Dissertation Research: Fisheries Cooperatives, Urbanization, and Changing Environments in Japan

研究生Satsuki Takahashi将在Bonnie J. McCay博士的指导下，研究如何在不断变化的环境中发展和维持以社区为基础的保护。该研究员将以人类学实践理论和自然资源管理研究为基础，研究日本茨城市的四个渔业合作社。人们经常强调，自19世纪以来，日本渔业合作社在其悠久的历史中，获得特定沿海资源的法律特权财产权帮助其发展和维持了以社区为基础的管理机构。然而，与这段历史上保持静态合作状态的普遍观点相反，这位研究人员假设，这种制度是通过人与人之间以及人与沿海环境之间的动态谈判建立起来的。通过档案研究、半结构化访谈和参与者观察，研究人员将调查每个合作社在过去五十年中如何管理沿海资源，这是合作社及其成员经历与城市化相关的重大社会文化和生态变化的时期。这项深入的历史和民族志研究将为了解当代日本文化中实践、情境和背景之间的相互作用提供机会，并进一步了解以社区为基础的自然资源管理。

Graduate student Satsuki Takahashi, supervised by Dr. Bonnie J. McCay, will undertake research on how community-based conservation is developed and maintained over time and in changing circumstances. Building on anthropological theories of practice and studies of natural resource management, the researcher will study four fisheries cooperatives in Ibaraki, Japan. It is often emphasized that the legally privileged property rights to access particular coastal resources have helped Japanese fisheries cooperatives develop and maintain community-based management institutions over their long history since the 1800s. Yet, in contrast to the popular belief of a static state of cooperation maintained over this time history, this researcher hypothesizes that such institutions have been constructed through dynamic negotiations among people and between people and their coastal environments. Through archival research, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation, the researcher will investigate how each cooperative has managed coastal resources over the last fifty years, a period when the cooperatives and their members experienced major socio-cultural and ecological changes associated with urbanization. This in-depth historical and ethnographical research will provide opportunities to gain an understanding of the interplay between practices, situations, and contexts in contemporary Japanese culture and to gain further understanding of community-based natural resource management.