Doctoral Dissertation Research: Agro-Ecosystems and the Politics of Commodity Reregulation in Veracruz's Coffee Lands

博士论文研究：韦拉克鲁斯咖啡地的农业生态系统和商品重新管制政治

• 批准号: 0728313
• 负责人: Paul Robbins
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-09-01 至 2009-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0728313&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Agro; Ecosystems

Volatility in the global coffee market has deeply impacted the world's 25 million coffee producers, most of whom are smallholders in developing nations. In Veracruz, Mexico, where the national coffee agency had been headquartered since the 1960s, smallholders were doubly impacted by market collapse and the dismantling of state programs during the 1980s. Coffee producers developed unique strategies to weather the impacts of economic transformation, ranging from alternative crops to outright political activism. State agencies recently developed programs that attempt to directly control rural producers and environmental management in the manner of traditional, top-down resource politics. State actors now must accommodate more heterogeneous configurations of power that developed in the post-1980s Veracruz countryside, however. While recent studies have examined how forms of social organization contest the more egregious effects of economic and institutional restructuring, such analyses have not given much attention to coffee, especially in Mexico. In addition, relatively few studies have examined how the state itself responds to, co-opts, and/or integrates these socioecological changes. This doctoral dissertation research project seeks answers to the following questions: How have small-scale coffee producers developed new social networks and environmental strategies to mediate the impacts of socioeconomic change? Are changes in land use resulting from these new social relationships? How have these socioecological practices shaped the state's role in regulating coffee landscapes? The doctoral candidate will test answers to these questions using a multi-method approach, including a combination of ethnographic techniques, including semi-structured interviews with coffee producers and officials from producer organizations and government agencies. The relationships between social organization and land-use change will be measured through local mapping projects and through time series analysis of remotely sensed LANDSAT images.This research will bridge a gap in the literature by explaining how coffee producers at the household level are active agents of global economic and social change rather than merely passive victims. A deeper sense of the connections between social organization and farm-level practices also has material implications for the ecologically diverse shade-grown coffee landscape. Scholarly discussion on land-cover change has identified the need for case studies and theoretically robust analyses that directly relate actual land-cover transformations to economic, institutional, and political change. This project will address this need by articulating quantitative data with interviews and discourse analysis of official documents and programs. Because this project will link socioeconomic transformation to actual changes in rural livelihoods and land use, it will help identify the types of social relationships and environmental practices that are most sustainable for both the shade-grown coffee agro-ecosystems and the families they sustain. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.

全球咖啡市场的动荡深深地影响了世界上2500万咖啡生产商，其中大多数是发展中国家的小农户。在墨西哥的韦拉克鲁斯，国家咖啡机构的总部自20世纪60年代以来一直设在那里，小农户在20世纪80年代受到市场崩溃和国家项目取消的双重影响。咖啡生产商制定了独特的战略，以应对经济转型的影响，从替代作物到彻底的政治行动主义。国家机构最近开发了一些项目，试图以传统的、自上而下的资源政治方式直接控制农村生产者和环境管理。然而，国家行为者现在必须适应80年代后韦拉克鲁斯农村发展起来的更多样化的权力配置。虽然最近的研究考察了各种社会组织形式如何对抗经济和体制改革的更严重影响，但此类分析并未对咖啡给予太多关注，特别是在墨西哥。此外，相对较少的研究考察了国家本身如何应对、拉拢和/或整合这些社会生态变化。这一博士论文研究项目寻求以下问题的答案：小规模咖啡生产商如何开发新的社会网络和环境战略，以调解社会经济变化的影响？土地利用的变化是这些新的社会关系的结果吗？这些社会生态实践如何塑造了该州在监管咖啡景观方面的角色？博士生将使用多种方法测试这些问题的答案，包括人种学技术的组合，包括对咖啡生产商以及生产商组织和政府机构的官员的半结构化面试。社会组织和土地利用变化之间的关系将通过当地测绘项目和遥感陆地卫星图像的时间序列分析来衡量。这项研究将弥补文献中的一个空白，解释家庭一级的咖啡生产者如何成为全球经济和社会变化的积极推动者，而不仅仅是被动的受害者。对社会组织和农场实践之间联系的更深层次的认识，也对生态多样化的遮荫种植的咖啡景观产生了实质性的影响。关于土地覆盖变化的学术讨论确定了需要进行案例研究和理论上强有力的分析，将实际的土地覆盖变化与经济、体制和政治变化直接联系起来。该项目将通过对官方文件和方案进行访谈和语篇分析，将定量数据联系起来，以满足这一需要。由于该项目将把社会经济转型与农村生计和土地利用的实际变化联系起来，它将有助于确定对遮荫种植的咖啡农业生态系统及其养活的家庭来说最可持续的社会关系和环境做法类型。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究事业。