Catching the Wave of Capitalism in the Wake of the Nuclear Age: Subsistence, Development, and Environmental Security in French Polynesia

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This award provides fellowship support to a student for post-doctoral research and training. The student's proposed research project is entitled `Catching the Wave of Capitalism in the Wake of the Nuclear Age: Subsistence, Development, and Environmental Security in French Polynesia.` This study argues that multilateral environmental governance precipitates environmental degradation by failing to recognize the critical role of local resource users and politics in processes of conservation and degradation. In particular, this study focuses on subsistence fishing in Moorea and Raiatea, which is primarily performed by women in lagoons, and provides up to 70 percent of animal protein in the local diet. The thesis is that the recent intensification of fishing, agriculture and tourism results in the marginalization of women's subsistence fishing, increasing scarcity of resources, a breakdown in sustainable marine resource management practices, and new forms of local and regional environmental conflicts. Fieldwork methods include: interviews and participant observation with fishers (men, women, commercial and subsistence) to understand the nature and dimensions of marine resource politics; the design and construction of a Geographic Information System (GIS) which analyzes and maps a variety of conflicting individual, state, and institutional perceptions of marine space and use; and the archival research to determine how the role of women in Polynesian political economy has been shaped by colonial attitudes on gender. Theoretically, this study engages and expands the debates over environmental security, gender, and the environment, and the social implications of Geographic Information Science.