Doctoral Dissertation Research: Impact of HIV/AIDS on the Wild Harvesting Movements of Women and Girls in Former Transkei

南非是世界上艾滋病毒/艾滋病感染率最高的国家，但仍在遭受种族隔离的影响。这场大流行进一步加剧了男性城市移民对现有农村劳动力的制约。与此同时，环保人士对艾滋病毒/艾滋病导致对野生自然资源收获的依赖加深表示担忧。因此，疾病的政治生态适合探索农村妇女和女孩如何在野生资源收获的背景下应对劳动力限制。问题是，一群沉默的用户依赖于几乎没有国家利益的开放获取自然资源，同时遭受着社区不愿谈论的流行病的痛苦。因此，这项研究将调查农村妇女和儿童在应对艾滋病毒/艾滋病对家庭的影响时的环境空间行为。其目的是：1)模拟妇女和女童野生收获的不同空间分布，以比较来自受艾滋病毒/艾滋病影响的家庭和未受影响的家庭的个人；2)了解在农村贫困和健康状况不佳的情况下，决定个人和家庭野生收获时空分配的疾病的背景政治生态。该项目假设，大流行造成的劳动力限制将影响个人的空间流动性，这由野生资源活动的总体活动空间决定。因此，拟议工作将着眼于个人和家庭一级的流动性问题，将其作为一项重要资产，并在依赖自然资源的农村生计战略中加以适应。将采用混合方法将地理空间工具与政治生态相结合，将对全球定位系统得出的自我绘制的每日轨迹进行分析，利用全球定位系统进行参与性民族地图绘制，以及背景半结构化访谈和社会经济调查数据。这种综合的扎根分析可以帮助建立一个当地微观机构的框架，并对妇女和女孩在与野生采伐有关的流行病中的行为应对战略和反应进行理论分析。妇女和儿童的野生收获是南非受艾滋病毒/艾滋病影响的公共土地上多样化的农村生计系统的一个组成部分。然而，不同的收割机的条件因子以及随后这种收获的更精细的分布在文献中并没有很好的描述。过去的研究侧重于这一流行病对人口的影响，因为它与自然资源的使用有关，而很少注意随后可能发生的野生资源动态利用的不同空间分布。这项拟议的研究将首次在跨越城乡鸿沟的宏观政治生态中对感染艾滋病毒/艾滋病的妇女和女童的这种日常环境行为进行空间微观地理调查。由于这一流行病是一种多层面的冲击，只有通过这种综合方法，人们才能更好地了解其规模和复杂性。这项研究将有助于编写关于非洲野生采摘的一般文献，同时特别涉及了解妇女和女童在艾滋病毒/艾滋病大流行阴影下的空间环境行为的必要性。还需要了解这一流行病如何影响个人开采脆弱的自然资源，以指导今后的减贫和可持续自然资源管理综合政策干预。这里学到的任何经验教训不仅适用于非洲其他受艾滋病毒/艾滋病困扰的地区，而且也适用于世界其他地区更普遍的公共卫生研究。拟议的研究还将培训当地以前处于不利地位的非洲学生学习地理信息系统以及一些研究方法。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。该项目由地理与区域科学计划和国际科学与工程办公室共同支持。

South Africa has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world while still suffering from the legacy of apartheid. The pandemic puts a further stress on existing rural labor constraints caused by male urban migration. Concurrently, environmentalists have raised concerns about the deepening reliance on the harvest of wild natural resources as a result of HIV/AIDS. A political ecology of disease is therefore fitting to explore how rural women and girls cope with labor constraints within the context of wild resource harvesting. The problem is that of a silenced group of users dependent upon open access natural resources of little national interest while suffering from an epidemic that the community prefers not to speak of. The research will therefore investigate rural women's and children's environmental spatial behaviors while coping with the household impact of HIV/AIDS in the former homeland Transkei. The objectives are to: 1) model the varying spatial distribution of wild harvesting among women and girls to compare individuals from HIV/AIDS afflicted households with non-afflicted households 2) and understand the contextual political ecology of disease that condition individual and household spatiotemporal allocation of wild harvesting in a context of rural poverty and poor health. The project hypothesizes that the labor constraints caused by the pandemic will influence individuals' spatial mobility as determined by the overall activity space of wild resource activities. Consequently, the proposed work will look at the issue of mobility on an individual and household level as an important asset and adaptation in rural natural resource-dependent livelihood strategies. Using a mixed methods approach to integrate geospatial tools with political ecology, there will be analyses of GPS-derived self-mapped daily trajectories, participatory ethnomapping with GPS, as well as contextual semi-structured interviews and socio-economic survey data. Such an integrated grounded analysis can help develop a framework of local micro-agency and to theorize about women's and girls' behavioral coping strategies and responses to the pandemic as they relate to wild harvesting.Wild harvesting by women and children is an integral part of the diversified rural livelihood system in South Africa's HIV/AIDS affected communal lands. Yet the varying harvesters' conditioning factors and subsequent finer-scaled distributions of such harvesting are not well represented in the literature. Past research has focused on the demographic impact of the epidemic as it relates to natural resource use while there is scant attention paid to subsequent possible varying spatial distribution of dynamic wild resource use. The proposed research will present the first spatial micro-geography investigation of such daily environmental behaviors of women and girls living with HIV/AIDS within a macro-political ecology straddling the urban-rural divide. Because this epidemic is a multi-dimensional shock it is only through such an integrated approach that one can come to better understand its magnitude and complexity. This study will contribute to the literature on wild harvesting extraction in Africa generally while specifically addressing the need to understand women's and girls' spatial environmental behavior in the shadow of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. An understanding of how the pandemic influences individuals in their extraction of fragile natural resources is also needed to guide future integrated policy interventions for poverty alleviation and sustainable natural resource management. Any lessons learned here can be applied not only to other HIV/AIDS afflicted regions in Africa but also to more general public health studies in other parts of the world. The proposed research will also train local previously disadvantaged African students in GIS as well as a number of research methods. 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. This project is jointly supported by the Geography and Regional Science Program and the Office of International Science and Engineering.