Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Effects of Learning on Agroecological Conservation among Landless Farmers

博士候选人David Meek(佐治亚大学)，由Peter Brosius博士和Julie Veasquez-Runk博士指导，将在巴西无地工人运动的亚马逊社区进行研究，以确定新的定居点迁移如何影响参与者及其使用的雨林环境。这项研究将侧重于通过社会运动参与获得的非正式学习如何影响农业生态知识、农林业做法以及由此产生的土地覆盖变化。研究人员将结合生活史访谈、农业和运动活动的参与者观察、半结构访谈和自由列表来检验运动参与是否影响农业生态知识和农业实践的水平。从卫星图像和参与性测绘收集的空间数据将用于检查农林复合区域的空间范围及其对更大的土地覆盖变化过程的贡献。亚马逊土地改革与土地覆盖变化之间的关系在那些关心平衡经济发展需要与对森林的影响的人中仍然存在高度辩论。这项研究很重要，因为它将探索政治意识形态和有关砍伐森林和重新造林的关键问题的非正式学习之间的潜在联系。研究结果将有助于关于土地改革对环境的影响的辩论，从而将支持民间社会内部实现土地改革和可持续发展的努力。它还将促进未来社会运动和其他农业聚落之间的长期比较生态研究，为土地变化科学和政治生态学提供信息。在一个缺乏持续正规教育机会的区域，关于非正规学习作用的经验细节将促进今后更有效的行动规划和公平解决政策的制定。

Doctoral candidate David Meek (University of Georgia), supervised by Drs. Peter Brosius and Julie Velasquez-Runk, will engage in research in an Amazonian community of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement to determine how new settlement movements impact the participants and the rainforest environments they are using. The research will focus on how informal learning, gained through social movement participation, influences agroecological knowledge, agroforestry practices, and resulting land cover changes. The researcher will combine life history interviews, participant observation of agricultural and movement activities, semi-structured interviews, and free-lists to examine whether movement participation influences levels of agroecological knowledge and agricultural practices. Spatial data, gathered from satellite imagery and participatory mapping, will be used to examine the spatial extent of agroforestry areas, and their contribution to larger processes of land cover change.The relationship between Amazonian land reform and land cover change remains highly debated among those concerned with balancing the need for economic development with the impact on the forest. This research is important as it will explore potential linkages between political ideology and informal learning about critical issues of deforestation and reforestation. Research findings will contribute to debates about the environmental impact of land reform settlements, and will thereby support efforts within civil society to achieve agrarian reform and sustainable development. It will also facilitate future comparative long-term ecological research between social movement and other agrarian settlements, informing land change science and political ecology. Empirical details on the role of informal learning, in a region characterized by lack of consistent access to formal education, will promote more effective movement planning and equitable settlement policy-making in the future.