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

博士生John H.由Richard Sosis博士监督的Shaver（康涅狄格大学）将对人类合作行为和资源重新分配进行研究。人类为什么要放弃有用的资源，比如食物和物质财富，这一直是人类学家长期以来的兴趣所在。大量的研究已经检验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。拟议的研究旨在扩展这些实证研究结果，并检查一个经济体系中，公共宴会和再分配事件的贡献是常见的。具体而言，本研究将在斐济瓦努阿岛南部海岸的三个农村进行，对五种社会科学理论的解释能力进行评估，以解释为什么在传统社会中，个人会向集体池捐款，用于盛宴和再分配。将采用定量和定性方法，数据收集将包括：与再分配盛宴相关的资源转移、人口统计、生育率和家庭经济的定量数据，以及与盛宴相关的规范、村民的相对声望和他们接受其他村民社会援助的意愿的定性数据。 这项研究是重要的，因为它将提高我们对制度环境和人类合作行为之间的关系的理解。理解人类合作的动机以及制度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.