Doctoral Dissertation Research: The effect of rural-urban mobility on livelihood strategies and governance of conservation areas

该奖项支持的研究解决了这样一个问题：鉴于当前全球农村生计多样化和快速城市化的趋势，小农在保护工作中可以发挥什么作用？这个问题很重要，因为尽管许多小农生活在具有重要保护意义的地区，但他们也经常遭受高度贫困的困扰，这可能会导致他们放弃严格以农业为基础的生活方式。因此，为世世代代加强对受保护领土的良好土地管理和治理而在环境上可持续的努力可能会因城乡空间之间的流通增加以及期望和愿望的变化而受到干扰。了解城市化和地方范围内代际变化的影响，对于更广泛地讨论我国未来保护区内小农耕作的作用至关重要。为了调查这些问题，印第安纳大学人类学研究生露西·米勒在爱德华多·S·布朗迪齐奥博士的指导下，将前往巴西亚马逊的保护区GurupáMelgaço采掘保护区。她之所以选择这个地区，是因为这里有大片保护区，也有许多贫困的小农。这种结合使得两者之间的冲突比在更发达的背景下更明显、更容易研究。快速城市化和农村生计多样化进程的全球趋势反映在对城市中心公共部门工作和政府福利方案现金收入的日益依赖上。在此背景下，研究人员将调查城乡流动对生计战略、代际资源治理和农村认同形成的影响。研究人员将结合社会科学方法收集数据，包括半结构化和深度访谈，记录保护区三个社区的规则和社会规范类型，以及每个社区的家庭访谈，以确定社区内的差异以及流动性在集体行动、规则遵守、争执和冲突中的作用。对这些信息的分析将使研究人员能够评估快速的社会变化如何影响保护区居民彼此之间的关系和他们的环境，以及这些不断变化的关系对集体资源治理有什么影响。这项研究的结果将对美国的政策制定者有用，他们关心改善农村生计，同时也促进环境保护。这些数据还将有助于改进社会科学的标量间理论，处理中级集体治理与地方一级家庭生存战略之间的关系。

The research supported by this award addresses the question: What role can be played by smallholder farmers in conservation efforts, given current global trends of rural livelihood diversification and rapid urbanization? The question is important because while many smallholder farmers live in areas significant for conservation, they also often suffer from high levels of poverty, which may lead them to shift away from strictly agricultural-based modes of living. Environmentally sustainable efforts to increase good land stewardship and governance of protected territories over generations may thus be confounded by increased circulation between rural-urban spaces and changing expectations and desires. Understanding the effects of urbanization and inter-generational changes at the local scale is crucial for broader discussions on the role of smallholder farming in protected areas in our nation's future. To investigate these issues, Indiana University anthropology graduate student Lucy Miller, who is supervised by Dr. Eduardo S. Brondizio, will travel the Gurupá-Melgaço extractive reserve, a protected area of the Brazilian Amazon. She has chosen this region because it is home to extensive protected areas as well as to many impoverished smallholder farmers. This combination makes the conflicts between the two more apparent and easier to study than they would be in a more developed context. The global trends of rapid urbanization and processes of rural livelihood diversification are reflected in increasing reliance on cash income from public sector jobs and government welfare programs in urban centers. In this context, the researchers will investigate what impact rural-urban mobility has on livelihood strategies, resource governance across generations, and rural identity formation. The researcher will gather data through a combination of social scientific methods, including semi-structured and in-depth interviews, documentation of the types of rules and social norms in three of the reserve's communities, and household interviews in each community to ascertain intra-community variation and the role of mobility in collective action, rule compliance, contestation, and conflicts. Analysis of this information will allow the investigators to assess how rapid social change affects reserve residents' relationships with each other and their environment, and what implications these evolving relationships have for collective resource governance. Findings from the research will be of use to policymakers in the United States who are concerned with improving rural livelihoods while also promoting environmental conservation. The data will also contribute to improved social science inter-scalar theory dealing with the relationship between meso-scale collective governance and local-level household subsistence strategies.