CAREER: Political Ecologies of Health: Coupling Livelihood and Environment Responses to HIV/AIDS

本研究项目利用政治生态学的地理子领域来研究生计系统为应对艾滋病毒/艾滋病而改变的方式。将利用定量和定性方法在南非的Mzinti、Schoemansdal和nunda社区完成深入研究，以评估对艾滋病毒/艾滋病的生计反应。该研究认为，特定的生计响应是自然资源的集约化，这将通过增加对木材、药用植物、牲畜、茅草/芦苇和食物（小规模农业、鱼类、收集的植被和昆虫）的收集、使用和依赖来衡量。预计自然资源集约化程度在家庭和社区内部各不相同，并受到若干因素的影响，特别是现有家庭资产、资源可得性、获取模式、性别动态和管理自然资源的机构关系。该研究项目断言，需要关注生计与环境之间的耦合关系，以了解疾病如何导致社会和环境系统的转变，以及这些系统如何反过来塑造疾病的轨迹和可持续管理的可能性。南非受到的打击尤其严重，估计仍是世界上受感染人口最多的国家之一。虽然艾滋病毒/艾滋病改变了社会和环境系统，但研究往往依赖于国家数据集，并集中于该疾病对收入和农业生产的影响。这减少了对地方一级影响艾滋病毒/艾滋病的动态以及家庭应对疾病传播和成人死亡的具体方式的关注。鉴于与其他健康危机不同，艾滋病毒/艾滋病的影响已被证明是在较长时间内发生的，是渐进的，而且在社区和区域内通常是不平衡的，因此特别需要这些分析。该研究项目旨在制定一个综合方案，审查健康与生计决策之间的关系。为此，它将在南非进行为期五年的深入研究，具体审查生计系统如何根据艾滋病毒/艾滋病作出调整，针对艾滋病毒/艾滋病的生计对策如何改变获取模式和管理资源使用的规则，以及家庭内部和社区内部对艾滋病毒/艾滋病的生计对策是否存在差异。除了其研究目标外，该项目还将促进宾夕法尼亚州立大学、宾夕法尼亚州和南非的综合教育和推广活动。该项目的教育目标是在宾夕法尼亚州立大学建立一个研究和教学工作组，指导本科生和研究生的研究和教学，并开发新的健康地理学本科和研究生课程。该项目还包括若干外展目标，特别是为国际“我的社区，我们的地球”（MyCOE）项目开发教育单位，创建一个在线资源中心，向宾夕法尼亚州的中学传播教育材料，并与南非机构建立研究和政策联系，这些机构提出政策建议，以改善向艾滋病毒/艾滋病患者家庭提供的服务。本项目由美国国家科学基金会地理与空间科学计划和美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

This research project draws upon the geographic subfield of political ecology to examine the ways that livelihood systems are transformed in response to HIV/AIDS. Intensive research utilizing quantitative and qualitative methods will be completed in the communities of Mzinti, Schoemansdal, and Ntunda in South Africa to evaluate livelihood responses to HIV/AIDS. This research theorizes that a specific livelihood response is the intensification of natural resources, which will be measured as the increasing collection, use and dependency upon wood, medicinal plants, livestock, thatch grasses/reeds, and food (small scale agriculture, fish, collected vegetation, and insects). It is expected that natural resource intensification varies within households and communities, and is shaped by a number of factors, specifically existing household assets, resource availability, access patterns, gender dynamics, and the institutional relationships governing natural resources. This research project asserts that attending to the coupled relationships between livelihoods and the environment is needed to understand how disease results in transformations to social and environmental systems, and how these systems in turn shape the trajectories of disease and the possibilities for sustainable management. South Africa has been particularly hard hit and continues to have one of the largest estimated infected populations in the world. While HIV/AIDS has transformed social and environmental systems, research has tended to rely upon national data sets and concentrated upon the impacts of the disease on income and agricultural production. This has reduced attention to local-level dynamics that shape the impacts of HIV/AIDS and the specific ways that households respond to disease transmission and adult mortality. These analyses are particularly needed given that, unlike other health crises, the effects of HIV/AIDS have been shown to occur over a longer time period, are gradual and incremental, and are generally uneven within communities and regions. This research project is designed to produce an integrative program that examines the relationships between health and livelihood decision-making. It will do so by conducting intensive research in South Africa over five years to specifically examine how livelihood systems adjust in response to HIV/AIDS, how livelihood responses to HIV/AIDS rework access patterns and the rules governing resource use, and whether variations in intra-household and intra-community livelihood responses to HIV/AIDS. In addition to its research objectives, this program will promote integrated educational and outreach activities at Penn State University, in the state of Pennsylvania, and in South Africa. The educational objectives of this project are to establish a research and teaching working group at Penn State University, mentor undergraduate and graduate students in research and teaching, and develop new undergraduate and graduate courses on health geographies. The project also includes several outreach objectives, specifically the development of educational units for the international My Community, Our Earth (MyCOE) project, create an online resource center for the dissemination of educational materials to secondary schools in Pennsylvania, and establish research and policy linkages with South African institutions that produce policy recommendations to improve service delivery to households suffering from HIV/AIDS. This project is jointly supported by the NSF Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.