Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Politics of Representing Nature, Culture, and Conservation in Northwestern Bolivia

研究生Teressa Trusty将在Stevan Harrell博士的指导下，对居住在玻利维亚马迪迪国家公园东侧的人们的环境感知和做法进行研究。她的研究将集中在他们对人与环境关系的认知模型，以及这些模型如何影响他们的农业和伐木实践。在国际自然资源保护者的要求下，玻利维亚政府于1995年创建了马迪迪国家公园。这一保护区的形成从安第斯山脉一直延伸到亚马逊盆地，包围了许多社区，并继续影响着公园内和附近居民的日常生活。国际非政府组织试图通过影响当地居民的价值观和信仰来加强他们的保护努力，使他们更加关注自然资源使用的影响。然而，初步研究表明，尽管当地居民对环境影响的概念与非政府组织不同，但他们已经意识到了环境影响。研究的三个目标是：1)评估和解释一系列社区和种族群体中环境文化模式的形成；2)利用这些信息开展一项调查，以衡量研究人群的价值取向和规范信念，以及他们对伐木、牧场、狩猎、采集、农业和参与保护项目的行为意图；以及3)测试价值观、信仰和行为之间的关系，以及研究人群内关于想法和行动的一致意见。这项研究将通过开放式访谈、参与者观察和档案研究，描绘出关于人与环境关系和保护的地方观念。这些定性数据将被用来设计和管理一项文化上合适的调查，以确定价值观和信仰体系被分享、遵守和采取行动的程度。这项调查还将提供数据，用于使用文化共识分析和标准心理测量学来模拟当地对环境的信念。这项研究的结果将推进认知人类学和社会心理学的理论，同时也有助于政治生态学中关于环境感知的越来越多的工作。此外，更好地理解这些想法和行为可以改善非政府组织、玻利维亚政府和生活在这个不断竞争的地区的个人之间的互动。这项研究还将对社会科学家的教育做出重大贡献。

Graduate student, Teressa Trusty, supervised by Dr. Stevan Harrell, will undertake research on the environmental perceptions and practices of people who live along the eastern side of the Madidi National Park in Bolivia. Her research will focus on their cognitive models of the human-environment relationship and how these models affect their practices of agriculture and logging. At the behest of international conservationists, the Bolivian government created Madidi National Park in 1995. Formation of this protected area, which stretches from the Andes to the Amazon Basin, enclosed numerous communities and continues to impact the everyday lives of those who live in and adjacent to the park. International NGOs have sought to strengthen their conservation efforts in part by influencing the values and beliefs of local residents so they become more concerned about impacts from their natural resource use. However, pilot research suggests that local residents already are mindful of environmental impacts, even though they conceptualize them differently than do the NGOs.The three aims of the study are: 1) to assess and explain the formation of the environmental cultural models within a range of communities and ethnic groups; 2) to use this information to develop a survey to measure the value orientations and normative beliefs of the study population and their behavioral intentions towards logging, ranching, hunting, gathering, agriculture, and participation in conservation projects; and 3) to test the relationship between values, beliefs, and behavior and agreement within the study population about ideas and actions. This research will begin by delineating local ideas about the human-environment relationship and conservation through open-ended interviews, participant observation, and archival research. These qualitative data will be used to design and administer a culturally appropriate survey to determine the degree to which the value and belief systems are shared, adhered to, and acted upon.. The survey also will provide data for modeling local beliefs about the environment using cultural consensus analysis and standard psychometrics. The results of this research will advance theory in cognitive anthropology and social psychology while also contributing to the growing body of work on environmental perceptions in political ecology. In addition, better understanding of these ideas and behaviors can ameliorate interactions between NGOs, the Bolivian government, and the individuals living in this continuously contested region. The research also will contribute significantly to the education of a social scientist.