Bram Tucker
Assistant Professor
PhD, Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001
bramtuck@uga.edu
Websites: Research among Mikea of Madagascar
Behavioral Ecology and Economic Decisions Lab (BEEDL)
Research and Teaching Interests
|
I am interested in economic, ecological, and evolutionary aspects of subsistence decision-making and behavior among rural populations of foragers and farmers. I have explored these issues through ethnographic fieldwork among Mikea of southwestern Madagascar since 1996. I teach these topics in such courses as economic anthropology, human behavioral ecology, hunter-gatherer ethnography, and African ethnography.
My research has explored Mikea economic diversification, particularly with regards to risk (gambles) and time (investments). While Mikea self-identify as hunter-gatherers, in actual practice all Mikea households maintain diversified portfolios of foraging, fishing, farming, herding, and marketing activities. Households manipulate their portfolio composition (i.e., change their allocation of labor to different activities) to cope with climatic fluctuation, regional politico-economic changes, and endogenous household variables such as age/sex composition and resource need. What interests me is how Mikea individuals and households decide which activities to practice. How do they comparatively evaluate a risky but potentially profitable activity such as wild boar hunting versus a certain but lower-yielding activity like wild tuber foraging? How do they compare the value of foraging and fishing activities that provide small, immediate paayoffs, versus the larger but delayed rewards of agricultural investments? I have pursued these issues through a combination of ethnographic, ethnohistoric, observational, and experimental methods.
What I am hoping to learn from this research is how humans make decisions, and how decisions translate into behaviors and cooperative strategies. This is an active field of debate within economic research today. Do people make "rational," self-centered, cost-benefit calculations? Do they instead rely on heuristics (rules-of-thumb) and covariation theories? Do individuals make decisions at all, or do they simply conform to societal expectations? What role has natural selection played in crafting our perceptive and evaluative capacity? This research should be directly applicable to issues of poverty and hunger throughout the world. How do people with limited resources make ends meet? How are they likely to react to foreign aid, development projects, and environmental protection schemes?
In preparation:
Tucker, B. (submitted). Inconsistent support for "the young male syndrome" in experimental studies of risk and time preference: Review, interpretation, and new data from southwestern Madagascar. Submitted to Human Nature, special issue. |
Published:
|
Tucker, Bram (2007). Perception of interannual covariation and diversification strategies for risk reduction among Mikea of Madagascar: Individual and social learning. Human Nature 18(2): 162-180. |
Tucker, Bram (2007) Applying behavioral ecology and behavioral economics to conservation and development planning: Example from the Mikea Forest, Madagascar. Human Nature 18(3): 181-189. |
Tucker, Bram and Lisa Rende Taylor (2007). The human behavioral ecology of contemporary world issues: Applications to Public Policy and International Development. Human Nature 18(3): 181-189. |
Tucker, Bram (2006). A future discounting explanation for the persistence of a mixed foraging-horticulture strategy among the Mikea of Madagascar. In Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture, edited by D. J. Kennett and B. Winterhalder. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 22-40. |
|
Kelly, Robert L., Lin Poyer, and Bram Tucker (2005). An ethnoarchaeological study of mobility, architectural investment, and food sharing among Madagascar's Mikea. American Anthropologist 107:403-416 |
|
|
Tucker, Bram and Alyson G. Young (2005). Growing up Mikea: Children's time allocation and tuber foraging in southwestern Madagascar. In Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods, edited by B. Hewlett and M. Lamb. Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Pp. 147-171. |
|
|
Tucker, Bram (2004). Giving, scrounging, hiding, and selling: Minimal food transfers among Mikea forager-farmers of Madagascar. Research in Economic Anthropology 23:43-66. |
|
Tucker, Bram (2003). Mikea Origins: Relicts or Refugees? Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 14:193-215. |
|
|
Yount, James W., Tsiazonera, and Bram Tucker (2001). Constructing Mikea identity: Past and present links to forest and foraging. Ethnohistory 48:257-291. |
|
|
Winterhalder, Bruce, Flora Lu, and Bram Tucker (1999). Risk-sensitive adaptive tactics: Models and evidence from subsistence studies in biology and anthropology. Journal of Archaeological Research 7:301-348. |
> |
Working papers :
|
Tucker, Bram, Daniel A. Steck, and Jaovola Tombo (submitted). Experimental evidence for time preference among Mikea forager-farmers: Implications for subsistence transitions and conservation planning. |
Ph.D. Dissertation:
(2001). "The Behavioral Ecology and Economics of Variation, Risk, and Diversification among Mikea Forager-Farmers of Madagascar." Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
| Front matter | |
| Chapter 1: Introduction | |
| Chapter 2: Mikea History | |
| Chapter 3: Seasonal, interannual, and spatial variation | |
| Chapter 4: Variation and covariation | |
| Chapter 5: Production across the lifespan | |
| Chapter 6: Hunter-gatherers who don't share? | |
| Chapter 7: Variation in market participation | |
| Chapter 8: Portfolio composition strategies and delay | |
| Chapter 9: Conclusions | |
| Appendix 1: Inventory of plants and animals | |
| Appendix 2: Plant inventories from landscape zones | |
| Appendix 3: Glossary of Malagasy terms | |
| References cited |
