Standard Research Grant: An Ethnographic Study of Agrarian Life

本项目是应用农业科学与沉降的研究。为了了解应用农业科学和住区如何提高土地和人口的生产力，该项目将收集农业推广、农业景观和生计方面的数据。发达的美国和欧洲大学，农业推广已经以值得更密切关注的方式塑造了美国和欧洲以外的生计。该项目将研究政府、大学和非政府组织的农业推广服务的工作，这些服务面向高海拔、易发生山体滑坡地区的小农。PI将创建一个可概括的框架，以理解使这种景观富有成效的政治、经济和环境技术。该项目将详细说明推广科学家和农民如何在环境和经济变化的背景下使农田可行。PI将开发一种方法，将历史与民族志结合起来，以理解农业变化。关于定居和农业推广的档案文件将在焦点小组讲习班上进行解释并与农民分享。这种方法将有助于回答两个问题：(1)生产力是以什么方式实现的？农业推广科学已经改变了农民种植什么和如何种植，它的目标是通过引进新的作物和工具来保持农业的可行性。需要进一步调查的是，小农在创造生产性景观的连续科学努力中所发挥的积极作用，以及特定作物的推广如何与确保控制具有挑战性的地形（特别是山区景观）的更大项目相关联。(2)农业推广对农民日常生活的影响是什么？连续的农业推广项目给小农，特别是妇女的生活带来了微妙和巨大的变化。要理解家庭生活、科学和市场是如何相交的，就需要研究聚落是如何在不同尺度上创造劳动分工的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

This project is a study of applied agricultural science and settlement. To understand how applied agricultural science and settlement make land and people productive, the PI will collect data on agricultural extension and agrarian landscapes and livelihoods. Developed U.S. and European universities, agricultural extension has shaped livelihoods outside the U.S. and Europe in ways that deserve closer attention. The PI will study the work of governmental, university-based, and nongovernmental agricultural extension services aimed at small farmers in high altitude, landslide-prone landscapes. The PI will create a generalizable framework for understanding the political, economic, and environmental technologies that make such landscapes productive. This project will result in a detailed picture of how extension scientists and farmers work to make farmland viable in the context of environmental and economic change.The PI will develop a methodology for bringing history into conversation with ethnography to understand agrarian change. Archival documents on settlement and agricultural extension will be interpreted and shared with farmers in focus group workshops. This methodology will contribute to answering two questions: (1) In what ways is productivity enacted? Agricultural extension science has transformed both what farmers grow and how they grow it, and it aims to keep farming viable by introducing novel crops and tools. What requires further investigation is the active role small farmers have played in successive scientific efforts to craft productive landscapes, and how the promotion of particular crops is enmeshed in the larger project of securing control over challenging terrain, particularly mountain landscapes. (2) What are the effects of agricultural extension on everyday life for farmers? Successive agricultural extension projects have entailed both subtle and drastic changes to the lives of small farmers, particularly women. Understanding how domestic life, science, and the market intersect requires investigation of how settlement creates divisions of labor across scales.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.