Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Remains of Agriculture: Rural Transformation in Hamakua District, Hawaii

最近关于新农村地区的文献研究了农村移民的影响（即农业用地的碎片化、社会隔离、土地价格上涨），但在很大程度上忽视了一些郊区移民的环境和管理价值和动机，以及他们在农业生产和土地管理的新时代过渡的潜力。在夏威夷，随着20世纪末种植园经济的崩溃，大量的休闲移民和经济多样化的涌入，导致了乡村景观的迅速变化。作为回应，规划者和政策制定者已经转向农田保护工具，以缓解农村正在发生的变化。然而，这些工具根植于美国大陆的农田保护理念，这与夏威夷农业过去的经济、社会和环境历史形成鲜明对比，在夏威夷，一个多世纪以来，大型糖或菠萝种植园主导了景观、农村生活和当地经济。结果是，夏威夷的农场社区试图创造而不是保护乡村景观。在夏威夷马诺阿大学Krisnawati Suryanata博士的指导下，博士生Nicole Milne将调查农业在Hamakua农村居民生活中的社会和意识形态角色，以及各种利益相关者如何构建，谈判和竞争当代夏威夷农村农业的竞争愿景。该项目将通过焦点小组会议、调查、参与者观察和为期12个月的实地调查的深度访谈，以及从州和县机构、公共会议和大众媒体获得的档案信息收集原始数据。该项目将从政治经济和文化角度批判性地审视资源利用的政治，以了解在社会话语和物质实践中，农业Hamakua的特定愿景和价值观是如何表达的。它将协助土地利用规划者、社区组织和其他参与设计指导农村社区农业和土地利用的可行政策的人员，提高可获得的社会经济和农业信息水平，以支持制定健全的土地利用政策，并促进滨川各子社区内部和之间的讨论、知识共享和网络。

Recent literature on new rural areas has examined the impacts of rural migrants (i.e., fragmentation of agricultural land, social segregation, rising land prices), but has largely overlooked the environmental and stewardship values and motivations of some exurban migrants and their potential to transition in a new era in agricultural production and land stewardship. In Hawaii, an influx of amenity migrants and economic diversification, following the collapse of plantation economy in the late twentieth century, have led to rapidly changing rural landscapes. In response, planners and policy makers have turned to farmland preservation tools to mitigate the changes taking place in the countryside. However, these tools are rooted in the farmland preservation ideals of the U.S. mainland, which are in contrast to the economic, social, and environmental histories of Hawaii's agricultural past where large sugar or pineapple plantations have dominated the landscape, rural life, and local economy for over a century. The result is that farm communities in Hawaii attempt to create, rather than preserve rural landscapes.Doctoral student Nicole Milne, under the supervision of Dr. Krisnawati Suryanata at the University of Hawaii Manoa will investigate the social and ideological role agriculture plays in the lives of Hamakua's rural residents, and how various stakeholders construct, negotiate, and contest competing visions of the place of agriculture in contemporary rural Hawaii. The project will collect primary data through focus group meetings, surveys, participant observation, and in-depth interviews over 12 months of fieldwork, as well as archival information derived from state and county institutions, public meetings, and popular media. This project will critically examine the politics of resource use from political economy and cultural perspectives to understand how particular visions and values for an agrarian Hamakua are expressed over others, both within social discourse and through material practices. It will assist land use planners, community organizations, and others involved in the design of viable policies guiding agriculture and land use in rural communities, improve the level of socioeconomic and agricultural information available to support the development of sound land use policies, and facilitate discussion, knowledge sharing, and networking within and between Hamakua's various sub-communities.