Standard Research Grant: An Ethnographic Study of Agrarian Life

标准研究补助金：农业生活的民族志研究

• 批准号: 2240334
• 负责人: Sarah Besky
• 金额: $ 13.18万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-04-15 至 2026-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2240334&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Standard; Research; Grant; Ethnographic; Study

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.

该项目是应用农业科学和住区的研究。为了了解应用农业科学和住区如何提高土地和人民的生产力，PI 将收集有关农业推广、农业景观和生计的数据。在美国和欧洲发达的大学中，农业推广以值得密切关注的方式塑造了美国和欧洲以外地区的生计。该项目负责人将研究针对高海拔、山体滑坡易发地区小农的政府、大学和非政府农业推广服务工作。 PI 将创建一个通用框架来理解使此类景观富有成效的政治、经济和环境技术。该项目将详细介绍推广科学家和农民如何努力使农田在环境和经济变化的背景下变得可行。项目负责人将开发一种方法，将历史与民族志对话，以了解农业变化。有关定居和农业推广的档案文件将在焦点小组研讨会上与农民进行解释和分享。这种方法将有助于回答两个问题：（1）生产力以什么方式产生？农业推广科学改变了农民的种植内容和种植方式，其目标是通过引入新型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连续不断的科学努力中发挥的积极作用，以塑造生产性景观，以及特定作物的推广如何融入到确保对具有挑战性的地形（特别是山地景观）的控制的更大项目中。 （2）农业推广对农民日常生活有何影响？ 连续不断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。了解家庭生活、科学和市场如何交叉需要调查定居点如何造成跨尺度的劳动分工。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。