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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Reclaiming The Future Through Small-Scale Agriculture: Autonomy And Sustainability In The Caribbean, Dana M. Conzo
Reclaiming The Future Through Small-Scale Agriculture: Autonomy And Sustainability In The Caribbean, Dana M. Conzo
Doctoral Dissertations
My dissertation, “Reclaiming the future through Small-Scale Agriculture: Autonomy and Sustainability in the Caribbean,” is a political-economic analysis of land politics, foodscapes and foodsheds, and small-scale agricultural activities in plantation economies on the Caribbean island of St Kitts. Using ethnographic and geographic methods, such as participant observation, interviews, social network analysis, and foodshed mapping, I investigate the cultural and economic niche of local farmers, documented and analyzed the island’s foodshed, and provide a historical and economic background of St Kitts to link historical processes to contemporary spatial organization and agricultural practices. I consider the complexities of food inequalities and food …
Reconstructing Late Holocene Fire, Agriculture, And Climate From Sediment Records In Costa Rica And The Dominican Republic, Erik Nicholas Johanson
Reconstructing Late Holocene Fire, Agriculture, And Climate From Sediment Records In Costa Rica And The Dominican Republic, Erik Nicholas Johanson
Doctoral Dissertations
We use multiple proxies from sediment cores to identify periods of climate stress during the late Holocene across the circum-Caribbean region and to determine how fire activity and signals of Pre-Columbian agriculture coincide with these arid periods. We examine evidence of aridity from stable carbon isotope ratios and shifts in elemental composition, along with pollen and microscopic charcoal, at Bao Bog in the highlands of Hispaniola. We infer two major periods of aridity (3600–2300 and 1040–850 cal yr BP), with the later period associated with the late phase of the Terminal Classic Drought. A third, less marked interval of aridity …