Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gender and Globalization in Fishing Economies

本博士论文项目是关于渔业社区的经济全球化以及家庭中的性别关系如何影响提供全球鱼类供应链的过程。随着北美、欧洲和亚洲对鱼类消费需求的增长，渔业生产网络日益融入全球经济。调查这种全球化如何影响男女相互交往的方式，对于理解人们如何影响其环境和获取自然资源具有重要意义。这项研究将涉及渔业社区的性别层面，这是目前对加强捕鱼努力的理解中缺少的一个因素。它将有助于保护和发展研究、生计研究和政治生态学方面的知识。在西非塞内加尔，渔业经济历来表现出高度的性别分工，本研究将调查渔业家庭中的夫妻合同，以更好地了解这些合同在更大的全球一体化时代是如何重新制定的。这项研究将通过为期12个月的以人种学为基础的密集实地考察来完成，其中包括在塞内加尔沿海地区的参与者观察和半结构化访谈。塞内加尔是一个主要的渔业国家，也是美国资助的外援接受者。该项目将包括在研究过程中培训和雇用两名当地研究助理，并制定了广泛传播的计划。除了标准的学术传播外，这些研究所还计划以政策制定者和业界专业人士为对象编写政策简报，并计划通过媒体展示，将研究成果宣传到当前研究领域之外。这样，将向行业专业人员提供信息，有助于更有效地规划和执行战略，管理充满活力的渔业。作为博士论文研究进步奖，该项目还将为研究生建立独立的研究生涯提供支持。

This doctoral dissertation project is about economic globalization in fishing communities and how gender relationships in households shape the processes that provision the global fish supply chain. Fishing production networks are increasingly integrated into the global economy as consumer demand for fish grows in North America, Europe and Asia. Investigating how such globalization impacts the ways in which men and women relate to one another has important implications for understanding how people affect their environments and access natural resources. This research will address the gender dimension of fishing communities, an element currently missing in the understandings of intensified fishing efforts. It will contribute to knowledge on conservation and development studies, livelihoods research, and political ecology. By considering fisher communities in Senegal, West Africa, where fishing economies have historically displayed highly gendered divisions of labor, this research will investigate the conjugal contracts in fishing households to better understand how these are being reformulated in an era of greater global integration. The research will be accomplished through twelve months of intensive ethnographically-based fieldwork that includes participant observation and semi-structured interviews in coastal Senegal, a major fishing nation and recipient of US-sponsored foreign aid. This project will include the training and employment of two local research assistants in the course of the research and plans are in places for broad dissemination. In addition to standard academic dissemination, the PIs are planning to develop policy briefing papers targeted at policy-makers and industry professionals, and they are also planning on making media presentations in order to publicize the research beyond the immediate study area. This way industry professionals will be provided with information that will contribute to more effective planning and implementation strategies for managing a dynamic fishing industry. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will also provide support to enable a graduate student to establish an independent research career.