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

佛罗里达大学博士生、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、记录和了解促使一些农民种植或保留树木作为经济作物的各种因素，从而生产一种发电产品-木炭。塔特的研究将有助于证明一种较早提出的人类学理论--“能量驯化”的出现。这一理论范式通过农民自愿、广泛参与早期人类学设计的农林项目得到了部分验证；然而，广泛的自愿植树或保留树木在学术上尚未被证明是独立于外部投入发生的。要理解这种自主转向驯化能源范式的原因，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、社会网络分析产生的指标、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长期的参与者观察和人种学访谈而产生的见解加以说明。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造和完善，以及预测性土地利用模式的产生。这个模型将有助于预测哪些农民最愿意接受或已经参与了能源驯化的典范转变。塔特的研究有可能影响政策制定者；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，在森林高度砍伐的国家进行人类学研究将为其他森林砍伐国家的政策制定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.