Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Cultural and Economic Logic of Small-Scale Farming

现代农业曾经是当地的一种做法，现在很多都是在商业农场和种植园进行的，这些农场和种植园将产品分销到世界各地。随着世界农业集中到大型商业农场，其他地方的许多生产者放弃了农业，转向更有利可图的行业，如旅游业。然而，人们普遍认识到，粮食安全取决于维持至少包括少量当地粮食生产的多样化经济。这个项目训练一名学生使用经验、科学数据收集和分析的方法，调查当地农民的这一经济利基，即使经济效益下降，他们也继续耕种。研究人员问道，为什么人们选择继续传统的生计和自给自足，即使这似乎违背了经济上的自身利益。除了为人类学研究生的培训提供资金外，该项目还将通过将其发现广泛传播给投资于寻找更有效的方法来解决粮食不安全问题、改善经济和农业政策以及促进环境、文化和经济可持续性的组织，从而加强科学理解。Dana Conzo在马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特学院的Krista Harper博士的指导下，将探讨为什么农业生产者在参与小规模农业似乎不符合他们短期到中期的经济利益的情况下，仍然致力于小规模农业。它检验了经济人类学中的一个经典假设，即人类的经济行为往往是由物质上非理性但文化上战略性的目标驱动的。该项目将在圣基茨进行；加勒比长期以来一直被认为是研究纵向政治经济趋势的理想实验室，因为它长期参与资本主义生产和殖民主义。圣基茨融入全球经济始于一个糖生产国，并继续作为一个豪华旅游目的地，使其成为一个合适的地点，以调查人们如何以及为什么在不断变化的文化，经济和政治景观中保持文化习俗。利用一系列已建立的民族志和地理技术进行数据收集和分析，如参与性观察、访谈和ArcGIS中的空间分析，调查人员将采访小规模农业生产者并追踪该岛的粮食和经济流动。这些发现将有助于经济人类学关于自治、粮食安全、土地和劳动实践以及全球化的辩论。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Once a local practice, much contemporary agriculture takes place on commercial farms and plantations that distribute their products worldwide. With the world's agriculture concentrated onto large commercial farms, many producers elsewhere have abandoned farming for more profitable industries, such as tourism. Yet, it is widely recognized that food security depends on maintenance of a diversified economy that includes at least some modicum of local food production. This project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, investigates this economic niche of local farmers, who continue to farm even as economic benefits wane. The researcher asks why people chose to continue traditional livelihoods and self-sufficiency even when it seems to counter economic self-interest. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, the project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to organizations invested in discovering more effective means of navigating food insecurity, improving economic and agricultural policies, and promoting environmental, cultural, and economic sustainability.Dana Conzo, under the supervision of Dr. Krista Harper of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will explore why agricultural producers remain committed to small-scale farming when participation appears to not be in their short to medium-term economic interest. It tests a classic hypothesis in economic anthropology that human economic behavior is often driven by materially irrational but culturally strategic aims. This project will be conducted in St. Kitts; the Caribbean has long been recognized as an ideal laboratory for examining longitudinal political economic trends because of its long engagement with capitalist production and colonialism. St. Kitts' integration into the global economy began as a sugar producer and has continued as a luxury tourist destination, making it an appropriate location to investigate how and why people maintain cultural practices in changing cultural, economic, and political landscapes. Using a range of established ethnographic and geographic techniques for data collection and analysis, such as participant observation, interviews, and spatial analysis in ArcGIS, the investigator will interview small-scale agricultural producers and trace the island's food and economic flows. The findings will contribute to debates in economic anthropology about autonomy, food security, land and labor practices, and globalization.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.