Dissertation Research: The Environment as as Political Resource: Land Reform on the Masoala Penisula, Madagascar

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project involves the dissertation research of a student of cultural anthropology from Washington University, St. Louis. The project is to study the evolving process by which tribal farmers in a rural area of Madagascar defend their claims to farmland in a forested area where the federal government and international NGOs hope to establish a wildlife preserve. Using ethnographic techniques of intensive interviewing about life histories and family histories, coupled with a survey of an entire representative village and a set of intensive interviews on land conflicts, the student will test the proposition that wealthier villagers, who will tend to have been earlier settlers and control more land, can more successfully contest the government's definition of rights to land and affect the evolving social norms in their communities. This research is important because land reform, the protection of forested areas, and the migration of poor farmers to new agricultural zones are global processes taking place all over the developing world. Advances in our understanding of how land use rights become established and accepted by local communities will help planners design more effective programs to defend wildlife areas from encroachment. In addition this project will train a scholar in the culture and ecology of this part of the world.