Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ethnographic Analysis of Linkages between Rural Land Dispossession, Land Use Change, and Deforestation

该奖项支持的研究将调查农业扩张与随之而来的森林砍伐的人为原因和后果。森林砍伐对环境的影响，包括水土流失、洪水增加、荒漠化和栖息地丧失，是众所周知的。伐木可能是森林砍伐的诱因，但农业是其最大的驱动力。小规模的农民砍伐木材作为燃料，清理出适当的空间种植作物；机械化、工业化耕作和大规模牧场开垦了大片土地。工业化农业增加了粮食产量，减少了当地的粮食短缺。但是，由于这些大规模经营需要获得昂贵的技术和农业投入，工业化农业的扩张也把贫穷的农村农民从他们的土地推向了城市，并加入了全球流动人口的行列。农业、森林砍伐、城市化和移民的融合改变了当地环境，破坏了当地政治的稳定，并影响了包括美国在内的移民接收国。这些过程在全球范围内都有充分的记录，但在开始时引发这些影响的地方层面的微观过程却知之甚少。机械化农业究竟如何扩展到森林地区？小农是如何失去对土地的控制的？为什么这么多人最终离开家乡去了城市？这些都是由该奖项资助的研究将解决的问题。这项研究将由亚利桑那大学人类学博士生Cari Tusing在资深人类学家Linda B. Green博士的指导下进行。因为这些过程已经在美国发生，工业化农业现在是常态，图辛将前往巴拉圭，在那里，工业化大豆种植刚刚进入森林地区，极大地改变了景观，使巴拉圭成为世界上森林砍伐率最高的国家之一。该研究人员将集中在巴拉圭-巴西边境周边地区收集数据，巴西人正从这里进入巴拉圭，在巴拉圭小农和瓜拉尼美洲印第安人从事农林业和自给农业的地区开发大规模农业和牧场。研究人员将收集有关土地所有权的数据；阶级、种族和国家身份；以及对农业和森林砍伐之间关系的文化理解。在多阶段项目的这一阶段，调查员将重点关注巴西（也称为Brasiguayo）农民，记录他们的耕作方式、获得土地的策略以及社会和经济网络。数据将通过多种社会科学方法收集，包括参与者观察，访谈和农场样带步行。已经收集了小农和瓜拉尼美洲印第安人的可比数据。累积起来，这三个数据集将全面说明最近土地利用变化的性质及其对农业生产、森林砍伐、当地生计和农村向城市迁移的影响。

The research supported by this award will investigate the human causes and consequences of agricultural expansion with accompanying deforestation. Deforestation's environmental impacts, including soil erosion, increased flooding, desertification, and habitat loss, are well-established. Logging can be a deforestation trigger, but agriculture is its biggest driver. Small-scale farmers cut wood for fuel and clear modest spaces for crops; mechanized, industrial farming and large-scale ranching clear larger tracts. Industrial agriculture has increased food production and reduced local food shortages. But because these large scale operations require access to expensive technologies and farming inputs, the expansion of industrial agriculture has also pushed poor rural farmers off their lands into cities and into the global flow of migrants. This confluence of agriculture, deforestation, urbanization, and migration changes local environments, destabilizes local politics, and impacts migrant receiving countries, including the United States. These processes are well-documented on a global scale, but the local-level micro-processes that set these effects off in the beginning are much more poorly understood. How exactly does mechanized agriculture expand into forested areas? How do smallholders lose control of land? Why do so many end up leaving for urban areas? These are the questions the research funded by this award will address.The research will be carried out by University of Arizona anthropology doctoral student, Cari Tusing, with the supervision of senior anthropologist Dr. Linda B. Green. Because these processes have already taken place in the United States, where industrial agriculture is now the norm, Tusing will travel to Paraguay where industrial soy farming is just now moving into forested areas, dramatically modifying the landscape and giving Paraguay a deforestation rate that is among the highest in the world. The researcher will concentrate data collection in the region surrounding the Paraguay-Brazil border, where Brazilians are crossing into Paraguay to develop land for large-scale agriculture and ranching in an area where Paraguayan small-scale farmers and Guarani Amerindians practice agroforestry and subsistence agriculture. The researcher will collect data on land titling; class, race, and national identities; and cultural understandings of the relationship between agriculture and deforestation. For this phase of a multi-phase project, the investigator will focus on the Brazilian (also called Brasiguayo) farmers to document their farming practices, strategies employed to obtain land, and social and economic networks. Data will be collected with multiple social science methods including participant observation, interviews, and farm transect walks. Comparable data have already been collected on small-holder farmers and Guarani Amerindians. Cumulatively, the three data sets will produce a fully rounded account of the nature of recent land-use change and its effects on agricultural production, deforestation, local livelihoods, and rural-to-urban migration.