Browsing by Author "Huanca, Tomas"

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    Changes in adult well-being and economic inequalities: An exploratory observational longitudinal study (2002-2010) of micro-level trends among Tsimane', a small-scale rural society of Indigenous People in the Bolivian Amazon
    (2024) Godoy, Ricardo; Bauchet, Jonathan; Behrman, Jere R.; Huanca, Tomas; Leonard, William R.; Reyes-Garcia, Victoria; Rosinger, Asher; Tanner, Susan; Undurraga, Eduardo A.; Zycherman, Ariela
    Knowing what happens over time to the lifeways of people in contemporary small-scale non-industrial societies of the rural Global South matters because it helps assess changes in the quality of life of underrepresented groups. It has been hard to answer the question because longitudinal information is rarely collected in such settings. A longitudinal dataset of nine years (2002-2010) from a horticultural-foraging society of Indigenous People in the Bolivian Amazon (Tsimane') is used for an exploratory analysis of micro-level trends in indicators of well-being and economic inequalities. We selected 13 Tsimane' villages (from - 100) that varied in proximity to town and surveyed all households in each village. - 240 households were followed yearly to estimate trends of 21 outcomes (e.g., income, sociality, macronutrients). For each economic outcome, annual and all-years-combined Gini coefficients were estimated for the entire sample across the 13 villages. We show a rise in total asset wealth, a change in asset composition (less traditional wealth, more commercial wealth), higher monetary value of foods eaten, and better-perceived health, but a decline in caloric and protein consumption and no marked gender differences in objective or hedonic measures of well-being. Economic inequalities were non-trivial and showed no marked trend but varied between years; asset inequality varied less than income inequality. We document the value of longitudinal, locally grounded indexes of well-being to obtain a granular view of micro-level changes in well-being and the possible use of inequality in the consumption of calories and macronutrients as a valid proxy for income inequality in rural areas of the Global South with tenuous links to the market economy.
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    Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries
    (2021) Jacoby, Nori; Polak, Rainer; Grahn, Jessica Adrienne; Cameron, Daniel J.; Lee, Kyung Myun; Godoy, Ricardo; Undurraga Fourcade, Eduardo Andrés; Huanca, Tomas; Thalwitzer, Timon; Doumbia, Noumouké; Goldberg, Daniel; Margulis, Elizabeth; Wong, Patrick; Jure, Luis; Rocamora, Martín; Fujii, Shinya; Savage, Patrick E.; Ajimi, Jun; Konno, Rei; Oishi, Sho; Jakubowski, Kelly; Holzapfel, André; Mungan, Esra; Kaya, Ece; Rao, Preeti; Ananthanarayana, Rohit Mattur; Alladi, Suvarna; Tarr, Bronwyn; Anglada-Tort, Manuel; Harrison, Peter M. C.; McPherson, Malinda J.; Dolan, Sophie; Durango, Alex; Mcdermott, Josh
    Music is present in every known society, yet varies from place to place. What, if anything, is universal to music cognition? We measured a signature of mental representations of rhythm in 39 participant groups in 15 countries, spanning urban societies and indigenous populations. Listeners reproduced random ‘‘seed’’ rhythms; their reproductions were fed back as the stimulus (as in the game of “telephone”), such that their biases (the prior) could be estimated from the distribution of reproductions. Every tested group showed a sparse prior with peaks at integer ratio rhythms. However, the importance of different integer ratios varied across groups, often reflecting local musical practices. Our results suggest a common feature of music cognition – discrete rhythm “categories” at small integer ratios. These discrete representations likely stabilize musical systems in the face of cultural transmission, but interact with culture-specific traditions to yield diversity evident when mental representations are probed across many cultures.
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    High life satisfaction reported among small- scale societies with low incomes
    (2024) Galbraith, Eric D.; Barrington-leigh, Christopher; Minarro, Sara; Fernandez, Santiago Alvarez-; Attoh, Emmanuel M. N. A. N.; Benyeia, Petra; Calvet-mira, Laura; Carmona, Rosario; Chakauya, Rumbidzayi; Chen, Zhuo; Chengula, Fasco; Fernandez-Llamazares, Alvaro; Garcia-del-amo, David; Glauser, Marcos; Huanca, Tomas; Izquierdo, Andrea E.; Junqueira, Andre B.; Lanker, Marisa; Li, Xiaoyue; Mariel, Juliette; Miara, Mohamed D.; Porcher, Vincent; Porcuna-Ferrer, Anna; Schlingmann, Anna; Seidler, Reinmar; Shrestha, Uttam Babu; Singh, Priyatma; Torrents-Tico, Miquel; Ulambayar, Tungalag; Wu, Rihan; Reyes-Garcia, Victoria
    Global polls have shown that people in high- income countries generally report being more satisfied with their lives than people in low- income countries. The persistence of this correlation, and its similarity to correlations between income and life satisfaction within countries, could lead to the impression that high levels of life satisfaction can only be achieved in wealthy societies. However, global polls have typically overlooked small- scale, nonindustrialized societies, which can provide an alternative test of the consistency of this relationship. Here, we present results from a survey of 2,966 members of Indigenous Peoples and local communities among 19 globally distributed sites. We find that high average levels of life satisfaction, comparable to those of wealthy countries, are reported for numerous populations that have very low monetary incomes. Our results are consistent with the notion that human societies can support very satisfying lives for their members without necessarily requiring high degrees of monetary wealth.