口统计、生育率和家庭经济，以及与盛宴相关的规范、村成员的相对声望及其对其他村成员的社会援助的意愿的定性数据。这项研究具有重要意义，因为它将加深我们对制度背景与人类合作行为之间关系的理解。理解人类合作的动机以及机构如何影响人类合作，对于解释战争、环境保护和公共卫生等广泛现象至关重要。这项研究也支持研究生的教育。

Doctoral student John H. Shaver (University of Connecticut), supervised by Dr. Richard Sosis, will undertake research on human cooperative behaviors and the redistribution of resources to others. Why humans give away useful resources, such as food and material possessions, has been of longstanding interest to anthropologists. Considerable research has examined the ability of anthropological models to explain resource transfers in the context of food sharing, labor, foraging, warfare and other domains of social behavior. The proposed research aims to extend these empirical findings and examine an economic system where contributions to public feasting and redistribution events are common. Specifically, this project will evaluate the ability of five social science theories to explain why individuals donate to collective pools for feasting and redistribution in a traditional society.The research will be conducted in three rural villages located on the southern coast of Vanua Levu, Fiji. Quantitative and qualitative methods will be employed and data collection will include: quantitative data on resource transfers associated with redistribution feasts, demographics, fertility, and household economics, and qualitative data on norms associated with feasts, the relative prestige of village members and their willingness to come to the social assistance of other village members. This research is important because it will improve our understanding of the relationship between institutional context and human cooperative behavior. Understanding human motivations for cooperation and how institutions influence human cooperation are crucial for explaining such wide-ranging phenomena as warfare, environmental conservation, and public health-care. This research also supports the education of a graduate student.