Dissertation Improvement: Ethnobotanical Knowledge and Communication Networks: An Interactionist Approach to Understanding Indigenous Education in the Sierra Tarahumara, Mexico

这项研究项目将由乔治亚大学人类学专业的一名博士生进行，有助于了解正式和非正式社会背景下知识获取和转移的一些过程。植物知识多样性和共识被认为与交流网络结构和群落互动模式的变化有关。定性和定量技术用于检验这些假设，并记录了墨西哥奇瓦瓦州几个Raramuri （Tarahumara）社区民族植物学知识的变化和变化。该项目在三个互动层面上确定了影响儿童和成人植物专业知识差异的环境因素：1)家庭之间的社会互动模式；2)儿童与环境的直接互动，包括生物物理和社会文化；3)孩子的个人特征和社会角色。研究结果将有助于发展土著教育的互动模式，并有助于理解个人学习与社区变革进程之间的关系。它还将为正在进行的拉穆里生物文化保护工作和设计有效的环境教育项目作出贡献。

This research project, to be conducted by a doctoral student in Anthropology at the University of Georgia, contributes to an understanding of some of the processes of knowledge acquisition and transfer in formal and informal social contexts. Plant knowledge diversity and consensus are hypothesized to be correlated with variation in the structure of communication networks and community interaction patterns. Qualitative and quantitative techniques are used to test these hypotheses and document variation in ethnobotanical knowledge and change in several Raramuri (Tarahumara) communities in Chihuahua, Mexico. The project identifies environmental factors contributing to differential botanical expertise among children and adults at three levels of interaction: 1) the social interaction patterns between households; 2) a child's immediate environment interactions, both biophysical and sociocultural; and 3) a child's personal characteristics and social roles. Results will contribute to the development of an interactionist model of indigenous education, and to understanding the relationships between individual learning and community processes of change. It will also contribute to ongoing Raramuri biocultural conservation efforts and to the design of effective environmental education projects.