Current Institutional Affiliation
Associate Professor and Department Chair, Sociology and Anthropology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Award Information

International Dissertation Research Fellowship 2001
Institutional Affiliation (at time of award):
Anthropology, University of Michigan
Madagascar's Forest Labor: The Meaning of Conservation for Low-Wage Workers

This research focuses on labor in forest conservation projects in Madagascar. I hypothesize that the structural position of low-wage workers in conservation and development projects, and the multiple labor relations of which they are a part, undermine conservation goals. I will spend 12 months in the Biosphere Reserve of Mananara-Nord on the central eastern coast of Madagascar examining whether workers' expressions and demonstrations of forest conservation principles change according to the collective labor process in which they participate. I will conduct interviews and participant observation with workers' during their job hours and when they perform their non-job-related ritual, agricultural, or entrepreneurial activities that use forest resources, such as trees, plants, or soils. A study of Malagasy conservation workers' tasks, experiences, thoughts of conservation, and competing obligations within multiple relations of production will offer insight into problems of long-term forest conservation that remain unanalyzed in development reports and scholarly literature.

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