Biocultural perspectives on the role of youth in subsistence societies' responses to market intersections and changing economic conditions

University Of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN

Investigators

Abstract

Market economies create new job opportunities, technology, and trade practices to communities. These opportunities often involve changes to existing values, norms, and customs as opportunities challenge existing means of subsisting and interacting. These shifts are often attended by changes in wealth and health – some positive and some negative. Who stands to benefit from these changes in rapidly changing contexts is not well understood. In particular, although the differences in intergenerational beliefs in changing contexts has been well established, we know relatively little about how youth are situated as change-makers and what this means in terms of their health and well-being. This research provides new knowledge about the role of youth in changing values and in health outcomes as communities experience economic and social transitions. The research team investigates these dynamics in two neighboring societies with differing cultural practices to understand how social change and inequality relate to health in settings differing according to attitudes toward and acceptance of inequality. The project supports and trains undergraduate researchers in the scientific method and in laboratory skills related to human biology. It also supports and provides STEM learning camps for middle school children from disadvantaged backgrounds to help increase STEM participation for underrepresented groups. This project investigates youth values, behaviors, and stress-related biology in neighboring communities varying in the extent to which they condone inequality and in experiences of market integration. The research team will collect data from 600 youth and adults in three communities experiencing differing levels of market-based economic change to pursue the following research aims. First, the project describes youth social networks and preferences for different types of learning models. Second, it investigates whether community-level market integration are associated with the social tolerance of inequality versus social norms enforcing egalitarianism. Third, it tests whether market integration and social norms predict variation in health and well-being outcomes. The project uses interviews, participant observation, and biological data collection and analysis to pursue these aims. In doing so, it contributes new understanding of the potential importance of youth to the pace and direction of cultural change under changing economic conditions and in the processes that underlie emerging disparities in health through stress-related pathways, including hormone production and epigenetic regulation of gene expression. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.