Does Market Integration Buffer Risk, Erode Traditional Sharing Practices and Increase Inequality? A Test among Bolivian Forager-Farmers

Abstract

Sharing and exchange are common practices for minimizing food insecurity in rural populations. The advent of markets and monetization in egalitarian indigenous populations presents an alternative means of managing risk, with the potential impact of eroding traditional networks. We test whether market involvement buffers several types of risk and reduces traditional sharing behavior among Tsimane Amerindians of the Bolivian Amazon. Results vary based on type of market integration and scale of analysis (household vs. village), consistent with the notion that local culture and ecology shape risk management strategies. Greater wealth and income were unassociated with the reliance on others for food, or on reciprocity, but wealth was associated with a greater proportion of food given to others (i.e., giving intensity) and a greater number of sharing partners (i.e., sharing breadth). Across villages, greater mean income was negatively associated with reciprocity, but economic inequality was positively associated with giving intensity and sharing breadth. Incipient market integration does not necessarily replace traditional buffering strategies but instead can often enhance social capital.

Growth references for Tsimane forager‐horticulturalists of the Bolivian Amazon

“…Thus, there are reasons to both hypothesis that Amazonians will differ in genetic potentials for height, and to suspect that such differences might be less than is observed in some African populations. The good news is that even if we cannot answer this question with direct genetic evidence, a natural experiment is currently underway which will answer this question within a few decades; Tsimane and other Amazonian populations are rapidly market integrating and gaining access to market goods and health care (Blackwell et al, 2009; Gurven et al, 2015; Urlacher et al, 2016b). While it may take a few generations to have a definitive answer, if Tsimane do differ genetically from other populations we should see relatively modest secular changes in height, regardless of economic development.…”

Wealth, fertility and adaptive behaviour in industrial populations

“…Examinations of wealth and fertility in industrial settings might therefore benefit from drawing on those models that deal more specifically with risk and uncertainty (within both human behavioural ecology [102][103][104] and the social sciences [105,106]). The idea that people work towards ensuring their security also grants them greater agency than an 'unconsidered' or unconscious desire for material wealth, particularly in traditional societies where the idea of fertility as largely under physiological control seems to deny any capacity for foresight or planning (which would be at odds with human activity in other domains; see also [107]).…”

Multiplex social ecological network analysis reveals how social changes affect community robustness more than resource depletion

“…Embedded social relations have been termed the "capital of the poor" (11) as they allow flexible access to resources in times of stress and rapid change (12-16). Yet inequities can emerge as cooperative institutions are stressed (17, 18) and effects of specific exposures on people, social relations, and landscapes are uncertain (3,4,19).The indigenous Alaskan communities considered here represent two ethno-linguistic groups occupying distinct ecological zones with differential access to marine and terrestrial resources: coastal Iñupiat and interior Athabascan Gwich'in (SI Appendix, Fig. 1).…”

“…lobally, while millions of people combine subsistenceand market-based activities for their livelihoods, they are increasingly exposed to substantial perturbations from both climate change and globalization (1)(2)(3)(4). Mixed subsistence-cash economies are characterized by strong human-landscape connections, in which social relations facilitate flows of food and other resources among households (5).…”

“…Embedded social relations have been termed the "capital of the poor" (11) as they allow flexible access to resources in times of stress and rapid change (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)). Yet inequities can emerge as cooperative institutions are stressed (17,18) and effects of specific exposures on people, social relations, and landscapes are uncertain (3,4,19).…”