Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Conservation and Customary Law in Coastal Southwest Madagascar

研究生Elaina Lill(佐治亚大学)在J.Peter Brosius博士和Bram Tucker博士的指导下，将进行多地点的人种学研究，以调查试图在自然资源管理中利用被认为是传统习惯法的努力和效果。研究人员将重点研究马达加斯加传统习惯法DINA的案例，以及它如何被用于Veldriake项目，这是一个为马达加斯加Vezo人开发的社区自然资源管理倡议。初步研究表明，Vezo渔民在历史上并没有实践DINA或任何明确的资源管理传统。但在过去的五年里，一个外国非政府组织(NGO)在共同管理的Veldriake项目中宣传了Dina的思想和做法。研究人员将使用参与者观察、焦点跟踪、一年两次的家庭问卷、文化领域技术、访谈和文件研究的结果来：1)探索国家政府、国际非政府组织保护机构和Vezo人自己如何理解和构建Dina的文化模型；2)将Dina的Vezo文化模型与他们实际的沿海觅食行为进行比较；3)调查市场和保护项目如何影响Vezo的福利和对环境的感知；最后，4)调查市场如何影响Vezo对Veldriake项目的参与。这项研究之所以重要，是因为它将有助于改进合作努力，以制定有意义的参与性办法来管理发展中国家的资源。它还将增进对传统的“发明”、它与制度发展的关系以及它对社会、经济和环境变化的影响的学术理解。资助这项研究还支持研究生的教育。

Graduate student Elaina Lill (University of Georgia), supervised by Dr. J. Peter Brosius and Dr. Bram Tucker, will conduct multi-sited ethnographic research to investigate efforts and effects of trying to utilize what is thought to be traditional customary law in natural resource management. The researcher will focus on the case of Malagasy traditional customary law known as dina, and how it has been employed in the Velondriake project, a community-based natural resource management initiative developed for the Vezo people in Madagascar. Preliminary research suggests that Vezo fishers did not historically practice dina, or any explicit resource management tradition. But for the past five years, a foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) has promoted dina ideology and practices in the co-managed Velondriake project. The researcher will use the results of participant observation, focal follows, a biannual household questionnaire, cultural domain techniques, interviews, and document research to: 1) explore how the national government, international NGO conservation agents, and Vezo people themselves understand and construct cultural models of dina; 2) compare Vezo cultural models of dina to their actual coastal foraging behavior; 3) investigate how markets and conservation projects affect Vezo welfare and perception of the environment; and finally, 4) investigate how markets influence participation in the Velondriake project. This research is important because it will contribute to improving collaborative efforts to develop meaningful participatory approaches to resource management in the developing world. It will also improve scholarly understanding of the "invention" of tradition, its relationship to institutional development,and its effects on social, economic, and environmental change. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.