Dissertation Improvement Grant: Gender and Social Power among the Napo Runa of the Ecuadorian Amazon

Washington State University, Pullman WA

Investigators

Abstract

Graduate student Kerensa L. Allison, supervised by Dr. John H. Bodley, will study the influence of concentrated economic wealth on gender roles, perceptions, and control over household resources in a small-scale agricultural community in Napo Province, Ecuador. Methods are designed to assess how wealth is perceived and distributed in order to compare resource concentration and social and gender stratification within and among households. This study is important because as small-scale indigenous communities become more incorporated into the national socioeconomic system, men seem to benefit more from national development policies and job opportunities. Much research suggests this is a natural and inevitable decline in economic and social status for women leading to unequal access to resources. In societies where resource management decisions have been traditionally complementary between men and women within the household and collaborative within the community, concentrations of economic wealth may result in fewer people making the majority of resource management decisions, decreases in household innovation, breakdowns in community social networks, and loss of traditional ecological knowledge. These changes may collectively make the socio-ecological system less resilient. The researcher will use both quantitative and qualitative data to explore existing and developing concentrations of economic wealth, which may influence resource management decisions and traditional gender relations at the household and community level. She will conduct a community wealth census, do participant observation, determine variability in ecological and agricultural knowledge, have adults keep work diaries to determine time allocation, and employ cognitive research techniques such as free listing and pile sorts. This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge addressing socio-cultural change in indigenous communities in relation to market-integration and socio-economic stratification with specific emphasis on gender influences and power. This has important implications for indigenous resource management decision-makers in this region and the wider international community interested in sustainable resource management and the preservation of biodiversity. The research also will contribute significantly to the education of a graduate student.