Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Tourism and Changing Paternal Investment among the Matrilineal Na

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

Graduate student Siobhan Mattison, supervised by Dr. Eric Alden Smith, will conduct research on kinship and paternal investment among the matrilineal Na of Southewest China. Heretofore, the Na, China's last existing matrilineal population,have been portrayed as a society without fathers or husbands. It has been claimed that men emphasize their roles as uncles and brothers and therefore take greater care of their sisters' children than of their own. However, Chinese tourists' fascination with this unusual social system has affected the Na's economy and increased exposure to Han (majority) Chinese values. This may be one reason that recent evidence suggests that now Na fathers do indeed provide care and financial support for their biological children. The researcher will use the evolutionary thoretical framework of human behavioral ecology to examine the relationship between individual Na parenting decisions and changing descent systems. She will conduct household censuses and do ethnographic surveys of two different Na communities, one with strong exposure to tourism and the other without. She also will employ systematic behavior observation techniques, such as focal follows, to systematically and quantiatatively evaluate male investment in their offspring. Her data will allow her test seven hypotheses about the causes and consequences of variability in paternal care, including whether the emergence of a market economy, in the form of income from ethnic tourism, affects the distribution of resources by, and partnering preferences of, Na men. The research is important because it is one of the first quantitative analyses of how individual-level attributes interact with local markets to affect kinship and family practices. This research will inform debates about the nature of human family composition by clarifying the roles of social and economic factors in reproductive and parenting decisions. The findings also will help resolve controversies about Na social organization. The research also will contribute significantly to the education of a social scientist.