Doctoral Dissertation Research: Transnational Corporations and Livelihood Transformation in Peru

近几十年来，跨国公司在世界各地迅速实施了新的商业运作形式。跨国公司在发展中国家的影响尤其深远，在这些国家，外国资本的涌入和管理控制已经改变了以前以当地为导向的经济。许多国家面临的一个日益重要的问题是，跨国公司在多大程度上影响当地发展和居住在它们建立新设施的地区的人民的生计。这一博士论文研究项目将评估新的跨国公司商业活动如何影响秘鲁安第斯山脉北部家庭使用的人力、自然和社会资源。该项目将评估改变获得资源的机会是否以及如何影响家庭生计和家庭内部获得资源的机会，特别是在获得资源的机会是基于性别的情况下。为了解决这些问题，将在秘鲁卡哈马卡地区的三个社区进行为期八个月的基于有意和随机抽样程序的三组不同的密集、半结构化访谈和重点小组。此外，将使用基于档案材料的定性文本和对地理信息系统收集的数据进行分析，以评价跨国公司与生计转型之间关系的性质。这项研究将产生关于秘鲁安第斯山脉家庭生计生产战略以及跨国公司如何为生计转型作出贡献的新的基本数据。该项目还将生成数据，说明跨国公司的活动如何影响基于性别差异的家庭内部资源的获取。该项目将有助于建立一个分析框架，力求了解当地资源变化的不同方面以及国际经济行为者与当地规模之间的联系。实地研究将有助于地理政治生态和女权主义政治生态研究、商业和经济发展研究以及拉丁美洲地理研究的理论发展。此外，该项目将有助于学术和政策辩论，因为它将通过定性和基于地理信息系统的方法确定和评估国际公司采矿活动对当地资本资源的影响。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究事业。

During recent decades, transnational corporations (TNCs) have rapidly implement new forms of business operation throughout the world. The impact of TNCs has been especially profound in developing nations, where previous locally oriented economies have been transformed by the influx of foreign capital and managerial control. An increasingly important question across many nations is the degree to which TNCs impact on local development and on the livelihoods of the people who inhabit regions where they establish new facilities. This doctoral dissertation research project will evaluate how new transnational corporation business activities are affecting the human, natural, and social resources used by households in the northern Peruvian Andes. The project will evaluate if and how changing access to resources has affected household livelihoods and intra-household access to resources, especially as differential access is based on gender. In order to address these questions, three different sets of intensive, semi-structured interviews and focus groups based on intentional and random sampling procedures will be conducted in three communities over the course of eight months in the Cajamarca region of Peru. In addition, both qualitative text-based of archival material and analyses of data collected in a geographic information system will be used to evaluate the nature of the relationships between TNCs and livelihood transformation. The study will generate new basic data on household livelihood production strategies in the Peruvian Andes and how TNCs are contributing to livelihood transformation. The project also will generate data rgearding how TNC activities are affecting intra-household access to resources based on gender differences. The project will contribute to a framework of analysis that seeks to understand the different dimensions of local resource change and the links between international economic actors and the local scale. The field research will contribute to theoretical development in geographic political ecology and feminist political ecology studies, business and economic development research, and Latin American geographic studies. Furthermore, the project will contribute to academic and policy debates as it will identify and assess the impacts of international corporate mining activities on local capital resources through qualitative and GIS-based methodologies. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.