Methodological Training For a GIS Application in Cultural Anthropology

该项目将使一名富有成效的高级学者获得地理信息系统方面的培训，这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开发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，由于1970年代石油繁荣的衰退，该地区正在进行经济调整。这项培训将使研究人员能够获得方法方面的专门知识，从而能够在区域基础上分析人种学现象，这是对通常狭隘的人种学观点的重大改进。因此，将比其他方法更详细地描述整个地区的人种学趋势，并将研究如果没有这项新技术就无法提出的有关地区趋势的问题。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.