Status determinants, social incongruity and economic transition: Gender, relative material wealth and heterogeneity in the cultural lifestyle of forager-horticulturalists.

Alan Frank Schultz

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0220432

Abstract

For small-scale societies, transitions from self-sufficiency to cash-based labor in market economies have been associated with the exacerbation of existing, and the emergence of new, social incongruities. Social incongruity occurs when two or more of a person’s status determinants (e.g. age, gender, wealth) conflict, resulting in reduced social status. A central focus of theory and research on social incongruity is the relationship between the cultural prototype of what is needed to live a good life–or lifestyle–and status determinants. Assessment of status determinants is challenging because of their relative nature at multiple levels of analysis. This study uses theory and methods from cognitive anthropology to investigate whether and how individual knowledge of a cultural lifestyle prototype conflicts with status determinants at two levels of economic transition among 101 adults from a small-scale society of forager-horticulturalists in Bolivian Amazonia, the Tsimane’. Results support cultural consensus in a 38-item model labeled market lifestyle (explaining 72.7% of sample variance). While the model includes both overlapping traditional (e.g. weaving) and market-related (e.g. education) items and behaviors, most market alternatives were rated higher. When market lifestyle was tested for social incongruity against other status determinants, only gender predicted variation. Thematically, when lifestyle was stratified by gender, men rated several items of relational wealth higher than women did. Analysis of model residual agreement revealed heterogeneity in the form of a syncretic lifestyle model (explaining 18.2% of additional variance). Participants whose knowledge better matched syncretic lifestyle rated traditional items and market alternatives closer to parity. Agreement with the syncretic model correlated with lower material wealth and less market integration. In sum, the findings document a modern, market-oriented form of Tsimane’ lifestyle that varies ontologically from past modelling and ethnographic accounts in preferred forms of livelihood and wealth.

Highlights

Research on economic transitions has long recognized that the process influences, and is influenced by, several cultural domains including family life, social support, material consumption and lifestyle [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The existing social order is disrupted as the hierarchy of determinants that contribute to social status is rearranged [10,11]
The results provide a wealth of information on the modern prototype of what respondents deemed necessary for a good life, including a consensus answer key produced with consensus analysis that can be used to compare the relative necessity of each item in the model

Summary

Introduction

Research on economic transitions has long recognized that the process influences, and is influenced by, several cultural domains including family life, social support, material consumption and lifestyle [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Cultural changes due to economic transition can be especially profound during early-stage market integration, wherein a self-sufficient, small-scale society merges with a cash-based market system [7,8] These wide-ranging effects include alteration to shared concepts of wealth and value [9] through the “commodification of labor, capital, land, and goods and services [that leads to] individuals producing for the market and consuming from the market” (p.594). When faced with early-stage market integration in situ (i.e. in place) members of self-sufficient, small-scale societies cope with these changes by collectively drawing on their existing culture This includes expectations for social hierarchy and wealth distribution, which depending on the group, can range from near-egalitarianism to extreme forms of hierarchical elitism [12]. New evidence helps to narrow future directions for research and policy but many questions remain

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Conclusion