Standard Research Grant: An Ethnographic Study of Agrarian Life

该项目是一项应用农业科学和定居点的研究。为了了解应用农业科学和定居如何使土地和人民具有生产力，PI将收集农业推广和农业景观和生计的数据。发达的美国和欧洲大学，农业推广已经形成了美国和欧洲以外的生计方式，值得密切关注。PI将研究政府、大学和非政府农业推广服务机构针对高海拔、易滑坡地区小农户的工作。PI将创建一个可推广的框架，以了解使这些景观富有成效的政治，经济和环境技术。该项目将详细介绍推广科学家和农民如何在环境和经济变化的背景下努力使农田可行。PI将开发一种方法，将历史与人种学对话，以了解农业变化。关于定居和农业推广的档案文件将在重点小组讲习班上解释并与农民分享。这种方法将有助于回答两个问题：（1）生产力是以什么方式制定的？农业推广科学已经改变了农民种植的作物和种植方式，它旨在通过引入新的作物和工具来保持农业的可行性。需要进一步调查的是小农在连续的科学努力中发挥的积极作用，以创造生产性的景观，以及促进特定作物如何融入更大的项目，以确保对具有挑战性的地形，特别是山区景观的控制。(2)农业推广对农民的日常生活有哪些影响？ 连续不断的农业推广项目给小农户，特别是妇女的生活带来了微妙和剧烈的变化。要了解家庭生活、科学和市场是如何相互交织的，就需要对定居如何在不同规模上创造劳动分工进行调查。该奖项反映了NSF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。

This project is a study of applied agricultural science and settlement. To understand how applied agricultural science and settlement make land and people productive, the PI will collect data on agricultural extension and agrarian landscapes and livelihoods. Developed U.S. and European universities, agricultural extension has shaped livelihoods outside the U.S. and Europe in ways that deserve closer attention. The PI will study the work of governmental, university-based, and nongovernmental agricultural extension services aimed at small farmers in high altitude, landslide-prone landscapes. The PI will create a generalizable framework for understanding the political, economic, and environmental technologies that make such landscapes productive. This project will result in a detailed picture of how extension scientists and farmers work to make farmland viable in the context of environmental and economic change.The PI will develop a methodology for bringing history into conversation with ethnography to understand agrarian change. Archival documents on settlement and agricultural extension will be interpreted and shared with farmers in focus group workshops. This methodology will contribute to answering two questions: (1) In what ways is productivity enacted? Agricultural extension science has transformed both what farmers grow and how they grow it, and it aims to keep farming viable by introducing novel crops and tools. What requires further investigation is the active role small farmers have played in successive scientific efforts to craft productive landscapes, and how the promotion of particular crops is enmeshed in the larger project of securing control over challenging terrain, particularly mountain landscapes. (2) What are the effects of agricultural extension on everyday life for farmers? Successive agricultural extension projects have entailed both subtle and drastic changes to the lives of small farmers, particularly women. Understanding how domestic life, science, and the market intersect requires investigation of how settlement creates divisions of labor across scales.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.