Doctoral Dissertation Research: Taming the Black Tiger: The Political Ecology of Prawn Production in Tanzania

粮食恐慌、全球粮食危机以及环境和社会可持续的粮食运动导致了解决诸如我们的粮食从哪里来？为什么从那里？在什么条件下？被称为“农业食品”的研究，这一文献的主要重点探讨了生产，流通和食品消费及其对人类和环境健康的影响的相互关联的过程。与以资本为中心和全球北方为重点的农业食品研究文献相反，在伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校的托马斯巴塞特博士的指导下，学生贝齐·贝默将研究不同规模的演员和环境对黑虎虾生产和消费的影响。本研究采用区域政治生态学的方法来建立这些联系。拟议的研究旨在了解国家，公民，社会和环境运动，生物物理过程以及南北方的各种政治和经济机构如何围绕拟议的粮食生产地点以及已经建立的地点进行互动。该案例研究将通过混合方法使用定量和定性数据，审查两家跨国公司1996年至2009年期间在坦桑尼亚沿海建立黑虎虾养殖场的努力，坦桑尼亚沿海是东非沿海沿着最大的毗连红树林的所在地。这项研究将调查不断变化的政治生态条件下，工业对虾养殖最初被搁置在坦桑尼亚于1996年后，大量的反对，但随后在2003年批准。本研究的更广泛影响是表明粮食生产和消费关系如何深深植根于全球南方的区域政治生态。这项研究将通过考察政治生态过程交叉点上粮食生产的转移地点，丰富对经济全球化地理的理解。这项研究将阐明粮食全球化的动态和后果，提供更多关于经济进程的知识，例如对虾养殖业的全球变化，是由生物物理和社会进程的互动影响驱动的。这项研究将展示全球北方和南方的行为者（包括人类和非人类）如何影响工业食品的生产地点，为什么在那里，而不是其他地方。它还将解决公众对“全球食品”（如“经认证的可持续”对虾）在何处以及在何种条件下生产的担忧。

Food scares, the global food crisis, as well as environmentally and socially sustainable food movements have led to a proliferation of work addressing questions such as Where does our food come?, Why from there?, and Under what conditions? Referred to as "agri-food" studies, a principal focus of this literature explores the interrelated processes of production, circulation, and consumption of food and its implications for human and environmental health. In contrast to the agri-food studies literature, which is characterized by a capital-centric and global-North focus, Ph.D. student Betsy Beymer, under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Bassett at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will study the influence of actors and environments at multiple scales to the production and consumption of black tiger prawns. The study takes a regional political ecology approach to make these connections. The proposed study seeks to understand how states, citizens, social and environmental movements, biophysical processes, and various political and economic institutions in the North and South, interact around proposed food production sites as well as sites that are already established. The case study will use quantitative and qualitative data through a mixed methods approach to examine the quests of two transnational corporations to establish black tiger prawn farms in coastal Tanzania between 1996 and 2009, the home of the largest contiguous mangrove forest along the east African seaboard. This research will investigate the shifting political ecological conditions in which industrial prawn farming was initially put on hold in Tanzania in 1996 after substantial opposition, but subsequently approved in 2003. The broader impacts of this study are to show how relations of production and consumption of food are deeply rooted in the regional political ecologies of the global South. This study will enrich the understanding of the geographies of economic globalization by examining the shifting sites of food production at the intersection of political-ecological processes. This study will illuminate the dynamics and consequences of food globalization by providing more knowledge about how economic processes, such as global shifts in the prawn farming industry, are driven by the interactive effects of biophysical and social processes. This study will show how actors (both human and non-human) in the global North and South, influence where industrial food is produced, why there, and not elsewhere. It will also address the general public's concerns about where and under what conditions 'global food' such as 'certified sustainable' prawns are produced.