Doctoral Dissertation Research: Sovereignty, Displacement, and Land Titling Strategies

以种植园为基础的大规模生产日益占据主导地位，以满足全球对商品的需求，这导致较小的社区流离失所，而这些社区的丧失已被充分记录为具有不利的环境和社会影响。拥有土地基础对于创造收入和防止他们自己流离失所是至关重要的，特别是对经济上处于不利地位的社区和少数群体而言。这些土地的合法所有权和登记通常被认为是确保土地基础的关键方法，但所有权划分并不总是转化为对这些土地的实际占有。政府政策、私营部门的力量和自然灾害可能会逐渐侵蚀土地基础，因为它们在法律上或经济上迫使社区成员出售或腾出他们拥有所有权的土地。如果没有能力决定谁可以使用土地，管理土地的用途，并执行这些政策，这些社区对他们的土地基础几乎没有安全保障。该项目支持对人类学研究生进行实证性、科学性数据收集和分析方法的培训，探讨这些社区如何建立对土地的权威，以防止他们流离失所。这篇博士论文研究了尼加拉瓜东南部九个原住民Rama和非洲人后裔Kriol社区的经历，他们在2009年获得了一个面积相当于特拉华州五分之四的领土的共同所有权。这个网站特别适合于这一项目，因为最近才颁发了一个所有权，而且研究人员在该所有权颁发后的大部分时间里都与这些社区接触，提供了自那时以来不断变化的领土控制条件的分析。虽然尼加拉瓜法律保证，除非在极其有限的情况下，并在与社区协商后，否则不得出售、抵押或以其他方式转让所有权下的公共土地，但拉马-克里奥尔地区正受到来自国内的混血定居者的影响，他们正在夺取该领土日益增长的部分用于农作物和牧场。这摧毁了拉马-克里奥尔农业区和狩猎场，被污染的河流，以及一个拉玛社区完全流离失所。调查的重点将是拉马-克里奥尔领土政府及其组成社区如何通过三个关键领域寻求有效利用其领土：管理领土的实际占有率；收集和管理有关领土占有率的信息；以及竞争各级政府决定领土管理的能力。为此，研究人员将采访社区成员、拉玛和克里奥尔护林员、社区和领土领导人、政府官员和混血定居者，并对拉马-克里奥尔地区土地治理的日常活动进行参与式观察。这将允许对人们体验和参与这些过程的方式进行细粒度的理解。尼加拉瓜国家档案馆的档案研究还将增加对拉马-克里奥尔领土正在进行的殖民和剥夺过程的研究的历史深度。由此产生的研究成果将有助于理解土著和非洲人后裔主权的形成和维护的实践，这对世界各地的土著和非洲人后裔人民以及跨社会科学的主权、自治和国家形成的研究都有影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The increased dominance of large-scale, plantation-based production to meet global demand for commodities has contributed to the displacement of smaller communities, the loss of which has been well-documented as having adverse environmental and social impacts. Having possession of a land base is essential in order to generate revenues and prevent their own displacement, particularly for economically disadvantaged and minority communities. Legal titling and registration of those lands is often considered to be a critical method for ensuring a land base, yet titling does not always translate into real possession of those lands. Government policies, private sector forces, and natural disasters, may gradually erode of a land base as they legally or economically compel community members to sell or vacate their titled lands. Without the ability to decide who can use the lands, manage the purposes for which they are used, and enforce those policies, such communities have little security over their land bases. This project, which supports the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, explores how such communities establish authority over land in order to prevent their displacement. This doctoral dissertation research centers the experiences of nine Indigenous Rama and Afrodescendant Kriol communities in southeastern Nicaragua that received a communal title to a territory that is four-fifths the size of Delaware in 2009. This site is particularly appropriate for this project due to the recency of the issuing of a title and the researcher's engagement with these communities during a majority of the period since the title was issued, providing for an analysis of the changing conditions of territorial control since that time. While Nicaraguan law guarantees that communal lands under the title may not be sold, mortgaged, or otherwise alienated except in extremely limited circumstances and after consultation with the communities, the Rama-Kriol Territory is being impacted by mestizo settlers from the interior of the country, who are seizing growing segments of the territory for crops and ranching. This has destroyed Rama-Kriol agricultural areas and hunting grounds, contaminated rivers, and wholly displaced one Rama community. The investigation will focus on how the Rama-Kriol Territorial Government and its constituent communities are seeking to effectively use their territory through three key areas: the management of the physical occupancy of the territory; the gathering and management of information about the occupancy of the territory; and the contestation of the capacity of different levels of government to decide on the management of the territory. To do so, the researcher will interview community members, Rama and Kriol forest rangers, communal and territorial leaders, government officials, and mestizo settlers in the territory and carry out participant-observation in the daily activities of land governance in the Rama-Kriol Territory. This will allow for a fine-grained understanding of ways in which people experience and participate in these processes. Archival research at the Nicaraguan national archives will also add historical depth to this study of the processes of colonization and dispossession under way in the Rama-Kriol Territory. The resulting research products will contribute an understanding of the practices through which Indigenous and Afrodescendant sovereignty is formed and preserved, which has implications both for Indigenous and Afrodescendant peoples worldwide and for the study of sovereignty, autonomy, and state formation across the social sciences.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.