Methodological Training For a GIS Application in Cultural Anthropology

这个项目将使一位富有成果的高级学者获得地理信息系统方面的培训，地理信息系统是一种计算机密集型技术，用于创建可在空间上操纵的地理数据库。这项工作的一个重要部分将是发展将人种学数据与空间数据联系起来的方法，以便处理墨西哥一个地区的农业集约化问题，该地区由于1970年代石油繁荣的衰退而在经济上进行调整。这种培训将使研究获得方法学上的专门知识，从而能够在区域基础上分析民族志现象，这是对通常狭隘的民族志观点的重大改进。因此，整个地区的人种学趋势将得到更详细的描述，如果没有这种新技术，就不可能提出关于区域趋势的问题。此外，研究人员将能够在这一重要技术方面培训研究生。

This project will permit a productive senior scholar to gain training in GIS, a computer intensive technique employed to create geographic data bases that can be spatially manipulated. An important part of the work will be developing ways in which to link ethnographic data with spatial data in order to deal with the problem of agricultural intensification in an area of Mexico that is economically realigning itself as a result of decline in the oil boom of the 1970s. This training will allow the research gain methodological expertise that will permit the analysis of ethnographic phenomena on a regional basis, a major improvement over a usual narrow ethnographic perspective. As a result, ethnographic trends over entire regions will be described in greater detail than would otherwise be possible and questions about regional trends that could not otherwise be asked without this new technique will be studied. In addition, the researcher will be able to train graduate students in this important technique.