Michigan State University (MSU) researchers are delving into the effect globalization has on remote communities.
The researchers are using a $1 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to conduct a five-year study of “globalization from the perspective of households,” says principal investigator Dan Kramer, an assistant professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife and James Madison College.
The study focuses on a group of villages on the Caribbean Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua. It wasn’t until 2007 that a road was completed to connect the coast to Managua, Nicaragua’s capital. The group will study the road’s effects on household resource use, farming and fishing, through comparisons to baseline data collected before the road was built.
Kramer says other studies have focused on globalization’s effects on nations or regions, but have ignored the “really complex set of drivers,” such as market access, technological change and migration between communities that cause changes in households.
Kramer said the group has already observed changes in the villagers’ attitudes about development. Initially they were excited, but are now exhibiting some apprehension about spinoff developments.
Source: MSU
Ivy Hughes, development news editor, can be reached here.
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