Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Remains of Agriculture: Rural Transformation in Hamakua District, Hawaii

University Of Hawaii, Honolulu

Investigators

Abstract

Recent literature on new rural areas has examined the impacts of rural migrants (i.e., fragmentation of agricultural land, social segregation, rising land prices), but has largely overlooked the environmental and stewardship values and motivations of some exurban migrants and their potential to transition in a new era in agricultural production and land stewardship. In Hawaii, an influx of amenity migrants and economic diversification, following the collapse of plantation economy in the late twentieth century, have led to rapidly changing rural landscapes. In response, planners and policy makers have turned to farmland preservation tools to mitigate the changes taking place in the countryside. However, these tools are rooted in the farmland preservation ideals of the U.S. mainland, which are in contrast to the economic, social, and environmental histories of Hawaii's agricultural past where large sugar or pineapple plantations have dominated the landscape, rural life, and local economy for over a century. The result is that farm communities in Hawaii attempt to create, rather than preserve rural landscapes. Doctoral student Nicole Milne, under the supervision of Dr. Krisnawati Suryanata at the University of Hawaii Manoa will investigate the social and ideological role agriculture plays in the lives of Hamakua's rural residents, and how various stakeholders construct, negotiate, and contest competing visions of the place of agriculture in contemporary rural Hawaii. The project will collect primary data through focus group meetings, surveys, participant observation, and in-depth interviews over 12 months of fieldwork, as well as archival information derived from state and county institutions, public meetings, and popular media. This project will critically examine the politics of resource use from political economy and cultural perspectives to understand how particular visions and values for an agrarian Hamakua are expressed over others, both within social discourse and through material practices. It will assist land use planners, community organizations, and others involved in the design of viable policies guiding agriculture and land use in rural communities, improve the level of socioeconomic and agricultural information available to support the development of sound land use policies, and facilitate discussion, knowledge sharing, and networking within and between Hamakua's various sub-communities.