Doctoral Dissertation Research: The impacts of public policy on rural social organization

在农业经济大国，农村发展和农业推广是政府方案的重要组成部分。使国家增长战略与小规模家庭农民的利益相协调的努力导致农村人口可获得的政策的数量和质量发生了迅速变化。这些措施包括公共基础设施项目、补贴信贷计划、土地改革努力，以及生态系统服务付款。虽然规划者和发展实践者对个别倡议的成败了如指掌，但农业社区调整其经济、生产和组织战略以适应国家发展政策不断变化的优先事项的能力却鲜为人知。增加获得公共补贴和推广服务的机会是否鼓励农民减少或增加对生产的投资？它是否允许农民增加对家庭和社区基础设施的投资？随着时间的推移，政府反复干预会产生什么社会影响？社区是否相互协作，围绕公共政策的管理交换信息和建立组织？或者，政府发展政策的快速变化是否会产生冲突，因为地方领导人垄断了对关键公共资源的了解和控制？除了支持人类学研究生在实证、科学数据收集和分析方法方面的培训外，这项研究的结果还将提供关于国家政策随时间变化对社区组织的影响的见解，因此将对从事国内和国际发展的规划者和实践者具有重要意义。这项研究将在河口地区的农业社区进行，在那里，来自自然资源保护者、土地所有者和其他利益相关者的竞争压力创造了一个复杂的政策格局，在过去的30年里经历了快速的变化。这将为研究社区一级对不断变化的政府发展干预措施的反应提供一个合适的环境。此外，调查员以前在该地区的经验将为当地提供至关重要的支持。调查员将把重点放在河口的传统河流群落上。这些社区历来利用大家庭网络动员亲戚在泛滥平原沿线从事小规模农业和农林活动，但最近成为几项重叠的政府政策的目标。研究将包括收集对国家发展机构的采访，农民组成的地方协会的历史，以及来自四个农村的人口普查数据。利用这些数据，调查人员将探索财富不平等、次级职业地位、与宗教组织的联系或获得大家庭网络是否是农民获得公共发展资金并成功应对不断变化的政府政策的能力的更重要因素。这一奖项反映了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。

Rural development and agricultural extension form crucial components of government programming in countries with large agricultural economies. Efforts to harmonize national growth strategies with the interests of small-scale family farmers have led to rapid changes in the quantity and quality of policies available to rural populations. These include public infrastructure projects, subsidized credit programs, land reform efforts, and payments for ecosystem services. While the successes and failures of individual initiatives are well-known to planners and development practitioners, the ability of farming communities to adapt their economic, productive, and organizational strategies to the changing priorities of state development policy is less well understood. Does increasing access to public subsidies and extension services encourage farmers to decrease or increase investments in production? Does it allow farmers to increase investments in household and community infrastructure? And what are the social impacts of repeated government interventions over time? Do communities collaborate to exchange information and build organizations surrounding the administration of public policies? Or do rapid changes in government development policy generate conflicts as local leaders monopolize knowledge of and control over key public resources? In addition to supporting the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, findings from this research will provide insights into the way changing state policy impacts community organization over time and will therefore have significant implications for planners and practitioners working in both domestic and international development.This research will be conducted in farming communities in an estuary region where contending pressures from conservationists, landowners, and other stakeholders have created a complex policy landscape that has undergone rapid changes over the past three decades. This will provide an apt setting to study community-level responses to changing government development interventions. Moreover, the investigator's prior experience in the region will furnish crucial local support. The investigator will focus on the estuary's traditional riverine communities. These communities have historically drawn on extended family networks to mobilize relatives to pursue small-scale farming and agroforestry activities along floodplains but have recently become to targets of several overlapping government policies. Research will involve the collection of interviews with state development agencies, histories of local associations formed by farmers, and census data from four rural villages. Using this data, the investigator will explore whether wealth inequalities, secondary occupational status, affiliation with religious organizations, or access to extended family networks are more important factors in farmers' ability to gain access to public development funding and successfully navigate changing government policies.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.