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theses

Environmental volatility, resource-related risks, and the overall uncertainty about the future fundamentally shape behavioral strategies and are critical to understanding the evolution of human social behavior. One of the central ways in which humans in subsistence economies manage risk and uncertainty is through pooling or sharing risk with other individuals, such as central place food sharing among forager populations. Among pastoralists in East Africa, risk pooling takes the form of ‘stock friendships’: an informal insurance system in which male herders form mutually beneficial partnerships through livestock transfers. Networks of stock friends are critical to recouping short term losses such as food shortage, as well as to ensuring long-term sustainability through the rebuilding of herds. This dissertation investigates risk pooling friendships and other risk management strategies of pastoralists in Karamoja, Uganda. Risk management is a central concern for pastoralists in Karamoja because of the unreliable climate, recent volatile history, and lack of institutional support. Consequently, social networks of livestock and food exchange, such as stock friendships, play a significant role in minimizing the adverse effects of disasters. During fourteen months of fieldwork, I collected qualitative and quantitative data on men’s stock friendship networks, women’s close friendship networks, and individuals’ exchange networks during a prolonged drought. I use these data to present the following: 1) an ethnographic investigation of friendship contracts among men and women; 2) an examination of the characteristics of friendship networks, including size, composition, geographical spread, and relational content; 3) a study of how individual level and external factors influence friendship networks; and 4) an analysis of which social exchange networks are activated during drought induced stress. Based on data on norms and transfers within friendship networks, I argue that risk pooling friendships in Karamoja are characterized by needbased transfers and ‘demand sharing’ rather than account-keeping reciprocity. Further, I show that during periods of extreme stress, need-based transfers of food, livestock, and money are acquired not only from kin and friendship networks (‘strong ties’), but also from ‘weak tie’ friends within the neighborhood. I, thus, contend that engaging in risk pooling relationships and need based transfers are a necessity in an environment characterized by unpredictability. Lastly, I present results from an experimental economic game that explores participants’ risk attitudes and time preference—variables critical to understanding decision-making under conditions of chronic risk and uncertainty.

ETD_7572

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by K. Padmini Iyer

doi:10.7282/T39Z976J

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.