Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting the Domestication of Energy among Tree Farmers in a Deforestation Context

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

University of Florida doctoral candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow Andrew Tarter, under the guidance of Dr. Gerald F. Murray, will undertake research to discover, document, and understand the various factors that persuade some farmers to plant or retain trees for harvest as a cash crop, producing an energy-generating product - charcoal. Tarter's research will help document the emergence of an earlier posited anthropological theory, 'the domestication of energy'. This theoretical paradigm was partly validated through voluntary, widespread farmer participation in an earlier anthropologically-designed agroforestry project; however, widespread voluntary tree-planting or -retention has yet to be academically documented to occur independent of external inputs. Understanding the causes for this autonomous shift toward a domestication of energy paradigm calls for the collection and comparison of data on a range of sociocultural, economical, ecological and spatial factors thought to differentially affect levels of tree cover on randomly selected plots of privately owned land. These data will be procured through a variety of methods including semi-structured interviews, metrics produced from social network analyses, forest transects, soil classifications, analyses of satellite images, and the utilization of GIS and GPS technologies. These data will be contextualized through insights produced from long-term participant observation and ethnographic interviews in Haiti. What will emerge is a clearer understanding of the factors that lead to the domestication of energy, the creation and refinement of existing and new theoretical constructs, and the production of a predictive land-use model. This model will help predict those farmers most receptive to or already engaged in the paradigmatic shift toward a domestication of energy. Tarter's research has the potential to influence policy-makers; tree-planting and reforestation efforts remain major priorities of both nongovernmental and governmental organizations. Additionally, anthropological research in a highly deforested country will provide important comparative data for policy-makers in other deforested countries.