Complexité et anthropologie

Aujourd’hui, la mathématique des systèmes complexes offre divers outils à partir desquels on peut étudier les propriétés macroscopiques des interactions qui se manifestent dans une dimension temporelle. En dessinant les schèmes d’interaction qui correspondent aux éléments d’un système, on peut souvent découvrir des propriétés qui émergent à un niveau supérieur. Rétrospectivement, il apparaît remarquable que quelques idées simples tirées des analyses formelles des systèmes complexes pourraient avoir été si éclairantes dans divers champs de recherche. Bien que le concept de développement progressif — et de contingence historique — ne soit pas nouveau en anthropologie, pour briser le sceau de la réification sur l’ordre social, il est nécessaire d’aller au-delà des statistiques descriptives ou des modèles d’équilibre et d’explorer la contingence historique. Les réseaux qui se développent sont inévitablement inscrits dans une voie; les états ultérieurs sont contraints par le passé. Mais comme le révèlent de nouvelles études, l’« agence » (agency), dans son sens le plus fort d’habileté à donner forme à de véritables innovations, peut surgir d’une forme ordinaire d’« agence » présentée par des individus qui s’adonnent à leurs activités quotidiennes reliées au commerce, au mariage et à la politique.Today’s mathematics of complex systems offer a variety of tools to investigate the macroscopic properties of interactions that occur along a temporal dimension. By tracing patterns of interaction among the elements of a system, one can often discover emergent properties at a higher level. In retrospect it seems remarkable that a few simple insights from the formal analysis of complex sys-tems should have been so illuminating in diverse fields of inquiry. Even if the concept of progressive development — and historical contingency — is hardly new to anthropology, it is necessary to go beyond descriptive statistics or equilibrium models to explore historical contingency to break the seal of reification on the existing social order. Evolving networks are inevitably path dependent; future states are constrained by the past. But as new studies show, agency in the more powerful sense of the ability to shape genuine innovations can arise from the ordinary form of agency exhibited by people going about their daily business of commerce, marriage and politics

Growth effects of shifting from a progressive tax system to a flat tax

This paper develops a quantitative general equilibrium model to assess the growth effects of adopting a flat tax plan similar to the one proposed by Hall and Rabushka (1995). Using parameters calibrated to match the progressivity of the U.S. tax schedule and other features of the U.S. economy, we compute the growth and level effects of adopting a revenue-neutral flat tax for both a human-capital based endogenous growth model and a standard neoclassical growth model. Growth effects are decomposed into the parts attributable to the flattening of the marginal tax schedule, the full expensing of physical-capital investment, and the elimination of double taxation of corporate dividends. We find that the most important element of the reform is the flattening of the marginal tax schedule. Without this element, the combined effects of the other parts of the reform can actually reduce long-run growth.Fiscal policy ; Flat-rate income tax ; Human capital

The Value of a River

The Skokomish river was once the most productive salmon river in Puget Sound, but since 1926 the North Fork Skokomish has been diverted for hydropower. The Skokomish tribe has fought unsuccessfully to restore natural flows. At issue is the “non-market value” of the river’s biological productivity. The value of the river as “natural capital” for the tribe is analyzed from an historical, ethnographic, and ecological perspective. Keywords: non-market values, natural capital, salmon, Pacific Northwest, Skokomish, riverine ecology, ecosystem management

THE CONTRIBUTION OF RICE FARMING ON NITROGEN ENRICHMENT IN YEH SUNGI WATERSHED, TABANAN BALI

Pelaksanaan program intensifikasi pertanian melalui konsep revolusi hijau membuat meningkatnyaproduksi padi secara dramatis sehingga pada tahun 1984 Indonesia mencapai swa-sembada beras. Uniknya, sebelumtahun 1984 Indonesia dikenal sebagai negara pengimpor beras yang terbesar di dunia. Akan tetapi, disampingprestasi yang spektakular dalam produksi padi, dalam beberapa hal revolusi hijau juga memberi kontribusi dampakyang tidak menguntungkan terhadap ekosistem.Perkembangan pertanian di Bali, khususnya sawah sangat terkaitdengan sistem subak. Subak adalah pengaturan air irigasi tradisional di Bali yang telah dilaksanakan sejak berabadabadyang lalu. Sehubungan dengan masalah di atas, penelitian ini telah dilaksanakan di Daerah Aliran Sungai(DAS) Yeh Sungi di Kabupaten Tabanan, daerah di bagian barat Bali. Daerah penelitian meliputi delapan subakyaitu: Subak Apit Yeh and Subak Uma Poh di daerah hulu tempat tangkapan air; Subak Padangakitan, Jaka, Sungi I,Bena, dan Subak Tangkub di daerah tengah; dan Subak Gde Gadon I di daerah hilir. Penelitian ini dilakukan selama12 bulan, mulai dari bulan April 2001 hingga Maret 2002. Tujuan penelitian adalah: (1) meneliti tingkat pengayaanhara nitrogen di air irigasi yang berkaitan dengan aplikasi intensif pupuk anorganik di berbagai sistem pertaniandalam sistem subak di Bali; (2) meneliti kualitas lingkungan air, berkaitan dengan tingkat pengayaan hara nitrogendi dalam air irigasi. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pengayaan hara pada air irigasi berkaitan dengan sistempertanian pada sistem subak. Tingkat pengayaan hara di daerah hulu lebih tinggi daripada di daerah tengah dan hiliruntuk N-NO3-; untuk memelihara kelangsungan ekosistem Subak, maka aplikasi pupuk N harus mempertimbangkankandungan hara tersebut dalam air irigasinya. Pelaksanaan pertanian telah menyebabkan pengayaan hara nitrogenyang berlebihan di daerah irigasi, khususnya di daerah tengah maupun hilir yang masing-masing didominasi olehpola pertanian padi-padi-padi dan padi-padi-palawija. Untuk memelihara kelangsungan ekosistem subak, makaaplikasi pupuk nitrogen harus mempertimbangkan kandungan hara di air irigasi.Kata kunci: sistem pertanian padi, pengayaan air irigasi, ekosistem subak. The implementation of agricultural intensification program through the green revolution concept has madethe increasing rice production dramatically and in 1984 Indonesia achieved ice self-sufficiency. Uniquely, before1984 Indonesia was known as the biggest rice importing country in the world. However, beside of spectacularachievement in rice production, green revolution to some cases also contributes less favorable impact to theecosystem. The agricultural development in Bali, particularly rice field is closely related to the subak system. Subakis a traditional model of irrigation water treatment in Bali practiced since centuries ago. The related to abovementionedissues, this research has been conducted at Yeh Sungi watershed in Tabanan District, western part ofBali. The research site includes eight subaks: Subak Apit Yeh and Subak Uma Poh at upstream area of catchmentsarea; Subak Padangakitan, Jaka, Sungi I, Bena, and Subak Tangkub at the middle area; and Subak Gde Gadon I atdownstream area. This research was carried out for 12 months between April 2001 and March 2002. The objectionof this research were: (1) to investigate the water enrichment level of N nutrients in the irrigation water related to theintensive application of inorganic fertilizers at various farming systems in subak system in Bali; (2) to investigatethe water environment quality, related to the water enrichment level of N nutrient in the irrigation water. Research96Jurnal Pengkajian dan Pengembangan Teknologi Pertanian Vol. 6, No. 2, Juli 2003 : 95-106results showed that nutrient enrichment on irrigation water related to farming system on subak ecosystem. The levelof nutrient enrichment at upstream (hulu) area is higher than the middle (tengah) and downstream (hilir) areas for N-NO3-.To maintain the sustainability of subak ecosystem, therefore the application of N fertilizer should considerthose nutrients content in irrigation water. The agricultural practice has caused excessive enrichment of N nutrientsin irrigated area, especially at the middle as well as downstream areas dominated by rice-rice-rice and rice-ricepalawija(second crop) cropping patterns.Key words: rice farming system, water enrichment, subak ecosystem

Sex-linked genetic diversity originates from persistent sociocultural processes at microgeographic scales.

Population genetics has been successful at identifying the relationships between human groups and their interconnected histories. However, the link between genetic demography inferred at large scales and the individual human behaviours that ultimately generate that demography is not always clear. While anthropological and historical context are routinely presented as adjuncts in population genetic studies to help describe the past, determining how underlying patterns of human sociocultural behaviour impact genetics still remains challenging. Here, we analyse patterns of genetic variation in village-scale samples from two islands in eastern Indonesia, patrilocal Sumba and a matrilocal region of Timor. Adopting a 'process modelling' approach, we iteratively explore combinations of structurally different models as a thinking tool. We find interconnected socio-genetic interactions involving sex-biased migration, lineage-focused founder effects, and on Sumba, heritable social dominance. Strikingly, founder ideology, a cultural model derived from anthropological and archaeological studies at larger regional scales, has both its origins and impact at the scale of villages. Process modelling lets us explore these complex interactions, first by circumventing the complexity of formal inference when studying large datasets with many interacting parts, and then by explicitly testing complex anthropological hypotheses about sociocultural behaviour from a more familiar population genetic standpoint

Relaxed observance of traditional marriage rules allows social connectivity without loss of genetic diversity

© 2015 The Author. Marriage rules, the community prescriptions that dictate who an individual can or cannot marry, are extremely diverse and universally present in traditional societies. A major focus of research in the early decades of modern anthropology, marriage rules impose social and economic forces that help structure societies and forge connections between them. However, in those early anthropological studies, the biological benefits or disadvantages of marriage rules could not be determined. We revisit this question by applying a novel simulation framework and genome-wide data to explore the effects of Asymmetric Prescriptive Alliance, an elaborate set of marriage rules that has been a focus of research for many anthropologists. Simulations show that strict adherence to these marriage rules reduces genetic diversity on the autosomes, X chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, but relaxed compliance produces genetic diversity similar to random mating. Genome-wide data from the Indonesian community of Rindi, one of the early study populations for Asymmetric Prescriptive Alliance, are more consistent with relaxed compliance than strict adherence. We therefore suggest that, in practice, marriage rules are treated with sufficient flexibility to allow social connectivity without significant degradation of biological diversity

Genome-wide DNA methylation and gene expression patterns reflect genetic ancestry and environmental differences across the Indonesian archipelago.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, host to striking levels of human diversity, regional patterns of admixture, and varying degrees of introgression from both Neanderthals and Denisovans. However, it has been largely excluded from the human genomics sequencing boom of the last decade. To serve as a benchmark dataset of molecular phenotypes across the region, we generated genome-wide CpG methylation and gene expression measurements in over 100 individuals from three locations that capture the major genomic and geographical axes of diversity across the Indonesian archipelago. Investigating between- and within-island differences, we find up to 10.55% of tested genes are differentially expressed between the islands of Sumba and New Guinea. Variation in gene expression is closely associated with DNA methylation, with expression levels of 9.80% of genes correlating with nearby promoter CpG methylation, and many of these genes being differentially expressed between islands. Genes identified in our differential expression and methylation analyses are enriched in pathways involved in immunity, highlighting Indonesia's tropical role as a source of infectious disease diversity and the strong selective pressures these diseases have exerted on humans. Finally, we identify robust within-island variation in DNA methylation and gene expression, likely driven by fine-scale environmental differences across sampling sites. Together, these results strongly suggest complex relationships between DNA methylation, transcription, archaic hominin introgression and immunity, all jointly shaped by the environment. This has implications for the application of genomic medicine, both in critically understudied Indonesia and globally, and will allow a better understanding of the interacting roles of genomic and environmental factors shaping molecular and complex phenotypes

Kinship structures create persistent channels for language transmission.

Languages are transmitted through channels created by kinship systems. Given sufficient time, these kinship channels can change the genetic and linguistic structure of populations. In traditional societies of eastern Indonesia, finely resolved cophylogenies of languages and genes reveal persistent movements between stable speech communities facilitated by kinship rules. When multiple languages are present in a region and postmarital residence rules encourage sustained directional movement between speech communities, then languages should be channeled along uniparental lines. We find strong evidence for this pattern in 982 individuals from 25 villages on two adjacent islands, where different kinship rules have been followed. Core groups of close relatives have stayed together for generations, while remaining in contact with, and marrying into, surrounding groups. Over time, these kinship systems shaped their gene and language phylogenies: Consistently following a postmarital residence rule turned social communities into speech communities

Effective climate change adaptation means supporting community autonomy

Communities want to determine their own climate change adaptation strategies, and scientists and decision-makers should listen to them — both the equity and efficacy of climate change adaptation depend on it. We outline key lessons researchers and development actors can take to support communities and learn from them.Ye