Socioecological System Dynamics and the Emergence of Inequality

该奖项是作为NSF的社会，行为和经济科学博士后奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界，工业或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF的奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。NSF致力于促进来自科学界各部门的科学家，包括来自代表性不足的群体的科学家参与其研究计划和活动;博士后期间被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的重要水平。每个博士后研究员必须解决推进各自学科领域的重要科学问题。西蒙布鲁尔在犹他州的大学的赞助下，这个博士后奖学金支持早期职业科学家调查的环境和社会的相互作用，推动在北美西部山区之间的物质不平等。该项目将帮助开发一个联合地理学和人类学研究计划，评估环境变化和人类经济决策如何相互影响，从而影响人类之间的资源不平等。这里研究了两个长期存在的关键社会科学问题：1）物质不平等的驱动因素最具影响力; 2）鉴于不平等是一个复杂的系统，我们如何有效地评估驱动因素在空间和时间上的重要性。提出这些问题有助于我们了解不平等的严重程度，并预测它在未来可能如何变化。通过应用新技术，以现有理论为基础，将考古和古环境数据联系起来，这项研究将提供新的、可复制的方法，以了解可能在世界各地应用并用于未来预测的不平等原因的相对重要性。虽然不平等是多原因的，但许多研究将经济集约化、付出更大努力从同一空间区域获得更多回报以及私有化与不平等加剧联系起来。然而，集约化和私有化本身是多原因的，受到环境和人口规模之间相互作用的影响。通过实施一系列新的子模型内的近似贝叶斯计算（ABC）模拟方法，本研究解决了这些复杂性，通过生成定量的，实证的评估如何环境变化和生产力，人口密度，生计经济集约化（SEI）的相互作用，和私有化的影响出现的物质不平等的动态系统。至关重要的是，这项工作将估计哪些原因对不平等影响最大，为未来的研究提供指导。该项目采用四个案例研究，还产生了关于北美西部山区内部不平等、SEI和私有化范围的新的交叉比较数据。这些新数据将免费提供给未来的研究人员，不仅能够促进不平等现象的研究，还能够促进领土、定居、冲突、饮食变化、环境变化的影响等方面的研究。此外，该项目将a）提供新的，可复制的，方法来理解环境和社会因素对SEI，私有化和不平等的影响，和B）推进方法，以推动不平等的研究超越目前的限制。这项研究还将培养一名高级定量分析和古环境建模的博士后研究员，进一步推动他对终身职位的追求。这项工作还将招募在STEM中代表性不足的学生，提供数据收集和分析培训，介绍项目区的考古学和古气候，以及学生研究项目的机会。为了接触到更广泛的公众，项目成果将通过犹他州自然历史博物馆（NHMU）通过演示和互动的聚光灯计划中的科学家分享，并转化为NHMU的教学工具包。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Simon Brewer at the University of Utah, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the environmental and social interactions that drive material inequality in the inter-mountain west of North America. This project will help develop a joint geographical and anthropological research program evaluating how environmental change and human economic decisions influence each other to impact resource inequality among humans. Two key longstanding social science questions are investigated here: 1) what drivers of material inequality are most influential and 2) given that inequality is a complex system, how can we effectively evaluate the importance of drivers over space and time. Answering these questions helps inform us about how severe inequality came to be and predict how it may change in the future. By applying new techniques, informed by existing theory, linking archaeological and paleo-environmental data this research will provide new, replicable, approaches to understanding the relative importance of causes for inequality that may be applied around the world and used for future prediction. While inequality is multi-causal, much research has linked economic intensification, expending greater effort to obtain more returns from the same spatial area, and privatization with increasing inequality. However, intensification and privatization themselves are multi-causal, influenced by the interactions between the environment and human population size. Via implementation of a series of novel sub-models within an Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) simulation approach, this research addresses these complexities by generating quantitative, empirical evaluations of how the interactions of environmental change and productivity, population density, subsistence economy intensification (SEI), and privatization influence the emergence of material inequality within a dynamic system. Crucially, this work will estimate which causes have the greatest impact on inequality, providing guidance for future research. Employing four case studies, this project also generates new cross-comparative data on inequality, SEI, and the scope of privatization within the inter-mountain west of North America. This new data will be freely available to future researchers and capable of contributing to research on not only the emergence of inequality but also on territoriality, settlement, conflict, dietary change, the impacts of environmental change, and more. Further, this project will a) provision new, replicable, methods for understanding environmental and social factor influences on SEI, privatization, and inequality, and b) advance methods to push the study of inequality beyond current limitations. This research will also train one postdoctoral fellow in advanced quantitative analysis and paleoenvironmental modeling, furthering his pursuit of a tenure-track position. This work will also recruit students who are underrepresented in STEM to provide data collection and analysis training, introduction to the archaeology and paleoclimate of the project area, and opportunities for student research projects. To reach a broader public, project results will be shared through the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) via presentations and interactive Scientist in the Spotlight programs as well as turned into a teaching toolkit for the NHMU.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.