This award to the Institute for Development Anthropology, a non- profit research organization, will allow three senior anthropologists to oversee the prototype research to establish linked longitudinal field research sites wherein anthropologists can test hypotheses about economic development and social change. Extensive work by two of the PIs over the past 30 years has established a rich database on four Tonga villages in the Gwembe Valley, Zambia. The present research will computerize the data into an annualized time-series, process the most recent (1981/2) census and extend the database to 1988. They will also construct an exogenous factor database of world economic changes which have impacted this region (including wages, commodity prices, and ecological and environmental data). They will use remote sensing data to construct an allied database of environmental data. This research is important because it is a beginning in a long- term procedure to create a comparative theoretical and factual framework. Studies in isolated villages in distant regions of the world can be productively compared against a framework of quantitative measurements of world processes. Theories about causes and consequences of economic development will be able to be tested quantitatively with reference to a wide range of economic, social, environemtal and ecological variables.
