| PERSONAL DESCRIPTION |
| Name:Paul SILLITOE |
| Address: | Department of Anthropology, |
| University of Durham, 43, Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HN. |
| Telephone | 091 374 2841 |
| Fax | 091 374 3740 |
| e-mailpaul.sillitoe@durham.ac.uk |
| Current position: | Reader in Anthropology, Durham University. |
| Expertise: | Anthropologist (social/cultural) specialising in economics, politics and |
| social change, subsistence, livelihood and technology, human ecology and ethno- science. Pacific region ethnography. |
| Agronomist (soil/crop science) specialising in tropical & sub-tropical subsistence |
| farming and environments, natural resource management, and tribal/peasant agricultural development. |
| Qualifications: | M.A., M.Sc., Ph.D. |
| RESEARCH INTERESTS |
| My anthropological research interests centre currently on the Pacific, notably the islands of Melanesia, and in particular New Guinea. They concern non-industrial (tribal and peasant) economies and politics, subsistence and ecology, and technology. The thrust of my research has been to elucidate the ordering of stateless tribal polities founded on ceremonial exchange and explore connections with the subsistence economy, which suppress permanent hierarchies and equitably distribute resources. My research presently focuses on shifting agriculture in the region, both its sustainability and relation to the natural environment, and its cultural aspects and changing relation to the social order. This work compliments my growing concern to use anthropology by harnessing it to applied science and technology (agriculture and forestry). Regarding my interests in economic development/change and applying anthropology, I aim to combine social anthropological empathy with technical/scientific agricultural know-how, to achieve a sympathetic and in-depth understanding of local natural resource management practices and objectives, bridging between indigenous knowledge and our agricultural technology. By furthering our understanding of agricultural regimes in the tropics and sub-tropics, we may in the long term contribute to gainful development and positive change, promoting culturally appropriate and environmentally sustainable adaptions as they move towards commercial agriculture. I have also written on several other issues, usually at the request of other people, (e.g. belief and ritual, sickness, oral history etc.). |
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| MAJOR PUBLICATIONS RELEVANT TO APFT |
| 1983 | Roots of the earth : the cultivation and classification of crops in the Papua New |
| Guinea highlands. Manchester: University Press, and the University of New South Wales Press. (285pp.). |
| 1994 | The Bogaia of the Muller Ranges, Papua New Guinea: land use, agriculture and |
| society of a vulnerable population. Sydney: Oceania Publications Monograph 44 (130 pp.). |
| 1996 | A place against time: land and environment in the Papua New Guinea highlands. |
| London: Harwood Academic [Gordon & Breach] (464pp.) |
| APFT PROJECT PROPOSAL |
| We have little quantitative evidence on the impact of traditional farming practices on forests in tropical regions. While it is no longer assumed that shifting cultivation is inherently an environmentally destructive farming regime, it nonetheless inevitably effects changes in forest vegetation, and these changes affect ever larger areas with increases in population. The research proposed relates to a progamme of work to document rates of deforestation, and associated changes in vegetation communities, under traditional swidden based farming systems, from both the viewpoint of local people and according to scientific survey data. The proposal is initially to set up a monitoring programme in one small area in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, and if this proves successful to extend the methodology to other regions of the Pacific where APFT is working, and perhaps, if appropriate, to the other regions of the world too. The region proposed for this pilot research is the Was valley occupied by Wola speakers. It is proposed to use survey data and ethnographic information already collected, covering the last two decades, to develop a base line study, and to extend on this by organising a satellite monitoring programme to document the current position and track changes in the future. (Whereas previously this kind of work involved very time consuming field work, sometimes surveying in remote and difficult terrain, we now have the technology to set up almost continuous monitoring programmes using satellite imagery.) In this manner we can achieve a longitudinal study detailing the impact of local farming practices on forest and other vegetation, which might continue for many years. The research will comprise two parts: 1. the production of a baseline study from previously collected field data on garden surveys, vegetation communities and human and pig populations (pigs consume a considerable proportion of garden produce - up to 50% - and hence their numbers are important too regarding pressure to clear areas for cultivation); and 2. the development of a satellite survey technique to monitor areas currently under cultivation and adjacent forest communities, with the potential to continue at appropriate intervals in the future. The baseline study will be organised as a GIS database. This will involve the production of a digitised base map of the territory of the two clans for which survey data exists, which can be presented as either a conventional two-dimensional map, or a three- dimensional block-view (created using Digital Elevation Models) which can be rotated and viewed from any desired point. The map will show areas under cultivation, |
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| secondary regrowth and forest at different times, and residences, and will be keyed to a series of database tables that will contain information on the survey region, that is areas under cultivation (household cultivating, land tenure arrangements, crops, persons clearing and cultivating, site characteristics [slope, aspect etc.], and so on), demographic information (human and pig) at different time intervals (related to residences, and households gardening different areas), and the floristic composition of different vegetation communities. The GIS system will allow cartographic displays of the data, that is different information can be displayed on the base map (e.g. land tenure situation, household numbers, areas cultivated etc., as different time slices or whatever). It will also facilitate the retrieval of statistical summaries of data related to their spatial distribution. The data resulting from the satellite monitoring programme will be similarly organised as a GIS database, so that all the information will be compatible and readily comparable. We shall use the satellite information to produce up-dates of the map-related-database, to track garden patterns and rainforest destruction. There are now satellite images available with resolutions down to 2 to 3 metres, which will be sufficient to monitor all but the smallest cultivations adjacent to houseyards. This work will also comprise two parts. Firstly, the development of the satellite imagery component of the surveying procedure, related to the baseline study. Secondly, ground-truthing the satellite data and compiling related database details on cultivations, population etc. The intention is to establish a procedure involving return visits to the field at appropriate intervals with the satellite information to collect data on site ownership, physical characteristics and so on. These visits will also allow monitoring of local peoples' perceptions of forest destruction, any related changes in practices and forest use etc. The output from this project would be electronic publication of an interactive version of the maps and database, which would allow users to interrogate it themselves, depending on their interests in human-forest interactions. If the foregoing preliminary study proves successful, it is proposed that the methodology be used elsewhere in the S.W. Pacific. It is hoped that other workers in Papua New Guinea have similar data and may be interested in collaborating in a wide comparative study to assess deforestation issues within subsistence contexts where there are expanding populations. Also the Forestry Department in Papua New Guinea, which is instituting a satellite monitoring system of the country's forests. The GIS technology will facilitate the integration of a wide regional comparative study, making it feasible readily to compare data from different regions and test hypotheses about forest destruction under traditional farming regimes etc. And there is potential to expand comparative coverage to other parts of the world where APFT is working, if it is appropriate to monitor the impacts of local peoples' subsistence activities on forests. The proposal outlined here concerns current and future land use and their impact on forest cover, as most pertinent to the APFT Programme with its development perspective. But there is scope to extend the database back in time and obtain a long term view of the changes that human activities have had on forest cover in the regions under study. It might be thought worthwhile to fund research into the palaeo-environment of the regions where we carry out GIS-satellite surveys, in order to put the data into longer term context regarding environmental processes, which are themselves inherently long term. |
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Comments can be sent to
a.bicker@ukc.ac.uk Updated 19/11/97 |
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