Scott Calvert

  • PhD student, Cultural Anthropology
  • Religion, cooperative breeding, gossip, reputation, human behavioral ecology, cultural transmission
  • Advisor: Barry Hewlett
  • Office: 207
  • Email: scott.c.calvert@wsu.edu

Biographical sketch ▾

Biographical sketch

I completed both my BA (2013) and MA (2016) in cultural anthropology at WSUV.

Research statement ▾

Research statement

I am an evolutionary cultural anthropologist. That is to say, I am interested in how aspects of biology and ecology influence cultural beliefs, practices, and patterns, and vice versa. My PhD research focuses on the Hamar agropastoralists of the arid Ethiopian southwest. Specifically, I am interested in their ritual system and its role in regulating women’s reproduction and negotiating reproductive conflict between families and neighbors in this region where resources are scarce and competition over them can be intense. On one hand I ask how this system might encourage cooperation in child rearing between unrelated women; on the other, I am interested in how individuals or coalitions of individuals might manipulate that system to serve their own reproductive interests at the expense of others’.

Field sites ▾

Field sites