Monique Borgerhoff Mulder - University of California-Davis
Inequality: Cooperation, Kinship and Witchcraft in Mpimbwe, Tanzania
Date: 04/18/2013 (Thu)
Time: 3:30pm- 5:00pm
Location: Seminar will be held on-site: Social-Sciences 139
Organizer: Jenny Tung
Meeting Schedule: Login or email the organizer to schedule a meeting.
All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.
8:30am - Breakfast: Noah Snyder-Mackler, Victor Wang, Salomon Israel, Lauren Brent
9:30am - Jacob Moorad
10:00am - Seth Sanders
10:30am - OPEN
11:00am - Anne Pusey
11:30am - Chris Krupenye
12:00pm - Lunch (Faculty commons): Leslie Digby, Susan Alberts, Anne Pusey, Robert Seyfarth
1:00pm - Meet w/ DuPRI Students: Maria Laurito, Greg Callanan
1:45pm - Jenny Tung
2:15pm - Ian Gilby
2:45pm - Amar Hamoudi
3:15pm - Seminar Prep (139 Soc-Sci)
3:30pm - Seminar Presentation (3:30pm to 5:00pm)
6:30pm - Dinner (TBD, 3 - 4 people): Jenny Tung, Christine Drea
8:30am - breakfast (Giovanna Merli)
Additional Comments: ABSTRACT: While the causes, transmission and consequences of material and social inequality are well studied in the social sciences, the ways in which people respond to inequality are less clear. As evolutionary social scientists we know that humans show a strong aversion to inequality, but we have little understanding of how individuals respond behaviourally to disparities in material, social and relational wealth. In this talk I present data from the Pimbwe, a Bantu forager-horticulturalist population in Tanzania undergoing rapid social change and escalating material inequality, to show how both witchcraft accusations and social networks of exchange are patterned by wealth differences. Specifically cooperation among unrelated and related individuals is least pronounced amongst the wealthiest individuals. This observation is used to start theorizing how inequities might favor or disfavour cooperation. A better understanding of such dynamics is important, given the escalating levels of inequality worldwide, consequential on the neoliberal policies associated with globalization.