Dissertation Research: The Environment as as Political Resource: Land Reform on the Masoala Penisula, Madagascar

本项目涉及一位来自圣路易斯华盛顿大学文化人类学专业的学生的论文研究。该项目旨在研究马达加斯加一个农村地区的部落农民捍卫他们在森林地区的农田所有权的演变过程，联邦政府和国际非政府组织希望在该地区建立一个野生动物保护区。学生将使用人种学技术，对生活史和家族史进行密集访谈，再加上对整个代表性村庄的调查和对土地冲突的一系列密集访谈，来检验这样一个命题：较富裕的村民往往是较早的定居者，控制着更多的土地，他们可以更成功地挑战政府对土地权利的定义，并影响他们社区中不断发展的社会规范。这项研究很重要，因为土地改革、保护森林地区和贫穷农民向新的农业区迁移是在发展中世界发生的全球性进程。我们对土地使用权如何被当地社区确立和接受的理解的进步，将有助于规划者设计出更有效的方案，保护野生动物区不受侵犯。此外，该项目还将培养一名研究该地区文化和生态的学者。

This project involves the dissertation research of a student of cultural anthropology from Washington University, St. Louis. The project is to study the evolving process by which tribal farmers in a rural area of Madagascar defend their claims to farmland in a forested area where the federal government and international NGOs hope to establish a wildlife preserve. Using ethnographic techniques of intensive interviewing about life histories and family histories, coupled with a survey of an entire representative village and a set of intensive interviews on land conflicts, the student will test the proposition that wealthier villagers, who will tend to have been earlier settlers and control more land, can more successfully contest the government's definition of rights to land and affect the evolving social norms in their communities. This research is important because land reform, the protection of forested areas, and the migration of poor farmers to new agricultural zones are global processes taking place all over the developing world. Advances in our understanding of how land use rights become established and accepted by local communities will help planners design more effective programs to defend wildlife areas from encroachment. In addition this project will train a scholar in the culture and ecology of this part of the world.