Gurven Michael, Hill Kim
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
Curr Anthropol. 2009 Feb;50(1):51-62; discussion 62-74. doi: 10.1086/595620.
The role of men in hunter-gatherer societies has been subject to vigorous debate over the past 15 years. The proposal that men hunt wild game as a form of status signaling or "showing off" to provide reproductive benefits to the hunter challenges the traditional view that men hunt to provision their families. Two broad assumptions underlie the signaling view: (1) hunting is a poor means of obtaining food, and (2) hunted game is a public good shared widely with others and without expectation of future reciprocation. If hunters lack the ability to direct food shares and obtain subsequent benefits contingent on redistribution, then the ubiquitous observations of male hunting and universal pair-bonding cannot be explained from a perspective that emphasizes kin provisioning and a division of labor. Here we show that there is little empirical support for the view that men hunt for signaling benefits alone. The ethnographic record depicts a more complex relationship between food sharing patterns, subsistence strategies, mating, and the sexual division of labor. We present a framework incorporating trade-offs between mating and subsistence strategies in an economic bargaining context that contributes to understanding men's and women's roles in hunter-gatherer societies.
在过去15年里，男性在狩猎采集社会中的角色一直是激烈辩论的主题。有一种观点认为，男性捕猎野生动物是一种地位信号或“炫耀”的形式，以便为猎人带来生殖方面的好处，这一观点挑战了传统观念，即男性捕猎是为了供养家庭。信号传递观点有两个广泛的假设：（1）狩猎是获取食物的低效方式，（2）猎获的猎物是一种公共物品，广泛地与他人共享且不期望未来得到回报。如果猎人缺乏直接分配食物份额并获得基于重新分配的后续利益的能力，那么从强调亲属供养和劳动分工的角度就无法解释普遍观察到的男性狩猎和普遍的配偶关系。在这里，我们表明，几乎没有实证支持男性仅为信号传递利益而狩猎这一观点。人种志记录描绘了食物分享模式、生存策略、交配和性别分工之间更为复杂的关系。我们提出了一个框架，该框架在经济讨价还价的背景下纳入了交配和生存策略之间的权衡，这有助于理解男性和女性在狩猎采集社会中的角色。
