Presenter:
Dr. Drew Gerkey
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
School of Language, Culture & Society
Oregon State University
drew [dot] gerkey [at] oregonstate [dot] edu
Title: “Synthesizing Economic Experiments and Ethnography: A mixed-methods approach to understanding cooperation, risk, and resilience.”
Abstract:
Although economic experiments or “games” have become a standard method for studying decision-making processes and social interactions in economics, political science, and psychology, anthropologists have only recently begun to incorporate this tool in ethnographic research. The first wave of cross-cultural projects using economic games attracted considerable attention throughout the social sciences and stimulated inter-disciplinary dialogue (Henrich et al 2004, Ensminger & Henrich 2014), but many anthropologists remain skeptical of this methodological approach (Chibnik 2011). My presentation will feature projects in Northeastern Siberia and Alaska that combine insights from economic games with perspectives from standard ethnographic methods—such as participant observation and interviews—to investigate cooperation, collective action, risk, and resilience (Gerkey 2013; Howe et al 2016). Specifically, I focus on the ways economic games can complement ethnographic projects and enhance our understanding of the moral economies of food-sharing networks, institutions that manage common-pool resources, and the dynamics of social movements.
Works Cited
Chibnik, M. 2011. Anthropology, Economics, and Choice. University of Texas Press.
Ensminger, J. & Henrich, J. 2014. Experimenting with Social Norms: Fairness and Punishment in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Russell Sage Press.
Gerkey, D. 2013. "Cooperation in Context: Public Goods Games and Post-Soviet Collectives in Kamchatka, Russia." Current Anthropology 54(2).
Henrich, J. et al. 2004. Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies. Oxford University Press.
Howe, E.L. et al. 2016. "Indirect Reciprocity, Resource Sharing, and Environmental Risk: Evidence from Field Experiments in Siberia." PLoS ONE 11(7): e0158940.
