Does market integration buffer risk, erode traditional sharing practices and increase inequality? A test among Bolivian forager-farmers

Abstract

Sharing and exchange are common practices for minimizing food insecurity in rural populations. The advent of markets and monetization in egalitarian indigenous populations presents an alternative means of managing risk, with the potential impact of eroding traditional networks. We test whether market involvement buffers several types of risk and reduces traditional sharing behavior among Tsimane Amerindians of the Bolivian Amazon. Results vary based on type of market integration and scale of analysis (household vs. village), consistent with the notion that local culture and ecology shape risk management strategies. Greater wealth and income were unassociated with the reliance on others for food, or on reciprocity, but wealth was associated with a greater proportion of food given to others (i.e., giving intensity) and a greater number of sharing partners (i.e., sharing breadth). Across villages, greater mean income was negatively associated with reciprocity, but economic inequality was positively associated with giving intensity and sharing breadth. Incipient market integration does not necessarily replace traditional buffering strategies but instead can often enhance social capital.

Keywords: Bolivian Amazon; Tsimane; cooperation; food security; market integration; risk management; sharing.

Figure 1

Food security and household material wealth: (a) Mean daily food production and (b) coefficient of variation (CV) as a function of household wealth. Solid line is predicted fit and dashed lines are 95%CI controlling for income and average date of production interview. For detailed results see Table 1.

Figure 2

Effect of material wealth on giving intensity at (a) household level, showing the population average curve (red) and village-specific curves (dashed grey), and (b) the village level, showing that average village-level income moderates the effect of household wealth on giving intensity (cf. slope of the grey lines in a). In other words, in villages with higher average incomes, richer households give more than the population average. All curves are based on models in Tables 3 and 5, holding all other factors constant. Size of data points in (b) reflects number of households (range 21–225), dashed lines are 95% confidence intervals

Figure 3

Association between sharing breadth, i.e., the number of food and labor sharing partners and household wealth: Lines are predicted fit at the population level (solid red) and for individual villages (dashed grey) (Table 3). The association between household wealth and number of sharing partners is positive across all nine villages, with little variation in the strength of the association, i.e., village-level slopes. Villages do vary in the intercepts, i.e., in some villages people have more sharing partners than in others, yet this variation was not explained by any village-level predictors (Table 5)

Figure 4

Association between sharing contingency, i.e., village-level slopes for the association between giving and receiving food, and village-level average income and village size (indicated by the point size reflecting number of households, range 21–225). Lines are predicted fit (solid) and 95% confidence intervals (dashed) based on the model in Table 5. People in larger villages share food relatively more contingently, while people in villages with greater average income share less contingently