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We investigated the coupled social and ecological dynamics of swidden agriculture through a common property resource field experiment framed as a game with realistic social norms and ecological dynamics. We tested the hypothesis that community social norms related to labor reciprocity and graduated sanctioning may encourage sustainable swidden cultivation. We played the game with 150 people from two Q’eqchi’ Maya villages in southern Belize where swidden agriculture is common. We found that when the game mimics local social norms related to agricultural labor exchange, clearing requests decrease and a statistical analysis indicates that players sanctioned one another in order to decrease resource use and increase sustainability. We validated our results using qualitative methods, post-game surveys, and interviews, and we conclude that cultural and social norms related to labor exchange improve the sustainability of swidden agriculture.

BACKGROUND Although anthropogenic climate change poses existential challenges for Indigenous communities in the Arctic, these challenges are not entirely unprecedented. Over many generations, Arctic peoples have developed a wide range of behavioral strategies to navigate environmental change and uncertainty, and these strategies provide a foundation for contemporary adaptation. AIMS In this article, we focus on mixed cash-subsistence economies and the social networks that underlie them in Alaska. The patterns of food production, labor exchange, and food sharing in subsistence-oriented communities throughout Alaska are driven by the productivity of keystone households who regularly harvest and share resources within and between communities. MATERIALS & METHODS Building on previous research suggesting the critical importance of these networks to community resilience, we use network analysis to investigate whether patterns in resource transfers between households are associated with subsistence harvest diversity-the diversity of species harvested by a household unit. We use exponential random graph models to describe the structure of a sharing network from Aniak, Alaska, and model the links between harvest productivity, harvest diversity, and household position in this network. RESULTS Our results indicate that both productivity and diversity are positively associated with network connections, and that productivity alone provides an incomplete model of network structure. DISCUSSION We suggest that subsistence harvest diversity may play a unique role in supporting adaptive capacity and resilience by maintaining the productivity of keystone households despite changing environments and sustaining social network structures that circulate resources throughout the community. Harvest diversity may also serve as a broad indicator of Indigenous ecological knowledge and a tangible representation of cultural practices, values, and worldviews that underlie subsistence in Alaska. CONCLUSION Greater attention to harvest diversity is important for understanding how subsistence networks adapt to environmental change and uncertainty linked to social and ecological dynamics of anthropogenic climate change.

Protected areas positively affect several aspects of human well-being across the developing world., Protected areas (PAs) are fundamental for biodiversity conservation, yet their impacts on nearby residents are contested. We synthesized environmental and socioeconomic conditions of >87,000 children in >60,000 households situated either near or far from >600 PAs within 34 developing countries. We used quasi-experimental hierarchical regression to isolate the impact of living near a PA on several aspects of human well-being. Households near PAs with tourism also had higher wealth levels (by 17%) and a lower likelihood of poverty (by 16%) than similar households living far from PAs. Children under 5 years old living near multiple-use PAs with tourism also had higher height-for-age scores (by 10%) and were less likely to be stunted (by 13%) than similar children living far from PAs. For the largest and most comprehensive socioeconomic-environmental dataset yet assembled, we found no evidence of negative PA impacts and consistent statistical evidence to suggest PAs can positively affect human well-being.

Indigenous salmon fishers and reindeer herders living in villages on the Kamchatka peninsula in Northeast Siberia are reshaping Soviet era collective institutions in order to sustain traditional subsistence activities and secure access to common-pool resources. Following the collapse of the Soviet economy, many collectives have been privatized or liquidated, while others struggle on as government enterprises. These post-Soviet institutions coexist with “neotraditional” obshchina collectives formed from indigenous social movements. The institutional diversity emerging among contemporary collectives provides a unique opportunity to understand the role institutions play in mediating between individual interests and collective action. Drawing on research that identifies design principles of successful institutions, I assess the status of post-Soviet collectives in Kamchatka. Informed by the ways institutions and individual subjectivities are situated within social and ecological contexts, I explore how legaci...

The April/May 2015 Nepal earthquakes and aftershocks had catastrophic impacts on rural households living in biophysical extremes. Recoveries from natural hazards that become disasters have tangible and intangible short- and long-term dynamics, which require linked quantitative and qualitative methods to understand. With these premises in mind, we randomly selected 400 households in two accessible and two inaccessible settlements across two of the highest impacted districts to assess variation in household and settlement recoveries through tangible impacts to infrastructure and livelihood and intangible impacts to place attachment and mental well-being. We conducted household surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups over two ten-week intervals at 9 months and 1.5 years after the earthquakes and returned at 2.5 years to share and contextualize results. Previously, we used non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination to illustrate associations among recovery indicators, demographics, and adaptive capacity domains composed of multiple variables. Results indicated that socio-economic status, hazard exposure, livelihood, and displacement influenced recovery outcomes the most. Here, we triangulate and broaden those findings with 797 surveys, 40 interviews, eight focus groups, and eight research return workshops to illustrate the tangible and intangible dynamics of short-term recoveries through three interconnected and multi-faceted thematic sections: 1) inequality; 2) hazards, livelihood, and displacement; and 3) place, uncertainty, and mental well-being. Our contributions include: 1) providing a linked quantitative and qualitative dataset with a random sample collected at two short-term post-disaster time intervals; 2) illustrating how inequalities shape tangible and intangible recovery dynamics; and 3) documenting linkages between recovery and nascent transformations.

Natural disaster recovery is multidimensional and takes time depending on vulnerabilities. Change occurs as households embedded within integrated social and environmental systems adapt or transform. We focus on the April/May 2015 Nepal earthquakes to understand rural natural disaster recovery. We conducted household surveys on critical earthquake impacts and recovery trajectories with 400 randomly selected households in four clusters of settlements in two districts with catastrophic impacts to all houses and infrastructure. To track rapid change in the short-term, we completed surveys at two intervals—approximately 9 months and 1.5 years. Using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordination, our analysis explores relationships among critical recovery indicators, households, and clusters of settlements. Disaster recovery for these rural mountain households and settlements was spatially and culturally heterogenous, context specific, and changing over time, for better and worse. First, households dependent on place-based agropastoral livelihoods had more challenges recovering compared to households with more diverse market-based livelihoods. Second, the experiences of households in displacement camps were distinct from non-displaced households. Third, accessibility was a determining factor in recovery but not consistently. Fourth, households in the planned dam inundation zone were stagnant waiting for relocation. We presented results to research participants and stakeholders 2.5 years after the earthquakes in a series of research return workshops, which linked the results of our quantitative analysis with study participant experiences and perspectives. Our research contributes to the disaster and development aid literature in four ways by: 1) providing a unique dataset with a random sample over two time intervals collected immediately following a natural disaster; 2) offering a methodology that documents and analyzes recovery as a multidimensional phenomenon; 3) empirically illustrating linear and non-linear disaster recovery dynamics; and 4) capturing the complexity of variation at the household and settlement levels while also identifying patterns that resonate on the ground.

China is home to nearly half of the world’s 50,000 large dams, which provide irrigation, flood protection, and hydroelectricity. Most of these projects involve substantial population displacement, which can disrupt social capital, the webs of interdependence and support that community members maintain with one another through relationships of trust and reciprocity. We use new empirical evidence to examine the association between dam-induced displacement and social capital in China and interpret our findings in the context of social–ecological resilience theory. Our focus is on agricultural households on the Upper Mekong River, where four large hydropower dams have been constructed over the past twenty years. Our broad finding is that resettlement is associated with diminished social capital, as measured by two key indicators: inter-household exchange of financial resources, and inter-household exchange of agricultural labor. These effects differ across the four dam sites in the study based on local economic conditions and changes in resettlement policy. We find that population resettlement is associated with markedly lower levels of agricultural labor exchange. In an economically under-developed setting, this reduces the depth and breadth of social support that agricultural households rely on to produce crops for subsistence and income. This in turn diminishes social–ecological resilience because social capital is a key factor that helps agricultural or resource-dependent communities manage risk and adapt to changes and stressors. We consider the policy implications of our findings in the context of scientific and industry efforts to minimize social harm, promote economic vitality, and improve the sustainability of hydropower as a form of renewable energy.

The increasing availability of data and improved analytical techniques now enable better understanding of where environmental conditions and human health are tightly linked, and where investing in nature can deliver net benefits for people—especially with respect to the most vulnerable populations in developing countries. These advances bring more opportunities for interventions that can advance multiple SDGs at once. We have harmonised a suite of global datasets to explore the essential nexus of forests, poverty, and human health, an overlap of SDG numbers 1, 2, 3, 6, and 15. Our study combined demographic and health surveys for 297 112 children in 35 developing countries with data describing the local environmental conditions for each child (appendix).4 This allowed us to estimate the effect forests might have in supporting human health, while controlling for the influence of important socio-economic differences.4 We extended this work to look at how forests affect three childhood health concerns of global significance for the world's poorest people: stunting, anaemia, and diarrhoeal disease.

Economic game experiments have become a prominent method among social scientists developing and testing theories of cooperation. These games provide a valuable opportunity to generate measures of cooperation that can be compared from one place to the next, yet challenges remain in how to interpret cross-cultural differences in these experiments and connect them to cooperation in naturally occurring contexts. I address these challenges by examining framing effects in public goods games (PGGs) with salmon fishers and reindeer herders in Kamchatka, Russia. Combining standard versions of the game with versions that refer to post-Soviet institutions coordinating fishing and herding, I show that (1) average contributions in the PGG in Kamchatka are substantially higher than reported elsewhere and (2) framing the PGG alters the relationship between contributions and expectations, shifting strategies away from unconditional generosity and toward conditional cooperation. My analysis, by synthesizing quantitative a...

Following the dramatic transformations of Soviet collectivization and the ongoing transition to post-Soviet markets, institutions, and regulatory regimes, salmon fisheries of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East have become a vulnerable natural and economic resource. Although government authorities and environmentalists working in Kamchatka recognize salmon as an important part of local indigenous people's lives and cultural identities, the formal system for managing salmon fisheries does not directly address the vulnerability of cultural resources tied to salmon. In the mixed economy of rural villages, salmon fishing not only produces food that meets economic needs, it also generates cultural value. I examine how cultural resources are created as people harvest salmon, circulate it within their communities, and construct common identities from this work. Focusing on the obshchina, an institution that has emerged in the post-Soviet era to coordinate salmon fishing and other traditional economic activities, I explore dilemmas that arise as people strive to preserve the economic and cultural value of salmon while ensuring that their ways of life develop and remain viable in changing and challenging environments.

To explore the ability of audience effects to shed light on social dynamics, the authors contrasted responses given in individual and joint interviews. Interviews were conducted among the English-speaking residents of Utila, one of Honduras’s Bay Islands. Interviewees were older adults with at least one living adult child and younger adults with at least one living parent. Interviews were conducted with individuals alone and with pairs consisting of older adults and their adult children. The topic of the interviews was parenting, but the authors’ particular interest was in a question regarding obligations children have to their elderly parents. Responses to that question and to a control question were coded for length, interviewer behavior, vocalics, and forceful-ness of communicative style. Audience effects were found in children’s responses to the question about obligations to elderly parents: Children interviewed with parents responded more forcefully to that question than children interviewed alone. Responses to the control question showed no audience effect. Involvement in the island’s remittance economy was also associated with a more forceful communicative style, but this effect was not contingent on the audience present or the question asked. Audience effects may be a useful and important new tool for ethnographic research.

In foraging and other productive activities, individuals make choices regarding whether and with whom to cooperate, and in what capacities. The size and composition of cooperative groups can be understood as a self-organized outcome of these choices, which are made under local ecological and social constraints. This article describes a theoretical framework for explaining the size and composition of foraging groups based on three principles: (i) the sexual division of labour; (ii) the intergenerational division of labour; and (iii) economies of scale in production. We test predictions from the theory with data from two field contexts: Tsimane' game hunters of lowland Bolivia, and Jenu Kuruba honey collectors of South India. In each case, we estimate the impacts of group size and individual group members' effort on group success. We characterize differences in the skill requirements of different foraging activities and show that individuals participate more frequently in activities in which they are more efficient. We evaluate returns to scale across different resource types and observe higher returns at larger group sizes in foraging activities (such as hunting large game) that benefit from coordinated and complementary roles. These results inform us that the foraging group size and composition are guided by the motivated choice of individuals on the basis of relative efficiency, benefits of cooperation, opportunity costs and other social considerations.

Living with Koryak traditions: playing with culture in Siberia, by Alexander D. King, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2011, 348 pp., 23 illustrations, 2 maps, 1 glossary, US$35.00 (paper...

This article introduces core concepts and theories in the evolution of kinship and reviews empirical research that applies these perspectives to understand individual physiology, behavior, and social structure. After presenting theoretical definitions and methods used to measure genetic relatedness, the article reviews the mechanisms individuals use to recognize one another as kin. Research on inclusive fitness and kin selection demonstrates how relatedness between individuals affects individual actions and social interactions. This work establishes connections between the evolution of kinship and research on multilevel selection and major transitions in the evolution of complexity. A brief review suggests how the unique features of human kinship can illustrate the interactions between evolution, culture, and multiple pathways of inheritance.

This article highlights the ways in which social anthropology and evolutionary biology converge and complement each other. This is made easier by recognizing that each discipline focuses on different but related phenomena. The evolutionary biology of kinship is about the behaviour of organisms towards their kin and the evolved psychology underlying such behaviour. The anthropology of kinship is about the socially transmitted information — in a word, culture — in which behaviour towards kin is embedded. While evolutionary biologists document and analyse nepotistic behaviour, social anthropologists seek to understand and interpret the language, values, and symbols that often distinguish the collective behavioural patterns of one society from another. The evolutionary biologist's position follows logically from the fact that most organisms cannot talk. When dealing with organisms that do have language, this position needs to be supplemented by the anthropological focus on kinship terminology, descent, and alliance.

Smaldino argues that evolutionary theories of social behavior do not adequately explain the emergence of group-level traits, including differentiation of roles and organized interactions among individuals. We find Smaldino's account to be commendable but incomplete. Our commentary focuses on a simple question that has not been adequately addressed: What is a group?

We suggest that there are two coordination games when it comes to understanding kin terminology. Jones' article focuses on the linguistic coordination inherent in developing meaningful kin terminologies, alluding briefly to the benefits of these kin terminologies for coordination in other domains. We enhance Jones' discussion by tracing the links between the structure of kin terminologies and their functions.