This Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Minority PostDoctoral Research Fellowship supports research on the effects of populist reform policies on local resource use practices in Bolivia. The project focuses on the effects of the Agrarian Revolution, an agricultural development proposal to undo social and economic inequalities, on the management of land and forest resources in the lowlands department of Santa Cruz. The project addresses two questions: (1) How does the Revolution shape the management of land and forest resources among users with distinct socioecological beliefs and practices in Santa Cruz? (2) How will local resource use practices and relationships change as a result of the process of reform? The goal is to examine how material and symbolic aspects of resource management change as a function of both geographical imaginaries of people in place (endogenous drivers) and external actors and processes (exogenous drivers). Consideration of the local dynamics of populist reforms as these are in progress is an innovative approach that has been relatively unexplored in policy development in the developing world, but has significant broader implications. First, examining the local dynamics of resource use in times of uncertainty in Santa Cruz offers the much needed opportunity to empirically assess the conditions under which populist reforms can (or cannot) successfully achieve their social and economic goals, in a sustainable manner. This is of great value given the emergence of new populist regimes in Latin America and the mixed socioeconomic outcomes of populist policies in the region over the last few decades. Second, a deeper understanding of how local knowledge structures and relationships shape resource decisionmaking in times of change contributes to building more effective future policy interventions in the sustainable governance of areas of high biodiversity value, social inequality, and political instability. Training with these distinct yet complementary sponsors will broaden the applicant's research skills and facilitate expertise and infrastructure needed to conduct this research. Collaboration and exchanges with Bolivian institutions and researchers as a result of this project will also enhance the applicant's ability to develop approaches that bridge theoretical and practical concerns in human-environment research. Finally, the research will also advance the applicant's methodological and conceptual expertise by emphasizing integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches (specifically, through the use of agent-based modeling), in order to offer novel and significant approaches to the production of development policy.
