Doctoral Dissertation Research: Expanding Cultivation, Land, and Livelihood Transformations in Southern Morocco

肯塔基州大学的博士生凯伦·E. Rignall在丽莎·克里格特博士的指导下，将研究干旱地区生计转变对土地利用的影响。在世界各地的干旱和半干旱地区，历史上用于放牧的土地越来越多地被改为农田。这对旱地农业的环境可持续性、农村生计的经济可行性以及不平等影响人们获得生产性资源的方式具有重要影响。这项研究将在摩洛哥南部阿特拉斯山脉和撒哈拉沙漠之间的一个绿洲进行，具体审查农民如何获得牧场耕种，以及他们的战略如何影响他们自己的生计保障和其他家庭的安全。研究设计将侧重于家庭生计战略的案例研究，以阐明生计的变化如何与人们获得、交换和使用土地的方式的变化相关联。特别是，它将跟踪生计多样化的影响-特别是劳动力迁移的增加-家庭获得牧场转换为农田的能力差异。一系列半结构化的访谈，更大的样本将测试案例研究的更广泛的适用性，这项研究将有助于扩大种植如何与更广泛的农业变革进程的社会科学的理解。对土地保有权、社会分层和不断变化的生计战略的文化背景的人种学关注将揭示扩大种植如何可能在获得土地机会减少的家庭中造成新形式的脆弱性。这将对将农村生计与土地保有权和土地使用联系起来的学术、政策和发展规划产生影响。这项研究还将有助于培养一名社会科学家。

University of Kentucky doctoral student, Karen E. Rignall, under the direction of Dr. Lisa Cliggett, will examine the effects of livelihood transformations on land use in arid regions. In arid and semi-arid areas around the world, lands historically used for grazing are increasingly being converted into farmland. This has important implications for the environmental sustainability of arid-lands agriculture, the economic viability of rural livelihoods, and the ways that inequality shapes people's access to productive resources. The research will specifically examine how farmers acquire rangelands for cultivation and how their strategies affect their own livelihood security and the security of other households.The study will take place in a southern Moroccan oasis that lies between the Atlas mountains and the Saharan desert. The research design will focus on case studies of household livelihood strategies in order to shed light on how changes in livelihoods relate to changes in the way people acquire, exchange, and use land. In particular, it will trace the impact of livelihood diversification -- especially the rise of labor migration -- on the differential abilities of households to acquire rangelands for conversion into farmland. A series of semi-structured interviews with a larger sample will test the broader applicability of the case studies.This study will contribute social scientific understanding of how expanded cultivation relates to broader processes of agrarian change. An ethnographic focus on the cultural context of land tenure, social stratification, and changing livelihood strategies will shed light on how expanded cultivation may create new forms of vulnerability among households with reduced access to land. This will have implications for scholarship, policy, and development planning that relate rural livelihoods to land tenure and land use. The research will also contribute to the training of a social scientist.