Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gender and Globalization in Fishing Economies

这个博士论文项目是关于渔业社区的经济全球化，以及家庭中的性别关系如何塑造供应全球鱼类供应链的过程。随着北美、欧洲和亚洲消费者对鱼类的需求增长，渔业生产网络日益融入全球经济。调查这种全球化如何影响男人和女人相互联系的方式，对于理解人们如何影响他们的环境和获取自然资源具有重要意义。这项研究将涉及渔业社区的性别层面，这是目前对加强捕捞努力的理解中缺失的一个因素。它将有助于在保护和发展研究、生计研究和政治生态方面的知识。通过考虑西非塞内加尔的渔民社区，渔业经济历史上表现出高度性别分工，这项研究将调查渔业家庭的配偶合同，以更好地了解在一个全球一体化程度更高的时代，这些合同是如何重新制定的。这项研究将通过为期12个月的基于民族志的密集实地考察工作完成，其中包括在沿海国家塞内加尔进行参与者观察和半结构化采访。塞内加尔是一个主要的捕鱼国，也是美国赞助的外国援助的接受国。该项目将包括在研究过程中培训和雇用两名当地研究助理，目前已制定计划，以便广泛传播。除了标准的学术传播外，私人投资促进机构正计划为政策制定者和业界专业人士编写政策简报文件，并计划进行媒体介绍，以宣传直接研究范围以外的研究。通过这种方式，将向业界专业人士提供有助于更有效地规划和实施管理充满活力的渔业的战略的信息。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该项目还将提供支持，使研究生能够建立独立的研究生涯。

This doctoral dissertation project is about economic globalization in fishing communities and how gender relationships in households shape the processes that provision the global fish supply chain. Fishing production networks are increasingly integrated into the global economy as consumer demand for fish grows in North America, Europe and Asia. Investigating how such globalization impacts the ways in which men and women relate to one another has important implications for understanding how people affect their environments and access natural resources. This research will address the gender dimension of fishing communities, an element currently missing in the understandings of intensified fishing efforts. It will contribute to knowledge on conservation and development studies, livelihoods research, and political ecology. By considering fisher communities in Senegal, West Africa, where fishing economies have historically displayed highly gendered divisions of labor, this research will investigate the conjugal contracts in fishing households to better understand how these are being reformulated in an era of greater global integration. The research will be accomplished through twelve months of intensive ethnographically-based fieldwork that includes participant observation and semi-structured interviews in coastal Senegal, a major fishing nation and recipient of US-sponsored foreign aid. This project will include the training and employment of two local research assistants in the course of the research and plans are in places for broad dissemination. In addition to standard academic dissemination, the PIs are planning to develop policy briefing papers targeted at policy-makers and industry professionals, and they are also planning on making media presentations in order to publicize the research beyond the immediate study area. This way industry professionals will be provided with information that will contribute to more effective planning and implementation strategies for managing a dynamic fishing industry. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will also provide support to enable a graduate student to establish an independent research career.