Guaymi provisioning in the rural Caribbean of Panama: A diachronic analysis of market forces and the identification of Indigenous micro-economies

This dissertation has two projects. The first is to detail the food provisioning system of the maritime Guaymi of the Bocas del Toro Archipelago in the rural Caribbean of the Republic of Panama. The second project attempts to situate the maritime Guaymi within a larger theoretical context related to non-domesticated provisioning (foraging) and suggest how anthropologists should think about people who engage in foraging activity, but not exclusively.; The maritime Guaymi have for decades been identified as subsistence farmers that have additionally exploited the forest and seas for substantial items of sustenance. This diachronic analysis, executed through participant observation and longitudinal panel questionnaires, details multiple facets of the Guaymi food production system and proposes that micro-economic provisioning clusters exist depending on environmental conditions and opportunities. Novel strategies of food transfer are revealed and the relationship of food transfer to provisioning is discussed.; The maritime Guaymi provisioning system is situated within the context of forces of the burgeoning locus of Bocas Town, a major market-based economic center. The Bocas region is experiencing rapid economic growth. Bocas Town, formally the hub for the Central American banana industry, is now a thriving market-centered domain dominated by an economy based on the services sector. The opportunities and impediments that the town economy exact on the Guaymi will be one focus of this work.; The discovery and examination of the maritime Guaymi food production system informs on a larger theoretical construct described in this work concerning the concept of part-time foragers. I contend that part-time foragers are an economic division of folk that fit within a foraging continuum (ranging form full-time foragers to intermittent foragers). The foraging continuum is identified and assessed and perspectives on how anthropology can begin to evaluate this sustenance group is proposed.