Agricultural Change and the Division of Labor, Ibarapa, Western Nigeria

这项奖励将允许PI在尼日利亚西部进行为期五个月的人种学田野工作。她将采访小农，分析农业技术变化和社会变化对这个非洲农村经济的影响，这个非洲农村经济面临着对商品需求的快速和戏剧性增长。由于石油繁荣和随后的崩溃，尼日利亚这一地区在过去15年中经历了城市化和食品价格通胀的加速。城市腹地的经济变化导致了家庭农场的变化。该项目将记录小农户和大型农场的农场组织，特别关注劳动的使用、性别分工以及小农场和大农场之间的关系。目前的情况将与20年前的情况进行比较，当时PI对小农户农场进行了基线研究。这项研究之所以重要，是因为大多数发展理论家认为非洲小农是非洲大陆目前面临的主要经济问题。更多地了解小农场是如何运作的，特别是它们与更新的、更大的农场是如何联系在一起的，以及它们如何经受住了该地区在过去20年经历的繁荣和萧条周期，这对理论家和政策制定者都是有价值的。

This award will allow the PI to do five months of ethnographic fieldwork in Western Nigeria. She will interview small-holder farmers to analyze the effects of technical changes in farming and social changes in the organization of work in this African rural economy, which has been exposed to rapid and dramatic increases in the demand for goods. Due to the oil boom and subsequent collapse, this part of Nigeria has experienced increased rates of urbanization and food price inflation during the past 15 years. Economic change in the hinterland of cities has caused changes in family farms. This project will document farm organization in small-holder and larger scale farms with special attention to the use of labor, the gender division of labor, and the relations between small farms and large farms. The current situation will be compared with the situation 20 years ago, when the PI did a baseline study of small-holder farms. This research is important because African small-holder farmers are seen by most development theorists as the major current economic problem facing the continent. Increased understanding of how small farms function, and specifically how they relate to the newer, larger farms, and how they have withstood the boom and bust cycles that the region experienced in the previous 20 years, will be valuable to theorists and policy makers alike.