Resumen de Behaving sociably. Sharing and cooperation among contemporary punan tubu in north Kalimantan, Indonesia
Rasi Lucentezza Easterlita Napitupulu
Prosocial behavior, such as sharing and cooperation, is a central characteristic of the human species and is thought to be human adaptive tendency. Previous observational and experimental studies indicate that people share and cooperate under various motivations, which might differ according to the context. This dissertation examines individual sharing and cooperative behavior in a population of contemporary hunter-gatherer group with a strong tradition of sharing, the Punan Tubu. It also question how increasing integration into the Indonesian national society and the market economic system is influencing their prosocial behavior, a situation that is relevant to many indigenous group in developing countries,. Methodologically, I combine observations from daily behavior collected through surveys among 118 adults over 18 months of observations in two villages; with, results from two framed field experiments played with 212 adults in seven villages (including the previous two) with different levels of integration into the state system and the market economy.
The questions asked in the three empirical chapters are: 1) how individual levels of integration into the market economy and the national society relate to a prosocial practice, i.e., sharing, in a small-scale society?; 2) do variations in sharing relate to different levels of integration into the market economy when comparing a) observational and experimental data and b) the sharing of different products?; and 3) to what extent varying levels of involvement in development policies relate to decisions to cooperate in government programs? Results from empirical observations of daily behavior suggest that sharing, and more specifically demand sharing (i.e., requesting claim of food/resource), is a prominent behavior among contemporary Punan Tubu. Moreover, sharing is neither directly related to individual levels of integration into the market economy, nor to participation in national development programs. However, I also found that there are variations in the way locally-produced and market-purchased food products are shared. I argue that variation on how products are shared depends on 1) their visibility, 2) their cultural meaning, and 3) the division of labor followed to produce or obtain them. The comparison of sharing in daily life observations and sharing in experimental conditions suggest that data obtained through the two methods are not correlated, probably because each measures different aspect of sharing. In the third empirical chapter, I analyzed cooperative behavior through an economic game experiment, framed around an ongoing house building government program that required cooperation. I found that individuals and villages with experience cooperating with people beyond their kin (i.e., those who had previously participated in government programs) were more likely to display cooperative behavior under anonymous conditions. Findings from this dissertation advance the understanding of how sharing and cooperation arises in a dynamic context with an interdisciplinary perspective based on mix methodology of ethnographic description, systematic observational data collection and experimental economic game. This dissertation emphasizes the importance of examining the external validity of experimental games used to measure prosocial behavior. Policies aiming to capitalize on existing cooperative behavior to stimulate community collective action should take into account the specific conditions under which sharing and cooperation occurs in daily life setting, as ignoring them might hamper the achievement of the desired outcome of social behavior.
