Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting the Domestication of Energy among Tree Farmers in a Deforestation Context

佛罗里达大学博士候选人和国家科学基金会研究生研究员安德鲁·塔特将在杰拉尔德·f·默里博士的指导下进行研究，以发现、记录和理解说服一些农民种植或保留树木作为经济作物的各种因素，以生产能源产品——木炭。塔特的研究将有助于记录一个早期假设的人类学理论的出现，即“能量的驯化”。这一理论范式在一定程度上通过自愿的、广泛的农民参与早期人类学设计的农林业项目得到了验证；然而，广泛的自愿植树或保留树木尚未有学术文件证明是独立于外部投入而发生的。要理解这种向能源范式驯化的自主转变的原因，需要收集和比较一系列社会文化、经济、生态和空间因素的数据，这些因素被认为对随机选择的私有土地上的树木覆盖水平有不同的影响。这些数据将通过各种方法获得，包括半结构化访谈、社会网络分析、森林样带、土壤分类、卫星图像分析以及GIS和GPS技术的利用。这些数据将通过在海地进行的长期参与者观察和民族志访谈产生的见解进行背景化。将出现的是对导致能源驯化的因素的更清晰的理解，对现有的和新的理论结构的创造和改进，以及对土地利用预测模型的产生。这个模型将有助于预测那些最容易接受或已经参与到能源驯化范式转变中的农民。塔特的研究有可能影响决策者；植树和重新造林的努力仍然是非政府组织和政府组织的主要优先事项。此外，在森林砍伐严重的国家进行人类学研究将为其他森林砍伐国家的决策者提供重要的比较数据。

University of Florida doctoral candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow Andrew Tarter, under the guidance of Dr. Gerald F. Murray, will undertake research to discover, document, and understand the various factors that persuade some farmers to plant or retain trees for harvest as a cash crop, producing an energy-generating product - charcoal. Tarter's research will help document the emergence of an earlier posited anthropological theory, 'the domestication of energy'. This theoretical paradigm was partly validated through voluntary, widespread farmer participation in an earlier anthropologically-designed agroforestry project; however, widespread voluntary tree-planting or -retention has yet to be academically documented to occur independent of external inputs.Understanding the causes for this autonomous shift toward a domestication of energy paradigm calls for the collection and comparison of data on a range of sociocultural, economical, ecological and spatial factors thought to differentially affect levels of tree cover on randomly selected plots of privately owned land. These data will be procured through a variety of methods including semi-structured interviews, metrics produced from social network analyses, forest transects, soil classifications, analyses of satellite images, and the utilization of GIS and GPS technologies. These data will be contextualized through insights produced from long-term participant observation and ethnographic interviews in Haiti. What will emerge is a clearer understanding of the factors that lead to the domestication of energy, the creation and refinement of existing and new theoretical constructs, and the production of a predictive land-use model. This model will help predict those farmers most receptive to or already engaged in the paradigmatic shift toward a domestication of energy.Tarter's research has the potential to influence policy-makers; tree-planting and reforestation efforts remain major priorities of both nongovernmental and governmental organizations. Additionally, anthropological research in a highly deforested country will provide important comparative data for policy-makers in other deforested countries.