Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Cultural and Economic Logic of Small-Scale Farming

一旦成为当地的做法，许多现代农业都发生在商业农场和种植园，将其产品销往世界各地。随着世界农业集中在大型商业农场，其他地方的许多生产者已经放弃了农业，转向更有利可图的行业，如旅游业。然而，人们普遍认识到，粮食安全取决于维持多样化经济，其中至少包括少量的当地粮食生产。该项目培训一名学生掌握经验性科学数据收集和分析方法，调查当地农民的这一经济利基，他们即使在经济效益下降的情况下也继续耕作。研究人员问，为什么人们选择继续传统的生计和自给自足，即使它似乎违背了经济上的自我利益。 除了为培训人类学研究生提供资金外，该项目还将通过向致力于发现更有效的方法来应对粮食不安全、改善经济和农业政策以及促进环境、文化和经济可持续性的组织广泛传播其研究结果，提高科学认识。在阿默斯特的马萨诸塞州大学的克里斯塔哈珀博士的指导下，将探讨为什么农业生产者在参与似乎不符合他们的中短期经济利益的情况下仍然致力于小规模农业。它检验了经济人类学中的一个经典假设，即人类的经济行为往往是由物质上非理性但文化上具有战略意义的目标所驱动的。该项目将在圣基茨进行;加勒比长期以来一直被认为是研究纵向政治经济趋势的理想实验室，因为它长期从事资本主义生产和殖民主义。圣基茨岛融入全球经济始于一个糖生产国，并继续作为一个豪华的旅游目的地，使其成为一个合适的地点，以调查人们如何以及为什么在不断变化的文化，经济和政治景观中保持文化习俗。使用一系列既定的民族志和地理技术进行数据收集和分析，如参与者观察，访谈和ArcGIS中的空间分析，调查员将采访小规模农业生产者，并追踪该岛的粮食和经济流动。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Once a local practice, much contemporary agriculture takes place on commercial farms and plantations that distribute their products worldwide. With the world's agriculture concentrated onto large commercial farms, many producers elsewhere have abandoned farming for more profitable industries, such as tourism. Yet, it is widely recognized that food security depends on maintenance of a diversified economy that includes at least some modicum of local food production. This project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, investigates this economic niche of local farmers, who continue to farm even as economic benefits wane. The researcher asks why people chose to continue traditional livelihoods and self-sufficiency even when it seems to counter economic self-interest. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, the project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to organizations invested in discovering more effective means of navigating food insecurity, improving economic and agricultural policies, and promoting environmental, cultural, and economic sustainability.Dana Conzo, under the supervision of Dr. Krista Harper of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will explore why agricultural producers remain committed to small-scale farming when participation appears to not be in their short to medium-term economic interest. It tests a classic hypothesis in economic anthropology that human economic behavior is often driven by materially irrational but culturally strategic aims. This project will be conducted in St. Kitts; the Caribbean has long been recognized as an ideal laboratory for examining longitudinal political economic trends because of its long engagement with capitalist production and colonialism. St. Kitts' integration into the global economy began as a sugar producer and has continued as a luxury tourist destination, making it an appropriate location to investigate how and why people maintain cultural practices in changing cultural, economic, and political landscapes. Using a range of established ethnographic and geographic techniques for data collection and analysis, such as participant observation, interviews, and spatial analysis in ArcGIS, the investigator will interview small-scale agricultural producers and trace the island's food and economic flows. The findings will contribute to debates in economic anthropology about autonomy, food security, land and labor practices, and globalization.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.