Doctoral Dissertation Research: Agents of the Environmental State: Indigenous Authority and Environmental Regulation on the Philippines' "Last Frontier"

博士论文研究：环境国家的代理人：菲律宾“最后边疆“的土著权力和环境法规研究人员审查了新的生物多样性保护项目和政府正在进行的少数民族人口管理工作之间的交叉点。 研究将在巴拉望岛上一个国际资助的保护项目地点进行，这个地方长期以来被称为菲律宾的“最后边疆”，现在被全球公认为“生物多样性热点”。“根据现行法律，预计巴拉望的土著领导人将帮助执行新的环境法规，但由于不确定这是否有任何土著习俗的基础，他们这样做的权力仍然存在疑问。 因此，这些领导人的参与不均衡，其合法性受到质疑。 本研究探讨：（1）关于土著政治权力的不同观念如何影响新环境法规的实施;（2）这种差异如何与更广泛的社会和环境变化过程相关联。 为了探讨这些问题，研究者将使用社会科学的方法，包括档案研究，参与者观察，半结构化访谈和社会网络分析。 科学家和决策者越来越强调地方参与建立和执行环境机构的必要性，但响应他们的呼吁的努力往往会遇到意想不到的政治和文化问题。 这项研究将提供一个人种学的解释，说明这种复杂性是如何发展的背景下，深刻的文化和权力的差异分离少数民族人口的官员谁寻求他们的合作。

Doctoral Dissertation Research: Agents of the Environmental State: Indigenous Authority and Environmental Regulation on the Philippines' "Last Frontier"The researcher examines the intersection between new biodiversity conservation projects and ongoing government efforts to regulate minority populations. Research will be conducted at the site of an internationally funded conservation project on Palawan Island, a place long known as the Philippines' "last frontier" and now recognized globally as a "biodiversity hotspot." Under existing laws, indigenous leaders in Palawan are expected to help enforce new environmental regulations, but their authority to do so remains in question due to uncertainty over whether it has any basis in indigenous custom. As a result, the participation of these leaders is uneven and their legitimacy contested. This study asks (1) how differing ideas about indigenous political authority shape the implementation of new environmental regulations and (2) how this variation relates to broader processes of social and environmental change. To explore these questions, the researcher will use social science methods, including archival research, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and social network analysis. Scientists and policy-makers increasingly stress the need for local participation in the establishment and enforcement of environmental institutions, but efforts to heed their calls often meet with unanticipated political and cultural complications. This study will offer an ethnographic account of how such complications develop in a context where profound differences of culture and power separate minority populations from the officials who seek their cooperation.