Social returns of local knowledge in child health and forest conservation: A study in a native Amazonian population of Bolivia

纵观我们的进化史，人类一直在利用当地对植物的了解来保护自己的健康。人类学家早就认识到测试地方知识的适应性优势的重要性，但测量地方知识的个体文化内差异的方法有限，阻碍了他们的工作。此外，人类学家强调个人知识如何使掌握知识的个人受益，而不是个人知识如何使他人受益。最近文化人类学对文化共识和文化和谐方法的发展和完善为研究人员提供了填补空白的工具。在这个项目中，研究人员将在玻利维亚的土著亚马逊人口Tsimane中进行，研究人员建议使用这些新方法来量化父母对用于治疗2-15岁儿童疾病（贫血、感染、寄生虫和身体发育）的药用植物的知识。研究人员将估计父母对药用植物的了解对父母自己的孩子和邻居的孩子的客观儿童健康的影响。他们假设父母的知识会保护自己孩子的健康，也会产生积极的好处，因为自己的孩子有更好的健康状况，从而给家庭以外的其他孩子带来好处。该研究的具体目的是：(a)提出一种理论和假设，说明当地药用植物知识如何以及为什么使拥有该知识的人以外的其他人受益，包括父母自己的孩子和邻居家庭的孩子。(b)使用工具变量技术，对当地知识对儿童健康的影响进行无偏估计。(c)为其他人创建一个公共使用的数据集，以检验超出本文所讨论的假设。(d)训练两名文化人类学博士研究生学习收集社会文化和生物数据的正式方法。研究将持续三年（2006-2008年），并将在距离集镇不同距离的村庄进行。研究小组包括文化和生物人类学家，他们自1999年以来一直与提斯曼人一起工作。经济学家和发展组织对理解文化影响幸福基本指标的程度和途径表现出潜在但日益增长的兴趣。该项目的结果改进了对文化的一个方面的益处的评估：分享当地知识。

Throughout our evolutionary history, humans have used local knowledge of plants to protect their health. Anthropologists have long recognized the importance of testing the adaptive advantages of local knowledge, but they have been hampered by limited methods for measuring individual intra-cultural variation of local knowledge. Furthermore, anthropologists have stressed how individual knowledge benefits the individual holding the knowledge more than how individual knowledge benefits others. The recent development and refinement of cultural consensus and cultural consonance methods from cultural anthropology provides researchers with the tools to fill the gaps.In this project, to be carried out among the Tsimane, a native Amazonian population in Bolivia, researchers propose to use these new methods to quantify parental knowledge of medical plants used to treat illnesses (anemia, infection, parasite, and physical growth) of children 2-15 years old. Researchers will estimate the effect of parental knowledge of medicinal plants on the objective child health of the parents' own children and their neighbor's children. They hypothesize that parental knowledge will protect the health of their own children, and also produce positive benefits that accrue to other children outside of the family because one's own children have better health. The specific aims of the research are to (a) Present a theory and hypotheses about how and why local knowledge of medicinal plants benefits others beyond the person holding the knowledge, including parent's own children and children in neighboring households. (b) Use instrumental-variable techniques to get unbiased estimates of the effect of local knowledge on child health. (c) Create a public-use data set for others to test hypotheses beyond the ones examine here. (d) Train two PhD students in cultural anthropology in formal methods of collecting socio-cultural and biological data.Research will last three years (2006-2008) and will take place in villages at varying distances from a market town. The research team includes cultural and biological anthropologists that has been working together with the Tsimane' since 1999. Economists and development organizations have shown a latent but increasing interest in understanding the magnitude and paths through which culture affects basic indicators of well-being. The results from this project improve assessment of the benefits of one aspect of culture: shared local knowledge.