Doctoral Dissertation Research: Cultural Economic Understandings of Work under Ecological Restoration

应对当今环境退化的规模，需要拥有专业劳动力、技能和知识系统的多名工人的协调。现有的探索环境行动和劳动之间关系的研究倾向于关注自愿参与的个体行为者。人们对承包生态修复项目的工人如何了解自己和他们的劳动知之甚少。本博士论文研究通过生态修复对劳动者行为的影响来研究生态修复的有效性。除了为人类学研究生提供经验、科学数据收集和分析方法方面的培训提供资金外，这项研究的结果还将与政府和非政府组织以及其他组织分享，目的是改善那些积极参与改善环境污染和退化的人的工作条件。该项目还努力提高公众对科学和科学方法的理解，特别是关于生态健康的科学管理。虽然修复项目对于确保生物圈的完整性至关重要，但研究假设，实施这些项目的责任分配不均，往往与先前存在的社会不平等有关。它扩展了工作人类学和环境人类学的理论视角，同时将代表不足的观点整合到科学史和社会学中。这位博士生研究人员使用人种学、视觉和档案相结合的方法(包括基础设施地图、反身性备忘录、参与者观察、生活史访谈、工作流程观察以及文本和话语分析)来调查生态恢复的基础设施劳动，并展示环境不公正如何在各种环境中表现出来。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Responses to the scale of environmental degradation today requires the coordination of multiple workers with specialized labors, skills, and knowledge systems. Existing research exploring the relationship between environmental action and labor tend to focus on individual actors who participate voluntarily. Less is known about how workers contracted in projects of ecological restoration come to understand themselves and their labor. This doctoral dissertation research investigates the efficacy of ecological restoration through its impacts on worker behavior. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, findings from this research will be shared with governmental and non-governmental organizations, and others with the aim of improving working conditions for those actively involved in ameliorating environmental pollution and degradation. The project also endeavors to enhance public understanding of science and the scientific method, specifically regarding the scientific management of ecological health.While restoration projects are critical for ensuring the integrity of the biosphere, the research hypothesizes that the responsibilities of carrying them out are unevenly distributed, often along lines of pre-existing social inequalities. It extends theoretical perspectives from the anthropology of work and environmental anthropology, while integrating under-represented perspectives into the history and sociology of science. The doctoral researcher uses a combination of ethnographic, visual, and archival methods (including infrastructural mapping, reflexive memos, participant observation, life history interviews, workflow observation, and textual and discourse analysis) to investigate the infrastructural labor of ecological restoration and demonstrate how environmental injustice plays out in various settings.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.