IBSS-Ex: Wealth, Wealth Inequality, and Marraige Systems

IBSS-Ex：财富、财富不平等和婚姻系统

• 批准号: 1329089
• 负责人: Samuel Bowles
• 金额: $ 24.92万
• 依托单位: Santa Fe Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1329089&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: IBSS; Ex; Wealth; Inequality; Marraige

This interdisciplinary research project focuses on relationships among wealth, wealth inequality, and polygyny in three population groups (farmers, horticulturalists, and foragers), with special emphasis given to addressing different marriage systems among different cultures. Distribution of different marriage systems has been a focus of anthropological investigation since the discipline's birth, with explanations drawing on sex ratio, women's economic contributions to production, social complexity, fraternal interest groups, available habitats for expansion, and parasite loads. Given the importance of marriage as an economic institution, economic explanations have come to prominence. These explanations show an interesting convergence with ideas developed by behavioral ecologists studying the distribution of polygyny in non-human species. It is widely thought that polygyny will be more common where material wealth is both more unequally held among men and more important to a population's production and reproduction. While this intuition explains why horticulturalists tend to be more polygynous than foragers, it results in a paradox, because farmers, among whom material wealth is both more important and more unequally distributed, are less polygynous than horticulturalists. The project will draw on insights from demography, anthropology, and economics. The researchers will combine ethnographic data with mathematical models of the interacting dynamics of family structure and wealth disparity. The major empirical component of this project entails estimating key model parameters using individual-level data from 13 small-scale populations. The analyses of data from these different sources will allow determination of the relative strengths of these joint effects of different factors and provide a test of possible resolutions of the polygyny paradox.This project will contribute to basic understanding of the dynamics of disparities in wealth and how they impact on the social structures. The resolution of the polygyny paradox has implications for general knowledge about interactions between wealth and family structure that extend beyond the small scale societies that the project will study. Project results may help address a range of factors that influence marriage dynamics in modern advanced societies, such as a tendency for higher divorce rates and more socially acceptable forms of polygyny, such as individuals having multiple spouses through a series of monogamous marriages over time. The project also will advance the methodological use of mathematical modeling, experimental techniques, and intensive analysis of individual level data to address the trade-off between the depth of an ethnographer's individual-level data and the power of cross-population comparisons. Broader impacts of this project will include facilitation of interdisciplinary research across economics, anthropology and evolutionary biology, special education and training opportunities for a post-doctoral researcher, and annual meetings to advance the use of advanced methodologies tested in this project among scholars in relevant fields. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.

这个跨学科的研究项目侧重于财富，财富不平等和一夫多妻制在三个人口群体（农民，园艺家和觅食者）之间的关系，特别强调解决不同文化之间的不同婚姻制度。 自人类学诞生以来，不同婚姻制度的分布一直是人类学研究的焦点，其解释包括性别比例、女性对生产的经济贡献、社会复杂性、兄弟利益集团、可供扩张的栖息地和寄生虫负载。 考虑到婚姻作为一种经济制度的重要性，经济学的解释就变得突出起来。 这些解释与行为生态学家在研究非人类物种中一夫多妻制分布时提出的观点有着有趣的一致性。 人们普遍认为，在物质财富在男性之间的分配更加不平等、对人口的生产和再生产更加重要的情况下，一夫多妻制将更加普遍。虽然这种直觉解释了为什么园艺家比采集者更倾向于一夫多妻制，但它导致了一个悖论，因为农民的物质财富比园艺家更重要，分配也更不平等，一夫多妻制比园艺家少。 该项目将借鉴人口学、人类学和经济学的见解。 研究人员将把联合收割机人种学数据与家庭结构和财富差距相互作用动态的数学模型结合起来。 该项目的主要经验组成部分需要使用来自13个小规模人口的个人数据估计关键模型参数。 对这些不同来源的数据进行分析，将有助于确定不同因素共同作用的相对强度，并检验一夫多妻制悖论的可能解决办法，该项目将有助于基本了解财富差距的动态及其对社会结构的影响。 一夫多妻制悖论的解决对财富和家庭结构之间的相互作用的一般知识具有影响，这些知识超出了该项目将研究的小规模社会。 项目成果可能有助于解决影响现代先进社会婚姻动态的一系列因素，如离婚率较高的趋势和社会更能接受的一夫多妻制形式，如个人通过一系列一夫一妻制婚姻拥有多个配偶。 该项目还将推进数学建模，实验技术和个人层面数据的密集分析的方法学使用，以解决民族志学者的个人层面数据的深度和跨人群比较的力量之间的权衡。 该项目的更广泛影响将包括促进跨经济学、人类学和进化生物学的跨学科研究，为博士后研究人员提供特殊教育和培训机会，以及举行年度会议，以推动在相关领域的学者中使用该项目中测试的先进方法。 该项目通过NSF跨学科行为和社会科学研究（IBSS）竞赛获得支持。