Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Politics of Representing Nature, Culture, and Conservation in Northwestern Bolivia

研究生Teressa Trusty将在steven Harrell博士的指导下，对生活在玻利维亚马迪迪国家公园东侧的人们的环境观念和实践进行研究。她的研究将集中在他们对人与环境关系的认知模型，以及这些模型如何影响他们的农业和伐木实践。在国际自然资源保护主义者的要求下，玻利维亚政府于1995年建立了马迪迪国家公园。这个保护区的形成，从安第斯山脉延伸到亚马逊盆地，包围了许多社区，并继续影响着居住在公园内和附近的人们的日常生活。国际非政府组织试图通过影响当地居民的价值观和信仰，使他们更加关注自然资源使用的影响，从而加强其保护工作。然而，试点研究表明，当地居民已经意识到环境影响，尽管他们对环境影响的概念与非政府组织不同。本研究的三个目的是：1)评估和解释一系列社区和族群内环境文化模式的形成；2)利用这些信息开展一项调查，以衡量研究人群的价值取向和规范信念，以及他们对伐木、放牧、狩猎、采集、农业和参与保护项目的行为意图；3)测试价值观、信仰和行为之间的关系，以及研究人群对想法和行动的认同。本研究将首先通过开放式访谈、参与性观察和档案研究来描述当地人对人与环境关系和保护的看法。这些定性数据将用于设计和管理一项文化上适当的调查，以确定价值和信仰体系被分享、遵守和采取行动的程度。该调查还将为使用文化共识分析和标准心理测量学对当地环境的信念建模提供数据。这项研究的结果将推进认知人类学和社会心理学的理论，同时也有助于政治生态学中环境感知的不断增长的工作。此外，更好地了解这些想法和行为，可以改善非政府组织、玻利维亚政府和生活在这个持续有争议地区的个人之间的互动。这项研究也将对社会科学家的教育作出重大贡献。

Graduate student, Teressa Trusty, supervised by Dr. Stevan Harrell, will undertake research on the environmental perceptions and practices of people who live along the eastern side of the Madidi National Park in Bolivia. Her research will focus on their cognitive models of the human-environment relationship and how these models affect their practices of agriculture and logging. At the behest of international conservationists, the Bolivian government created Madidi National Park in 1995. Formation of this protected area, which stretches from the Andes to the Amazon Basin, enclosed numerous communities and continues to impact the everyday lives of those who live in and adjacent to the park. International NGOs have sought to strengthen their conservation efforts in part by influencing the values and beliefs of local residents so they become more concerned about impacts from their natural resource use. However, pilot research suggests that local residents already are mindful of environmental impacts, even though they conceptualize them differently than do the NGOs.The three aims of the study are: 1) to assess and explain the formation of the environmental cultural models within a range of communities and ethnic groups; 2) to use this information to develop a survey to measure the value orientations and normative beliefs of the study population and their behavioral intentions towards logging, ranching, hunting, gathering, agriculture, and participation in conservation projects; and 3) to test the relationship between values, beliefs, and behavior and agreement within the study population about ideas and actions. This research will begin by delineating local ideas about the human-environment relationship and conservation through open-ended interviews, participant observation, and archival research. These qualitative data will be used to design and administer a culturally appropriate survey to determine the degree to which the value and belief systems are shared, adhered to, and acted upon.. The survey also will provide data for modeling local beliefs about the environment using cultural consensus analysis and standard psychometrics. The results of this research will advance theory in cognitive anthropology and social psychology while also contributing to the growing body of work on environmental perceptions in political ecology. In addition, better understanding of these ideas and behaviors can ameliorate interactions between NGOs, the Bolivian government, and the individuals living in this continuously contested region. The research also will contribute significantly to the education of a social scientist.