Current AnthropologyOn the heels of the field school, a new paper (Godoy et al. 2009) from the Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study (TAPS) was just published in the August issue of Current Anthropology.

The paper reports new evidence about changes in the well-being of the Tsimane’, indigenous foragers-farmers in the Bolivian Amazon. Many anthropologists and other social scientists are concerned about how globalization, climate change, and other forces affect indigenous peoples, but most research on this topic relies on cross-sectional data, or data collected at one point in time. Cross-sectional data are limited, because they don’t allow us to estimate change over time. To address this problem, our new paper draws on panel data from 2002-2006 to assess annual rates of change in several indicators of well-being among the Tsimane’.

We find improvements in some indicators of well-being (food consumption, body mass index, and experience of anger), but an increase in the number of self-reported ailments over the five-year period. Other measures of well-being showed no significant changes over time. The paper discusses the methodological and theoretical implications of our findings for research on the consequences of globalization and culture change. (For more on why panel data are important to cultural anthropology in general, see our upcoming paper in the Fall 2009 issue of the Journal of Anthropological Research—or grab the preprint now).

The abstract and paper are here. Feel free to leave your comments or criticism below.

Update, 7/25/09: Today’s New York Times features a story about how deforestation and climate change are posing new challenges for native Amazonians. This article reinforces the need for systematic data over time about indigenous subsistence practices, natural resource use, food security, and well-being.