Doctoral Dissertation Research: Land Access, Agrarian Relations, and the State

该奖项资助的研究解决了这样一个问题：当农村人口传统上拥有使用权的国有土地被剥夺用于农业综合企业项目时，他们会发生什么。 将国有土地用于商业性农业以及与此相关的对农村居民的剥夺是一个可以追溯到几个世纪前的普遍现象。但是，在当今更加相互关联的世界中，关于“土地掠夺”的社会科学研究才刚刚开始。研究人员问，今天国家和公共土地是如何定义和划定的？谁可以使用它们，用于什么目的？当地人如何回应？所有这些又告诉了我们什么关于当代形式的治理和公民身份的本质？为了回答这些问题，研究人员已经确定了一个区域，这些过程是活跃的，可以检查，因为他们的发展。通过调查的政治和文化纠纷的土地密切的情况下，这项研究将提供一个独特的窗口，紧急状态的转变和不断变化的定义，私人和公共在当代世界。这项研究将由纽约城市大学人类学博士生胡里奥阿里亚斯瓦内加斯进行，他由马克埃德尔曼博士监督。阿里亚斯为该项目确定的活动地点是冲突后的哥伦比亚的Altillanura地区。阿里亚斯将在哥伦比亚不同地点进行为期12个月的实地考察，通过多种方法收集数据，包括文件分析、口述历史、访谈和参与者观察。他将重点关注两个不同但又相互关联的案例：（1）国有财产案例，这是一个重要的区域农业研究中心的所在地，现在有各种团体声称对它拥有权利;（B）一个新兴的区域主义农业运动，它在指定特定土地持有为baldíos（空置公共土地）的问题上与国家立法相对抗。对这些案例的研究将使研究人员能够研究：如何通过法律的和科学辩论改变区域人民，自然和领土，以及公共和私人财产的概念;如何部署种族和区域识别和归属;以及不同的土地所有者和居住者如何通过自己的土地保有权的概念和形式挑战和重塑国家项目。在此过程中，本文将对国家形成、财产冲突和边疆地区生产之间的关系的形成有所启示。这项研究将有助于社会科学理论的国家，地区主义和剥夺。调查结果也将与对土地分配及其政治和文化后果感兴趣的决策者有关，特别是在过渡背景下。

The research funded by this award addresses the question of what happens to rural people when the state-owned lands where they traditionally had use rights are taken from them for agribusiness projects. The appropriation of state lands for commercial agriculture and the associated dispossession of rural occupants constitute a widespread phenomenon that goes back centuries. But social scientific research on "land grabs" in the more interconnected world of today is just beginning. The researcher asks, How are state and public lands defined and delimited today? Who can use them and for what purposes? How are local people responding? And what does all this tell us about the nature of contemporary forms of governance and citizenship? To answer these questions, the researcher has identified a region where these processes are active and can be examined as they develop. By investigating a case of political and cultural disputes over land closely, this research will provide a unique window into emergent state transformation and changing definitions of private and public in the contemporary world. The research will be undertaken by Julio Arias Vanegas, a City University of New York anthropology doctoral student who is supervised by Dr. Marc Edelman. The active site that Arias has identified for this project is the Altillanura region of post-conflict Colombia. Arias will conduct twelve months of fieldwork in different locations in Colombia, collecting data through multiple methods, including document analysis, oral history, interviews, and participant observation. He will focus on two dissimilar but interrelated cases: (a) the case of state property that was home to an important regional agricultural research center and over which various groups now claim rights; and (b) an emerging regionalist agrarian movement that has confronted state legislation over the designation of specific land holdings as baldíos (vacant public lands). The study of these cases will allow the researcher to examine: how conceptions of regional people, nature, and territory, as well as public and private properties, have changed through legal and scientific debates; how racial and regional identification and belonging are deployed; and how different land-holders and occupants challenge and reshape state projects through their own notions and forms of land tenure. In doing so, this study will shed light on the making of the relationship between state formation, property conflicts, and the production of frontier regions. The research will contribute to social scientific theory on the state, regionalism, and dispossession. Findings also will be relevant for policymakers interested in land distribution and its political and cultural consequences, particularly in transitional contexts.