Graduate student Elaina Lill (University of Georgia), supervised by Dr. J. Peter Brosius and Dr. Bram Tucker, will conduct multi-sited ethnographic research to investigate efforts and effects of trying to utilize what is thought to be traditional customary law in natural resource management. The researcher will focus on the case of Malagasy traditional customary law known as dina, and how it has been employed in the Velondriake project, a community-based natural resource management initiative developed for the Vezo people in Madagascar. Preliminary research suggests that Vezo fishers did not historically practice dina, or any explicit resource management tradition. But for the past five years, a foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) has promoted dina ideology and practices in the co-managed Velondriake project.
The researcher will use the results of participant observation, focal follows, a biannual household questionnaire, cultural domain techniques, interviews, and document research to: 1) explore how the national government, international NGO conservation agents, and Vezo people themselves understand and construct cultural models of dina; 2) compare Vezo cultural models of dina to their actual coastal foraging behavior; 3) investigate how markets and conservation projects affect Vezo welfare and perception of the environment; and finally, 4) investigate how markets influence participation in the Velondriake project.
This research is important because it will contribute to improving collaborative efforts to develop meaningful participatory approaches to resource management in the developing world. It will also improve scholarly understanding of the "invention" of tradition, its relationship to institutional development,and its effects on social, economic, and environmental change. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.
