The human stress response has been shaped by natural selection to manage acute environmental challenges. While short-term activation of this response is imperative for survival, its chronic stimulation can lead to negative health consequences due to dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and its end product, the glucocorticoid cortisol. In fact, chronic psychosocial stress has been identified as an important pathway through which lifestyle alterations associated with market integration (MI; the degree of production for and consumption from a market-based economy) impact traditionally-living societies experiencing rapid cultural changes. Few studies, however, have systematically examined the relationships between MI and HPA axis activity. Moreover, limited research has examined how factors associated with MI influence children's perceptions of the shifting cultural milieu. The primary goal of this dissertation was to illuminate the dynamic features of the human stress response among the indigenous Shuar of Amazonian Ecuador with four objectives: 1) To examine HPA axis activity among the Shuar to address fundamental questions about the basic biological mechanisms of the human stress response; 2) To examine individual differences in HPA axis activity as shaped by age, sex, and body mass index (BMI); 3) To evaluate how factors associated with MI influence the HPA axis activity of Shuar children and adolescents; and 4) To utilize a conceptual model (cultural consonance) to better understand how Shuar youth perceive changes in the sociocultural environment. Results suggested that age was positively associated with cortisol levels, while age and sex moderated the relationship between BMI and the decline in cortisol across the day. Factors associated with MI did not directly affect the cortisol patterns of Shuar children and adolescents; however, age, sex, and BMI moderated these relationships. For example, Shuar youth experiencing greater exposure to MI displayed age-related increases in waking cortisol levels. Finally, Shuar children and adolescents with less exposure to MI demonstrated more incongruity with their locally-defined model of lifestyle success due to limited access to items identified as important for “a good life”. These studies illustrate the complexity of the human stress response in the context of culture change. This dissertation includes unpublished, co-authored materials. / 10000-01-01

This dissertation is a study of diverse linguistic resources and contentious identity politics among indigenous Amazonian Kichwas in the city of Tena, Ecuador. Tena is a rapidly developing Amazonian provincial capital city with a long history of interethnic and interlinguistic contact. In recent decades, the course of indigenous Kichwa identity formation has been dramatically altered by increasing urban relocation, a burgeoning international eco-tourism industry, a generational language shift toward Spanish monolingualism, and the introduction of bilingual and intercultural education into native communities.The current era of nationalistic Ecuadorian "interculturality" and cultural tourism have heightened the public visibility of threatened indigenous practices. Paralleling these national social currents has been a growing indigenous activist movement in Ecuador that has very recently introduced a controversial new Kichwa language-planning project in Napo province. The national standard, Unified Kichwa, is currently being taught to a young population of indigenous students in the Tena region in an effort to create cultural and political solidarity among geographically separate communities. The move has been met with considerable backlash from Tena Kichwas who believe local Amazonian language identity and "natural" socialization practices are under threat of displacement.As part of this fracturing of ideologies surrounding language production and socialization, Tena Kichwas are creating innovative strategies for objectifying marked linguistic forms in order to use them for specific political purposes. The city of Tena has been reconceptualized as an indigenous space for publicly exhibiting opposing identity construction strategies, particularly through the use of new semiotic media, including folkloric performance and mass-communications technology. Language choice, variation and change are becoming very apparently politicized in this unique socio-cultural milieu, where new and old varieties are being symbolically elevated and denigrated through high-profile semiotic work. Language has become a critical site for the intellectualization of cultural change and a key vehicle for asserting rights to self-representation and self-determination.This dissertation combines theoretical and methodological approaches in linguistic anthropology, ethnographic sociolinguistics and discourse analysis to examine language variation, change and ideologization in progress. It attempts to illuminate aspects of the process by which language forms emerge and transform as products of social experience.