Doctoral Dissertation Research: Women and Environmental Identity in the Yucatan: Effects on Resource Access and Environmental Practice

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This doctoral dissertation research project explores the relationships among women's environmental identity, agency, and agricultural and resource extractive practices in the southern Yucatan peninsular region of Mexico. The project also examines whether and under what circumstances there can be a coincidence between women's interests and conservation interests, in a particular location - the rural farming communities bordering the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. This location is undergoing an intensification of agricultural land-use in conjunction with state and non-governmental organization efforts to protect and manage the forest. Conservation and development projects target women's groups organized at the community level, encouraging the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices and sustainable forestry uses. The central thesis of this research project is that some women's groups respond to the presence of these projects through an active adoption of an environmental stewardship identity and that this response is associated with access to formal programs whose projects of sustainable development affect opportunities and constraints on the wellbeing of women and their households. The management of environmental identity is part of a broader strategy to achieve individual and household food security and pursue improvements in consumption by taking advantage of "alternative" practices promoted by formal programs. The research focuses on the following questions: (1) How do women's groups around the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve respond to local conservation and development projects? Is one response the active management of group environmental identity? (2) Why do some women's groups self-identify as environmental stewards and adopt more sustainable practices, while others do not? And (3) what is the impact of these responses on (a) women's access to natural resources, (b) agricultural and extractive practices adopted by the groups, and (c) the wellbeing of participating women? The project is structured into two primary components: personal interviews of smallholder women whose households are engaged primarily in farming, and an ethnographic study of six women's groups active in the project area, with a range of histories, activities, and degree to which the group self-identifies as "green." For the personal interviews, the researcher will interview a random sample of women, stratified to include thirty-five households with participation in "green" women's groups and thirty-five households without participation. A farm visit will accompany each interview, and the researcher will statistically analyze interview responses. The ethnographic research attempts to access the complexity of group processes, as well as enrich and situate the personal interview data of the first research component.The significance of this research centers on its examination of how common ideas within "sustainable development," such as the coincidence of rural women's interests in developing countries with environmental conservation interests, are perhaps being used by groups to their own advantage. There is a tendency to polarize discussion into either/or terms: either women are natural environmental stewards or they are not. The thesis that women's groups in the southern Yucatan peninsular region might be using the notion of women as natural environmental stewards to their material advantage does not necessarily mean that these groups are not in fact adopting more environmentally sound practices. Both theory and conservation and development practice will benefit from a more nuanced understanding of when, why, and under what circumstances particular women consider themselves to be environmental stewards and then also engage in corresponding "green" activities. The results will contribute to local sustainable development efforts around the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve and be of comparative interest to conservation and development efforts elsewhere in the world. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.