Doctoral Dissertation Research: The effect of rural-urban mobility on livelihood strategies and governance of conservation areas

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The research supported by this award addresses the question: What role can be played by smallholder farmers in conservation efforts, given current global trends of rural livelihood diversification and rapid urbanization? The question is important because while many smallholder farmers live in areas significant for conservation, they also often suffer from high levels of poverty, which may lead them to shift away from strictly agricultural-based modes of living. Environmentally sustainable efforts to increase good land stewardship and governance of protected territories over generations may thus be confounded by increased circulation between rural-urban spaces and changing expectations and desires. Understanding the effects of urbanization and inter-generational changes at the local scale is crucial for broader discussions on the role of smallholder farming in protected areas in our nation's future. To investigate these issues, Indiana University anthropology graduate student Lucy Miller, who is supervised by Dr. Eduardo S. Brondizio, will travel the Gurupá-Melgaço extractive reserve, a protected area of the Brazilian Amazon. She has chosen this region because it is home to extensive protected areas as well as to many impoverished smallholder farmers. This combination makes the conflicts between the two more apparent and easier to study than they would be in a more developed context. The global trends of rapid urbanization and processes of rural livelihood diversification are reflected in increasing reliance on cash income from public sector jobs and government welfare programs in urban centers. In this context, the researchers will investigate what impact rural-urban mobility has on livelihood strategies, resource governance across generations, and rural identity formation. The researcher will gather data through a combination of social scientific methods, including semi-structured and in-depth interviews, documentation of the types of rules and social norms in three of the reserve's communities, and household interviews in each community to ascertain intra-community variation and the role of mobility in collective action, rule compliance, contestation, and conflicts. Analysis of this information will allow the investigators to assess how rapid social change affects reserve residents' relationships with each other and their environment, and what implications these evolving relationships have for collective resource governance. Findings from the research will be of use to policymakers in the United States who are concerned with improving rural livelihoods while also promoting environmental conservation. The data will also contribute to improved social science inter-scalar theory dealing with the relationship between meso-scale collective governance and local-level household subsistence strategies.