Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Reindigenization and in situ Conservation of Crop Diversity in the Andes

博士论文改进补助金：安第斯山脉作物多样性的重新本土化和就地保护

• 批准号: 0921859
• 负责人: Virginia Nazarea
• 金额: $ 1.49万
• 依托单位: University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-08-01 至 2012-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0921859&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Reindigenization

University of Georgia doctoral student, Kristine Skarbo, with guidance from Dr. Virginia Nazarea, will undertake research on how sociocultural factors affect the way farmers maintain crop diversity. Her research will focus on the Ecuadorian Andes. The Andean region long has been a center of origin of agriculture, where farmers have domesticated and developed a wealth of varieties with distinct properties and genetic make-ups within a number of crop species. Over recent decades, this diversity has declined, in part because indigenous practices have been devalued and people have turned away from traditional foods. However, recently there have been radical shifts in political as well as social landscapes across the Andean region, sometimes referred to as "reindigenization." By recasting indigeneity in a more positive light, these developments provide a natural laboratory in which to better understand the relationship between social, cultural, and political processes and the maintenance of crop diversity. The researcher will employ a mixture of social science research methods, including participant observation, archival research, focus group discussions, life history interviews, ethnobotanical collection, a seasonal interview survey, and comparison with a crop diversity data set collected in the study area six years earlier. These qualitative and quantitative data will allow her to assess whether the reindigenization process can be linked to changes over time in the symbolic values of food, food consumption patterns, and crop diversity. This research is important because it will produce a detailed measurement of the region's crop diversity and how it has changed over the past six years. By also connecting this changing inventory to cultural and political changes, the research will advance social scientific understanding of the connections between the larger society, farmer management, and plant genetic resources. Thus the research will contribute to both local and global conservation and development efforts, as well as to the education of a graduate student.

格鲁吉亚大学博士生克里斯汀·斯卡博将在弗吉尼亚·纳扎里亚博士的指导下，研究社会文化因素如何影响农民保持作物多样性的方式。她的研究将集中在厄瓜多尔的安第斯山脉。安第斯地区长期以来一直是农业起源的中心，农民驯化和开发了大量具有不同特性和遗传组成的作物品种。近几十年来，这种多样性有所下降，部分原因是土著做法被贬低，人们不再食用传统食物。然而，最近整个安第斯地区的政治和社会格局发生了根本性的变化，有时被称为“再本土化”。“通过以更积极的眼光重新塑造印第安人，这些发展提供了一个天然的实验室，可以更好地了解社会、文化和政治进程与维持作物多样性之间的关系。研究人员将采用社会科学研究方法的混合物，包括参与者观察，档案研究，焦点小组讨论，生活史访谈，民族植物学收集，季节性访谈调查，并与六年前在研究区域收集的作物多样性数据集进行比较。这些定性和定量数据将使她能够评估再本土化过程是否可以与食物、食物消费模式和作物多样性的象征价值随时间的变化联系起来。这项研究很重要，因为它将详细衡量该地区的作物多样性及其在过去六年中的变化。通过将这种不断变化的库存与文化和政治变化联系起来，这项研究将促进对更大社会，农民管理和植物遗传资源之间联系的社会科学理解。因此，这项研究将有助于当地和全球的保护和发展工作，以及研究生的教育。