Status incongruity in Samoan youth: a biocultural analysis of culture change,stress, and immune function

In Samoa, the presence of a matai title in the family has historically been a valued source of social status. However, as the process of Westernization continues, new sources of social status are emerging. This study explores the degree to which new and old markers of social status agree--or disagree--and the consequences they have for the experience of stress in 329 Samoan adolescents. The study integrates cultural and biological methods and data, and measures an aspect of immune function (antibodies against the Epstein-Barr virus) as a biomarker of psychosocial stress. Results indicate that status "incongruent" adolescents experience significantly more stress (indicated by reduced immune function), and that emerging markers of social status are becoming inextricably linked to "traditional" markers in such a way that discordance between them is a significant source of stress. This study proposes new conceptual models for future studies of culture change and suggests that biomarkers may represent ethnographic tools that can provide insight into hidden cultural dynamics and the experience of stress.     

Psychosomatic symptoms,stress, and modernization: A model

The quantity of research on the effects of stress on disease has increased substantially in recent years, but little effort has been devoted to examining the effects of cultural influences in the stress process. A model is proposed in this paper in which cultural context exerts a modifying influence on the relationship between sociocultural stressors and psychosomatic symptoms, specifically in the context of modernization. In change situations involving increasing modernization there is increased differentiation in systems of social stratification within a community, due to increased potential for upward social mobility. The individuals who are upwardly mobile adopt a particular style of life, involving the acquisition of western consumer goods, as symbolic of their success. Lower class individuals strive to attain this same style of life as a claim to a higher status social identity, but their lower economic condition results in stressful incongruities and higher psychosomatic symptoms. Individuals who are successful in upward mobility are confronted by a different set of stressors that are primarily intrapsychic in nature. Events and circumstances perceived as threats to their self-identity are related to more psychosomatic symptoms. Thus, the meaning of specific stressors changes depending on the sociocultural context of the individual, and this meaning serves as a bridge between environmental circumstances and physiological outcomes. This model receives substantial empirical support in two field studies. Limitations of the model and implications for future research are discussed.Research in St. Lucia was supported by the Connecticut Research Foundation and the University of Connecticut Health Center. Research in the U.S. was supported by Research Grant MH 33943 from the Center for the Study of Minority Group Mental Health, National Institute of Mental Health. Drs. Arthur Kleinman, Lee Badger, H. B. M. Murphy, James Bindon, and Laurence Watkins kindly commented on previous drafts of this paper. Dr. Michael Murphy deserves a special note of gratitude for reading several drafts of the paper and for patiently sitting through several lengthy discussions of it. I alone am responsible for the errors and shortcomings.     

Adding Cognition to the Formula for Culturally Relevant Instruction in Mathematics

Although equity is one of the goals of the mathematics reform movement, there has been little research done to develop programs that meet the needs of specific cultural groups. By studying how mathematical knowledge is developed in the course of everyday life, it is possible to change mathematics instruction to enhance mathematical achievement. In a series of research projects with Native Hawaiian children, ethnographic information and cognitive studies of mathematical thinking guided a program to develop culturally relevant mathematics teaching. The approach taken in this study is compared to other recent efforts to develop culturally relevant instruction in mathematics.     

Terracing in the Mixteca Alta, Mexico: Cycles of Resilience of an Ancient Land-Use Strategy

Terracing is an important and ubiquitous landscape feature in the Mixteca Alta region of southern Mexico. It is a land-management strategy that has been in use for millennia, perhaps starting around 300 B.C.E. We discuss terracing as an adaptive and resilient strategy of food production and land management that continues to be culturally significant to modern-day farmers. Through the integration of archaeological, geomorphological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic data we document the history of terracing and discuss how Mixtec communities and terraces have responded to natural and cultural perturbations through millennia. We find that different stages in the history of terracing show parallels with the adaptive cycles of a resilient system.     

Biocultural linkages--cultural consensus, cultural consonance, and human biological research

Cultural consensus analysis tests for shared models of behavior in various cultural dimensions. Cultural consonance is used to assess the degree to which individuals behave in a way that is consistent with these cultural models. Results are presented from two studies using cultural consensus and consonance analysis (CCCA) on health risk in an African American population and on diet in a mixed sample from West Alabama. In the African American case study, cultural consonance in lifestyle and social support are demonstrated to have a significant effect on blood pressure. In the diet study, significant differences in cultural consonance on the health dimension of diet between groups espousing different dietary preferences were demonstrated in spite of all groups sharing the same model of healthy foods. These studies are used to argue that more sophisticated measures of culture in human biological research are readily available and accessible for most studies.     

The Cultural Construction of Social Support in Brazil: Associations with Health Outcomes

The association of social support and healthoutcomes has received considerable attention inrecent years, but the cultural dimension of socialsupport has not been extensively investigated. Inthis paper, using data collected in a Braziliancity, we present results indicating that thoseindividuals whose reported access to social supportmore closely approximates an ideal cultural model ofaccess to social support have lower blood pressureand report fewer depressive symptoms and lowerlevels of perceived stress. The cultural model ofsocial support is derived using a combination ofparticipant observation, semi-structured interviews,and the systematic ethnographic technique ofcultural consensus modelling. These results arethen used to develop a measure of an individualsapproximation to that model of social support in asurvey of four diverse neighborhoods in the city(n = 250). We call this approximation to the idealcultural model of social support culturalconsonance in social support. The association ofhealth outcomes with cultural consonance in socialsupport is independent of individual differences inthe reporting of social support, and of standardcovariates. In the case of blood pressure andperceived stress, it is independent of diet, andother socioeconomic and psychosocial variables. Theassociation with depressive symptoms is notindependent of other psychosocial variables. Theimplications of these results are discussed withrespect to research on cultural dimensions of thedistribution of disease.     

High Selection Pressure Promotes Increase in Cumulative Adaptive Culture

The evolution of cumulative adaptive culture has received widespread interest in recent years, especially the factors promoting its occurrence. Current evolutionary models suggest that an increase in population size may lead to an increase in cultural complexity via a higher rate of cultural transmission and innovation. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of natural selection in the evolution of cultural complexity. Here we use an agent-based simulation model to demonstrate that high selection pressure in the form of resource pressure promotes the accumulation of adaptive culture in spite of small population sizes and high innovation costs. We argue that the interaction of demography and selection is important, and that neither can be considered in isolation. We predict that an increase in cultural complexity is most likely to occur under conditions of population pressure relative to resource availability. Our model may help to explain why culture change can occur without major environmental change. We suggest that understanding the interaction between shifting selective pressures and demography is essential for explaining the evolution of cultural complexity.     

The Health Consequences of Cultural Consonance: Cultural Dimensions of Lifestyle, Social Support, and Arterial Blood Pressure in an African American Community

Cultural dimensions of health and behavior have been difficult to study because of limited theoretical and methodological models linking the cultural, the individual, and the biological. We employ a cognitive theory of culture to understand culture and health in an African American community in the southern United States. First, cultural consensus analysis is used to test for shared cultural models of lifestyles and social supports within the community. Then, the theoretical and operational construct of "cultural consonance" is used to assess the degree to which individuals behave in a way consistent with cultural models. Findings indicate that cultural consonance in lifestyle and social support combine synergistically in association with blood pressure. These associations of cultural consonance and health are not altered by taking into account a variety of other variables, indicating an independent association of cultural dimensions of behavior with health status. Implications of these results for culture theory are discussed, [culture theory, culture consensus analysis, cultural consonance, African American community, arterial blood pressure]     

Understanding the conservation challenges and needs of culturally significant plant species through Indigenous Knowledge and species distribution models

Indigenous People in the Klamath River Basin have cared for and utilized ecosystems and component resources since time immemorial, proactively conserving species through continuous use and stewardship. Though many culturally significant plants are still tended and used by Indigenous people, many species are also experiencing prolonged stress from colonial forest management practices and environmental change. By integrating western and Indigenous ways of knowing, as part of a participatory and collaborative research and extension project, we present an approach to informing the conservation of four culturally significant plants (tanoak, evergreen huckleberry, beargrass, and iris) and understanding the influence of bioclimatic factors and stress on Indigenous people’s relationships with plants and the broader forest ecosystem. Mixed methods and ways of knowing generate a detailed assessment of each case study species that presence only species distribution models cannot supply alone. In this study we use MAXENT to model species distributions of our four study species and the flexible coding method in NVivo for qualitative interview and focus group data. Using species distribution models and 127 interviews and focus groups with cultural practitioners, we found significant shifts in huckleberry harvesting times, beargrass and iris cultural use quality, and tanoak acorn availability that must be addressed for the long-term vitality of these species and interconnected cultures and people. Tribes have generations of knowledge, experience, and connection to land that can help inform how to combat stressors and enhance productivity of forest foods and fibers and the health of forest ecosystems.     

Genes,culture, and the human niche: An overview

The sharp distinction between biological traits and culturally based traits, which had long been standard in evolutionary approaches to behavior, was blurred in the early 1980s by mathematical models that allowed a co‐dependent evolution of genetic transmission and cultural information. Niche‐construction theory has since added another contrast to standard evolutionary theory, in that it views niche construction as a cause of evolutionary change rather than simply a product of selection. While offering a new understanding of the coevolution of genes, culture, and human behavior, niche‐construction models also invoke multivariate causality, which require multiple time series to resolve. The empirical challenge lies in obtaining time‐series data on causal pathways involved in the coevolution of genes, culture, and behavior. This is a significant issue in archeology, where time series are often sparse and causal behaviors are represented only by proxies in the material record.     

Violence Against Women in Cambodia: Towards a Culturally Responsive Theory of Change

Almost one in four women in Cambodia is a victim of physical, emotional or sexual violence. This article brings together two seldom connected fields: Theory of Change (ToC) and cultural responsiveness in international development. It applies these approaches to a priority in global health, which is to prevent violence against women (VAW) and, drawing on my research on the epigenesis of VAW in Cambodia, develops an argument on the need for interventions to work with tradition and culture rather than only highlight it in problematic terms. The research draws on an ethnographic study carried out in Cambodia with 102 perpetrators and survivors of emotional, physical and sexual VAW and 228 key informants from the Buddhist and healing sectors. The eight ‘cultural attractors’ identified in the author’s prior research highlight the cultural barriers to acceptance of the current Theory of Change. ToC for VAW prevention in Cambodia seems to assume that local culture promotes VAW and that men and women must be educated to eradicate the traditional gender norms. There is a need for interventions to work with tradition and culture rather than only highlight it in problematic terms. The cultural epigenesis of VAW in Cambodia is an insight which can be used to build culturally responsive interventions and strengthen the primary prevention of VAW.     

Studying Knowledge, Culture, and Behavior in Applied Medical Anthropology

In this article we argue that the concept of knowledge, as utilized by public health professionals, is best regarded as cultural belief as defined in anthropology. The implications of this position are explored, particularly as it relates to the development of a decision-making approach to the understanding and analysis of health care behavior. The methodological challenges posed by the new theoretical perspective that has emerged from the emphasis on decision making is discussed from the perspective of applied research. The role of focused ethnographic studies is examined and contrasted with ethnomedicine and survey approaches. Some main features of focused ethnographic methods are described and illustrated with a case example of acute respiratory infection (ARI) in Gambia. [knowledge and cultural beliefs, decision-making approaches, health behavior, focused ethnographic studies]     

Capitalism as culture,and economy1

Contemporary cultural anthropology has been marked by its distance from the analysis of economy. I argue that anthropology as a discipline has suffered from this distance and suggest a form in which these interests can be reconciled for the purposes of ethnographic research. The discussion is divided into three sections. In the first, I trace the ‘disappearing’ of economy from cultural anthropology. In the second, I propose a schema for bringing economy back. This schema involves adopting a phenomenology of the subject that relies on notions of value drawn from Appadurai and from Heidegger and Marx. Finally, I instance two examples of this schema in my own ethnographic research. One concerns Central Australia and pertains to recent debates about remote indigenous life. The other concerns Kingston Jamaica and references debates about gender, sex and dancehall. Both milieux involve types of change and violence that can bear on modern subjects. My suggestion is that anthropology will address these issues in more interesting ways if economy becomes a part of ethnographic analysis.     

Social status,social context,and arterial blood pressure

As social change and economic development have proceeded, the prevalence of chronic diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases, has increased in the developing world. In part this is due to the adoption of diets and other health behaviors characteristic of industrialized nations; in part it is a function of changing social and economic circumstances. In this paper, we describe the development and testing of a model designed to account for social and economic effects on cardiovascular disease risk. The model incorporates the fact that global economic processes have made a lifestyle characterized by the consumption of Euroamerican material goods and information a basis for the assignment of social status in local communities. But economic change at the local level is rarely sufficient to provide a foundation for individuals' status aspirations. Hence, many individuals attempt to maintain a lifestyle inconsistent with their economic standing, a variable we term lifestyle incongruity. Here we describe how this factor is associated with higher blood pressure in a variety of settings and also how the effects of lifestyle incongruity can be modified in local contexts by social class and social role processes. This latter process, contextual modification, is illustrated by data from American Samoa. In this example, the association of lifestyle incongruity with blood pressure is examined in 30 male household heads and 26 spouses. After an examination of Samoan ethnography focused attention on the importance of age and gender differences as defining social contexts of intracultural variation, the model was modified to assess interactions between age and gender as they affect the association of lifestyle incongruity and blood pressure. Lifestyle incongruity is strongly associated with higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure for the younger household heads, minimally associated with blood pressure for older household heads, and only slightly associated with the blood pressure of their spouses. The regression coefficients for the lifestyle incongruity by age by sex interaction term was significant at P ≤ 0.01 for both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The consistency of these results with expectations based on the ethnographic record is emphasized in the interpretation. We feel that the lifestyle incongruity model represents an empirically successful attempt to link global political-economic processes, local social structure, and biological outcomes. Am J Phys Anthropol 102:55–66, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Relocation,consolidation, and settlement pattern in the Canadian subarctic

The relocation and consolidation of subarctic native populations into settlement patterns designed according to southern, urban models has often resulted in cultural confusion and an increase in interpersonal tension, alcohol abuse, and violence. Through a review of selected case material, and the detailed examination of one relocated community, the dynamics of this situation are highlighted. Where native communities have re-established themselves beyond the reach of government planners, the recreation of more culturally appropriate settlement patterns has ensued.     

Stories Remote Sensing Images Can Tell: Integrating Remote Sensing Analysis with Ethnographic Research in the Study of Cultural Landscapes

Although remote sensing techniques have become important methodologies in geographical studies, their quantitative tradition and empirical strength have discouraged their use in ethnographically based research of cultural landscapes. Using Uxin Ju of Inner Mongolia in China as a case study, this paper, adopting the approach of mixed methods, explores the integration of remote sensing techniques with ethnographic research in the study of cultural landscapes. In particular, it examines how remote sensing techniques, combined with ethnographic methods, can contribute to the study of cultural change and human perceptions as they relate to the landscape. Remote sensing analysis offers additional stories about changes in the landscape–stories not told by interviewees, or stories that supplement the account of interviewees. These stories provide important insights into cultural change and culture–landscape relationships. Through this case study, I argue that remote sensing techniques can greatly enhance ethnographic research in the study of cultural landscapes.     

The concepts of elasticity, invulnerability and invadability

Users of mathematical models in ecological research have emphasized mathematical elegance in elucidating the dynamics of ecosystem models with fixed collections of state variables instead of addressing the equally important question of what effects a changing ecosystem structure has on the system's dynamics. Our work addresses the effect of invasion on the species composition of communities. In the context of a linear model, we found that as communities were made more complex (in terms of the number of species they contained and the number of interactions among these species) the probability of their being stable decreased, but the probability of their being invulnerable to invasion by other species increased. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that, through time, communities approach an intermediate complexity at which the influences of environmental stochasticity (which tends to destabilize complex communities) and invasion pressure (which tends to add species to simple communities) counterbalance one another. At this intermediate complexity the average rate of change of species composition is low.     

Cultural Consonance and Psychological Well-Being. Estimates Using Longitudinal Data from an Amazonian Society

Researchers have hypothesized that the degree to which an individual’s actual behavior approximates the culturally valued lifestyle encoded in the dominant cultural model has consequences for physical and mental health. We contribute to this line of research by analyzing data from a longitudinal study composed of five annual surveys (2002–2006 inclusive) of 791 adults in one society of foragers-farmers in the Bolivian Amazon, the Tsimane’. We estimate the association between a standard measure of individual achievement of the cultural model and (a) four indicators of psychological well-being (sadness, anger, fear and happiness) and (b) consumption of four potentially addictive substances (alcohol, cigarette, coca leaves and home-brewed beer) as indicators of stress behavior. After controlling for individual fixed effects, we found a negative association between individual achievement of the cultural model and psychological distress and a positive association between individual achievement of the cultural model and psychological well-being. Only the consumption of commercial alcohol bears the expected negative association with cultural consonance in material lifestyle, probably because the other substances analyzed have cultural values attached. Our work contributes to research on psychological health disparities by showing that a locally defined and culturally specific measure of lifestyle success is associated with psychological health.     

Social context and psychosocial influences on blood pressure among American Samoans

This study explores social and economic influences on health within a model formulated to address explicitly both individual and household level phenomena. Dressler's lifestyle incongruity model is used as a basis from which to predict the effects of intracultural contexts of variability on blood pressure. The sample for this survey consists of 134 Samoan men and women living in American Samoa. Based on previous experience and ethnographic sources, two key intracultural contexts were examined: gender, i.e., male-female differences in response to psychosocial stress, and household employment as indicated by whether or not both spouses in a household are employed. Our analysis indicates that lifestyle incongruity, defined as the difference between the material culture presented by a household and the economic resources of the family, is significantly associated with both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Furthermore, males and females show opposite blood pressure associations with both lifestyle incongruity (male blood pressure increases with increasing incongruity while female blood pressure does not) and household employment (male blood pressure is higher when both spouses work but female blood pressure is lower). Am J Phys Anthropol 103:7–18, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.