Doctoral Dissertation Research: Reconfiguring Local Knowledge of Remedies: Hybridity at the Interface of Production and Consumption

匹兹堡大学博士生，诺拉C。Bridges，由Kathleen M. DeWalt将进行为期12个月的实地研究，研究土著人民如何在与不同的外来者越来越多的接触的背景下告知和建立当地的健康补救知识。她将调查当地知识是否以及在多大程度上是一种资源，通过这种资源，1）保持健康，2）维护土著身份，3）支持社会性。 据推测，当地知识库的灵活性提供了成功的生计战略。 本研究旨在探讨创新生产和战略消费在日益多元化的环境中提供稀缺医疗资源的同时作用。 这项研究将在厄瓜多尔上纳波的土著亚马逊人中进行。研究人员将记录在迅速变化的环境和社会经济背景下，当地补救措施知识的变化。 数据收集方法将包括结构化调查，正式的启发技术，参与性绘图，家庭花园库存，深入的半结构化访谈，参与者观察和文件收集。 这项研究将有助于当地知识生产的理论，在当地固化剧目与市场渗透和改变环境共存的背景下。 除了理论发展，这项研究旨在帮助设计一个更复杂和细致入微的框架，以更好地描述如何作出健康决策和稀缺资源的分配，以加强人类健康计划，产生可持续生计的建议，并加强文化和生物多样性。 资助这项研究也支持研究生的教育。

University of Pittsburgh doctoral student, Nora C. Bridges, supervised by Dr. Kathleen M. DeWalt, will undertake 12 months of field research on how indigenous people inform and build local knowledge of health remedies in a context of increasing engagement with diverse outsiders. She will investigate whether and to what degree local knowledge is a resource through which, 1) health is maintained, 2) indigenous identity is asserted, and 3) sociality is supported. It is hypothesized that agility in local knowledge repertoires provides successful livelihood strategies. This research seeks to examine the simultaneous roles of innovative production and strategic consumption in the provision of scarce medical resources in increasingly pluralistic settings. The research will be carried out among Indigenous Amazonians in the Upper Napo of Ecuador. The researcher will document shifts in local knowledge of remedies shifts across rapidly changing environmental and socioeconomic contexts. Data collection methods will include structured surveys, formal elicitation techniques, participatory mapping, home garden inventories, in-depth semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document collection. This research will contribute to theories of local knowledge production in contexts where indigenous curing repertoires co-exist with market penetration and altered environments. In addition to theoretical development, this research is intended to help devise a more sophisticated and nuanced framework to better describe how health decisions are made and scarce resources are allocated in order to enhance human health programs, generate recommendations for sustainable livelihoods, and fortify cultural and biological diversity. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.