Status determinants, social incongruity and economic transition: Gender, relative material wealth and heterogeneity in the cultural lifestyle of forager-horticulturalists

For small-scale societies, transitions from self-sufficiency to cash-based labor in market economies have been associated with the exacerbation of existing, and the emergence of new, social incongruities. Social incongruity occurs when two or more of a person’s status determinants (e.g. age, gender, wealth) conflict, resulting in reduced social status. A central focus of theory and research on social incongruity is the relationship between the cultural prototype of what is needed to live a good life–or lifestyle–and status determinants. Assessment of status determinants is challenging because of their relative nature at multiple levels of analysis. This study uses theory and methods from cognitive anthropology to investigate whether and how individual knowledge of a cultural lifestyle prototype conflicts with status determinants at two levels of economic transition among 101 adults from a small-scale society of forager-horticulturalists in Bolivian Amazonia, the Tsimane’. Results support cultural consensus in a 38-item model labeled market lifestyle (explaining 72.7% of sample variance). While the model includes both overlapping traditional (e.g. weaving) and market-related (e.g. education) items and behaviors, most market alternatives were rated higher. When market lifestyle was tested for conflicts with other status determinants only gender predicted variation (women had 13% more accurate knowledge). Thematically, when market lifestyle was stratified by gender, men rated several types of relational wealth higher than women did. Analysis of residual agreement in a second factor of lifestyle revealed heterogeneity in the form of a subcultural syncretic lifestyle model (explaining 18.2% of additional variance). Participants whose knowledge better matched syncretic lifestyle rated traditional items and market alternatives closer to parity. Results show the syncretic model correlated with subgroups having lower material wealth and less market integration. Thematically, their ratings deviated most from market lifestyle towards traditional forms of livelihood, relational wealth, spiritual beliefs and embodied wealth.