Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Anthropological Examination of the Reorganization of Urban Space in Food Security and Redevelopment Efforts

肯塔基州大学博士生梅根毛雷尔，博士克里斯汀门罗的监督下，将进行这项研究的重建。通过了解和评估社区成员，民间组织和地方政府改造城市环境的努力，这项研究将有助于确定更具包容性的城市再开发战略。这项研究发生在密歇根州东南部，该地区的特点是城市基础设施崩溃和破产的市政当局。社会科学家发现，美国社会经济遭到破坏的地区，如这对研究重建工作的社会和文化障碍特别有用。本项目的目的是调查来自不同社会经济背景的个人为改善他们的粮食安全而使用的策略。该项目还探讨了不同的社会经济经验如何塑造社区为生产目的改造城市空间的努力。这项研究将在密歇根州东南部的一个小城市进行。利用半结构式访谈的资料，研究者将探讨四个社区的粮食生产工作的案例研究。这些案例研究将使用调查，地图，深入访谈和参与者观察，以确定有关城市土地使用的想法和他们的公民参与之间的联系。这些方法也将用于确定人口统计学和与他人的关系在塑造这些联系中所起的作用。来自四个案例研究社区的一组个人，这些社区不属于有组织的食品生产工作的一部分，将作为一个比较组。该项目还推动了关于劳动人民和社会弱势个人在日常生活中应对粮食安全和其他挑战的方式的研究。最后，这项研究进一步人类学和其他科学研究的城市空间，公民身份和社会变革之间的联系。

University of Kentucky doctoral student Megan Maurer, under the supervision of Dr. Kristin Monroe, will conduct this study of redevelopment. By understanding and assessing the efforts of community members, civic organizations, and local governments to transform their urban environments, this research will help identify strategies for more inclusive urban redevelopment. The research takes place in Southeast Michigan, an area characterized by crumbling urban infrastructures and bankrupt municipalities. Social scientists find socioeconomically devastated areas of the U.S. such as this particularly useful for studying the social and cultural impediments to redevelopment efforts.The purpose of this project is to investigate the strategies used by individuals from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to improve their food security. This project also asks how community efforts to transform urban space for productive ends are shaped by different socioeconomic experiences. This research will be conducted in a small city in Southeast Michigan. Using data from semi-structured interviews with local community stewards the researcher will explore four community food production efforts for case study. These case studies will use surveys, maps, in-depth interviews, and participant observations, to identify the connections between ideas about urban land use and their civic engagements. These methods will also be used to determine the role demographics and relationships to others play in shaping these connections. A group of individuals from the four case study neighborhoods that are not part of the organized food production efforts will be included as a comparison group. This project also advances scholarship on the ways working people and socially disadvantaged individuals engage with food security and other challenges in their daily lives. Finally, this study furthers anthropological and other scientific research on the connections between urban space, citizenship, and social change.