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情况下，随着时间的推移发展和维持以社区为基础的保护。在人类学实践理论和自然资源管理研究的基础上，研究人员将研究日本茨城的四个渔业合作社。人们经常强调，自19世纪以来，日本渔业合作社在其漫长的历史中，获得特定沿海资源的合法特权财产权帮助它们发展和维持以社区为基础的管理机构。然而，与在这段时间历史上保持静态合作的流行信念相反，这位研究人员假设，这种机构是通过人与人之间以及人与沿海环境之间的动态谈判而建立的。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50年里是如何管理沿海资源的，在这段时期，合作社及其成员经历了与城市化相关的重大社会文化和生态变化。这一深入的历史和民族志研究将提供机会，以了解当代日本文化中实践、情况和背景之间的相互作用，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.