Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Causes and Effects of Costly Religious Practices

博士生埃莉诺·a·鲍尔（Eleanor A. Power）将在斯坦福大学丽贝卡·布莱吉·伯德（Rebecca Bliege Bird）博士的指导下，对公共仪式的制定所产生的社会后果进行研究。进化人类学家认为，个人有动机进行这样的仪式，尤其是昂贵的仪式，因为它们为行动者提供了社会资本。这些学者假设，信徒通过戏剧性的奉献表现、获得声誉和培养与共同参与者的人际关系来区分自己。该项目将通过定量数据收集和定性参与观察的结合，为这些假设提供首批实证评估之一。这项研究将在印度泰米尔纳德邦Sivagangai区的一个农村社区进行。选址是合适的，因为那里的仪式需要特别明确的成本，这将突出正在研究的理论问题。在这些仪式中，信徒们举着火罐进行漫长的游行，用钩子和长矛刺穿他们的皮肤，当他们突然被神附身时，痛苦地扭曲他们的身体。村民参与公共仪式的详细记录将与个人声誉和群体层面的社会凝聚力指标相结合，以确定参与公共仪式的性质是否以积极的方式影响一个人的声誉和社会资本。研究者将采用社会网络分析来列举仪式实践的社会后果，包括个人在社会资本方面的收益和更大的结构性后果。这个项目试图分析宗教活动的一些社会原因和影响。虽然数据将在一个特定的南印度村庄收集，但提议的参与仪式的动机和后果是一般的：声誉收益，加强人际关系和社会凝聚力并不局限于这个村庄。因此，这个项目将产生一系列关于公共仪式表演的性质和可变性如何与社会地位和社会结构相关的一般性主张。该项目将与进化人类学家、认知科学家、进化心理学家、社会学家和经济学家之间正在进行的关于宗教在社会中的作用的辩论有关。支持这项研究也支持了对社会科学家的教育。

Doctoral student, Eleanor A. Power, supervised by Dr. Rebecca Bliege Bird (Stanford University), will undertake research on the social consequences that stem from the enactment of public rituals. Evolutionary anthropologists argue that individuals are motivated to perform such rituals, especially costly ones, because they provide actors with social capital. These scholars hypothesize that devotees distinguish themselves through dramatic displays of devotion, gaining reputation and fostering interpersonal bonds with co-participants. This project will provide one of the first empirical evaluations of these hypotheses through a combination of quantitative data collection and qualitative participant observation. The research will be carried out in a rural community in Sivagangai District, Tamil Nadu, India. The site is appropriate because rituals there entail particularly clear costs, which will highlight the theoretical issues being investigated. In these rituals, devotees carry firepots in lengthy processions, pierce their skin with hooks and spears, and painfully contort their bodies when suddenly possessed by a deity. Detailed records of villagers' participation in public rituals will be coupled with metrics of individual reputation and group-level social cohesion to determine if the nature of participation in public rituals influences one's reputation and one's social capital in positive ways. The researcher will employ social network analysis to enumerate the social consequences of ritual practice, both in terms of individual gains in social capital and in terms of larger structural consequences. This project seeks to parse out some of the social causes and effects of religious practice. While the data will be collected in a particular South Indian village, the proposed motivations for and consequences of ritual participation are meant to be general: reputational gains, strengthened interpersonal bonds, and social cohesion are not particular to this one village. Thus this project will result in a set of general claims about how the nature and variability of public ritual performance are related to social position and social structure. The project will have relevance for the ongoing debates among evolutionary anthropologists, cognitive scientists, evolutionary psychologists, sociologists, and economists about the function of religion in society. Supporting this research also supports the education of a social scientist.