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

博士论文研究：记录森林砍伐背景下林农的能源驯化

• 批准号: 1222456
• 负责人: Gerald Murray
• 金额: $ 2.31万
• 依托单位: University of Florida
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-07-01 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1222456&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Documenting; Domestication

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.

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，在杰拉尔德F。默里将进行研究，以发现，记录和了解说服一些农民种植或保留树木作为经济作物收获的各种因素，生产一种能源产品-木炭。塔特的研究将有助于证明一个早期假设的人类学理论“能量的驯化”的出现。这一理论范式在一定程度上得到了证实，因为农民自愿、广泛地参与了一个早期的人类学设计的农林项目;然而，广泛的自愿植树或保留尚未在学术上被记录为独立于外部输入发生。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、社会网络分析产生的衡量标准、森林横断面、土壤分类、卫星图像分析以及利用地理信息系统和全球定位系统技术。这些数据将通过在海地进行的长期参与观察和人种学访谈产生的见解进行背景分析。将出现的是对导致能源驯化的因素的更清晰的理解，现有和新的理论结构的创建和完善，以及预测性土地使用模型的产生。这个模型将有助于预测哪些农民最容易接受或已经参与到能源驯化的范式转变中。塔特的研究有可能影响政策制定者;植树造林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，在森林严重砍伐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。