HNDS-R: Network Formation and Function Within and Between Cultural Groups

该项目研究不同文化群体之间社会关系的发展以及人们如何利用这些关系。随着世界各地的人口面临越来越大的气候变化压力，环境灾难、当地资源枯竭和群体间冲突的风险也在增加。然而，社会关系可以提供日常生存的资源，如食物，金钱和物质援助。在压力时期，跨群体的社会关系可能特别重要，因为它们提供了获得当地无法获得的关键资源的途径。一个人所拥有的社会关系是由一个人所属的群体（如他们的家庭或邻居）和他们的个人特征（如他们的年龄或性别）以及他们与他人的关系所塑造的。为了更好地了解群体间关系的发展和功能，本项目研究了两个相邻但文化不同的人群中的友谊和社会支持的多层次网络。该项目收集关于这些网络如何随着时间的推移而发展和演变的数据。它还收集有关个人特征的数据，如年龄，性别和地位，以了解个人特征如何塑造社会关系。该项目汇集了人类学、网络科学和社会学的理论和数据，使用网络模型来确定鼓励这两个群体之间关系的因素，包括在资源有限的情况下促进恢复力的因素。该项目使用最先进的基于模拟的方法来分析个人和群体层面的数据，结合多个数据源来了解网络结构以及个人和群体特征如何与关系建立机制相关。在这样做的过程中，这项工作告诉我们，个人如何建立和利用关系，提供获得支持资源内外的社区。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

This project studies the development of social relationships between culturally distinct groups and how people use those relationships. As populations around the world face growing pressure from climate change, the risk of environmental catastrophe, depletion of local resources, and conflict between groups increases. Yet, social relationships can supply resources for day-to-day survival, such as food, money, and physical assistance. Social relationships that cross groups may be especially important in times of stress because they provide access to crucial resources that cannot be obtained locally. The social relationships a person has are shaped by the groups a person belongs to, such as their household or neighborhood, and by their personal characteristics such as their age or gender, as well as the relationships they have with others. To better understand how between-group relationships develop and function, this project studies multilevel networks of friendship and social support in two adjacent but culturally distinct populations. The project collects data on how these networks develop and evolve over time. It also collects data on individual characteristics, such as age, gender, and status to understand how personal characteristics shape social relationships. Bringing together theory and data from anthropology, network science, and sociology, this project uses network models to identify the factors that encourage relationships between these two populations, including factors that promote resilience in the face of limited resources. The project uses state-of-the-art simulation-based methods to analyze data at the level of individuals and at the level of groups, combining several sources of data to learn about how network structure and individual and group characteristics are related to the mechanisms of relationship-building. In doing so, this work tells us how individuals build and leverage relationships that provide access to supportive resources within and beyond their communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.