2008 – 2009 Pruitt Dissertation Fellowship Recipients

I am currently a third-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. While my research draws upon a variety of theoretical and conceptual approaches, I self-identify as a feminist political ecologist with interests in environmental movements and the politics of collective action. Much of my research to-date has focused on environmental politics in northern India, especially the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. My Master’s thesis explored the regional context of anti-deforestation movements in India’s Himalayan foothills and asked how the Chipko “tree-hugging” movement reshaped national forest policy and local social relationships surrounding forest use practices. Results of this research were published in the Indian Geographical Journal and are included in a forthcoming edited volume on social geography from Cambridge University Press, New Delhi. Other recent research examined representations of women’s environmental activism, and impacts of social constructions of nature on the development, recognition and study of environmental movements in rural and urban areas in northern India.

I am grateful to the Society of Woman Geographers for supporting my dissertation research project, “Pollution Knowledge and Hydropolitics in the Ganges River Basin (India)”. This project investigates the emerging anti-pollution movement along the sacred Ganges River in Uttar Pradesh. By approaching the politics of pollution abatement as a “struggle over meaning”, I seek to reveal how collective action groups are reshaping the debate over conservation and resource use by engaging other local actors in a struggle to re-define popular knowledge regarding pollution and local water use practices. My methodology is designed to assess both current popular knowledge regarding water pollution, and the framing tactics employed by local actors in (re)producing particular ways of understanding the problems, sources, and potential solutions to presently high rates of water pollution. Over the course of this fellowship year, I am conducting my fieldwork in three cities along the Ganges River: Varanasi, Allahabad, and Kanpur. In each of these sites, I am surveying water users and interviewing members and leaders of anti-pollution organizations, governmental policy makers, state and municipal water board workers, local scientists, pilgrims and water users in order to assess the current state of “pollution knowledge”, the methods of its reproduction, and the processes by which new information is mediated and incorporated into the actions of water users and pollution producers.

I began this fall semester by completing much of my archival research. I started gathering water and pollution policy documents, as well as newspaper coverage of water pollution in the Ganges River Basin, during the summer of 2008 at the University of Wisconsin. Remaining documentation was located this fall through the Center for Research Libraries and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (Delhi). In October, I completed the textual analysis of national policy documents, and presented the initial results of these findings at the 15th Annual Mini-Conference on Critical Geography. Analysis of the hundreds of media archives I have gathered is deferred until after my fieldwork is complete next April. In the meantime, I have developed strong contacts at Benaras Hindu University, my sponsor institution in Varanasi, which is the first of the three sites where I am conducting research. I will be wrapping up my work in Varanasi and moving on to Allahabad, my second site, in January. However, I am taking a brief side-trip to Australia National University in late January in order to participate in their Asia-Pacific Week and present the preliminary results of my research at the South Asia Studies Summer School and Conference. In late March, I will present my research at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. While these opportunities and a hectic fieldwork schedule will keep me traveling across the seas for the remainder of the year, I have made arrangements to return to Varanasi at the end of my fieldwork period in order to share my findings with students and faculty in the Department of Geography and to obtain feedback before returning to the States.

Sarah E. Schwartz, a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the University of South Carolina, received the SWG Evelyn L. Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research in April 2008 and began her year of fieldwork in August 2008. Titled An investigation of four factors affecting decisions to adopt or reject HIV/AIDS prevention strategies in Swaziland, her project focuses on the effects of place and space on individuals’ responses to HIV/AIDS campaigns presently promoting abstinence, being faithful and condom use (the ABCs) in Swaziland. To better understand individuals’ decisions to adopt or reject these behaviors, Sarah is conducting a qualitative investigation of the ways in which responses are mediated and influenced by place-based and spatially-variable factors. Specifically, the investigation considers ABC campaigns and people in a variety of settings, e.g. Swaziland as a whole, communities within Swaziland, private-spaces¾in conjunction with role identities, social identities, gender roles and place-dependent factors that public health theories maintain are critical to a campaign’s success.

After visiting a number of communities in Swaziland, Sarah selected three in which to conduct her research: 1. Dumako, a rural, farming community; 2. Ezulwini, a suburban community located ten km from the capital city of Mbabane; and 3. the University of Swaziland’s main campus in Kwaluseni. A series of preliminary interviews in each of these communities yielded diverse responses and resulted in the elimination of some questions and topics and the addition of others. One early point of particular interest is the difference in the manner in which Ezulwini’s European population—Swazi citizens of European descent—and African population perceive HIV campaigns. Formal interviews in these communities will begin in January 2009.

Meetings with employees of a number of organizations involved in HIV/AIDS education including Lutheran Development Services (LDS), the Peace Corps, Swazi Women Against Abuse (SWAGA), the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and Population Services International (PSI) have taken place, and Sarah continues to seek interviews with individuals involved with other organizations involved with creating and implementing HIV campaigns. As part of her project, Sarah is also visually documenting campaigns and she has photographed numerous billboards, brochures and condom dispensers at locations throughout Swaziland from border posts to church restrooms.

Outside of her research, Sarah is volunteering for the Africa Cooperative Action Trust (ACAT), a Swazi NGO working primarily on agricultural projects. ACAT recently received funding to conduct a survey assessing the ways in which one of the organization’s projects has impacted individuals with HIV/AIDS and Sarah is presently involved in writing that survey. In addition, she has joined a local running group—the Swazi Slo-Jos—and is now training with the group for the Two-Oceans Marathon in Cape Town, South Africa.

Sarah conducted her Masters’ thesis research on ecotourism in northern Ghana and received her M.A. in geography from the University of South Carolina in 2005. So far, living and conducting research in southern Africa has been as enjoyable—and, at times, as frustrating!—as doing so in western Africa and Sarah is looking forward to her remaining eight months in Swaziland.

I am a third-year PhD Candidate in the department of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. My research focuses on the cultural and environmental geography of China. Specifically, my dissertation research examines changes in rice production and consumption in China by examining the case of ‘high quality’ japonica rice grown in the northeast of China. The support of the Pruitt National Dissertation Fellowship is assisting my fieldwork for this project in northeast China.

Since June 2008, I have been living in the northeastern city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province. The northeast of China, once known for its industry, has steadily grown as a major agricultural producer in recent years. The region is noted for its grain production, particularly the production of green and organic food. Rice production has especially increased in this region over the past twenty to thirty years. The rice grown in the northeast of China is short-grain japonica rice, similar to varieties in Japan and Korea. In light of increased international trade, Chinese scientists have made efforts to increase the quality the rice to attain quality levels of rice to compete in the international market.

Prior to the year 2000, the government made no price distinctions on the quality of rice produced. In fact, much of the rice grown in China has been high-yielding hybrid rice that is generally poor quality grain. In an effort to step away from its production of low quality grain in mass quantities, the state is increasing its efforts to grow higher quality grain. Beginning in 2000, the Chinese government established a series of standards and regulations to promote the production of high quality grain. Northeast rice thrives in its ideal temperate environment and has need for few pesticides. As a result of decades of scientific research, this rice is exemplary of a successful high quality grain, setting the foundation for my case study of japonica rice.

Following recent work in agro-food studies to integrate the production and consumption of commodity food, my dissertation seeks to develop the cultural economy of japonica rice in China. My research is situated at various sites of japonica rice production, distribution, and consumption. The project investigates the meaning of high quality rice for the scientists, producers, company managers, and consumers who interact with this rice and embed the label of quality onto this rice. Research methods consist primarily of interviews, surveys, and ethnographic research with these important actors.

Over the past six months in Harbin, I have made contacts with professors and rice research scientists at the Northeast Agriculture University and the Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences. I have accessed materials about the history, development, and current situation of rice production in the northeast. I have also traveled to potential field sites of rice production where I plan to spend much of my time during the next growing season beginning in the spring. My most recent project has been to complete over 500 surveys with consumers in Harbin supermarkets about their rice purchasing habits. These surveys asked consumers to list the factors influencing them when buying rice, including appearance, scent, nutritional value, price, brand name, and whether or not it is ‘green’ (organic) rice.

Over the next three to four months, I plan to continue consumer surveys with Beijing consumers and consumers in smaller towns in Heilongjiang. Focus groups discussing the results of the surveys will provide a more in-depth perspective of consumer decisions. I then plan to spend much of the 2009 growing season (April through October) in villages in Heilongjiang province known for their high quality rice. Much of the research I will conduct will be collecting ethnographic data with farmers and interviews with rice company managers and employees. This data will include responses by the northeast rice industry and farmers to changes in the market to encourage high quality rice as well as fluctuating grain process worldwide.

An overall goal of my dissertation is to understand how a shift in Chinese society away from the mass production of goods and to the consumption of high quality goods is evident in grain production and consumption. Again, I am grateful to the Society of Woman Geographers for making this project possible.