Southeast Asian Pluralisms: Social Resources for Civility and Market Participation

该项目将研究来自不同种族和宗教背景的人在东南亚两个地方--印度尼西亚的日惹和马来西亚的吉隆坡--聚集在一起的商业和社会环境中的社会互动。在福特基金会资助的一个更大的研究和培训项目的基础上，该项目将对这两个多民族城市环境中市场和社会参与的社会资源进行深入的人种学研究。该项目将研究中型企业、宗教组织和设在当地的非政府组织在促进社会多元化和公民参与方面的作用。调查员和当地同事将对这些社会环境中的一系列参与者进行参与者观察和深入访谈，重点关注对不同族裔和宗教群体的互动产生积极和消极影响的活动和社会背景。通过研究宗教、种族和经济分歧充满紧张的情况，以及发展新的文明和参与结构的新倡议的情况，这种比较民族志将提供新的知识，以促进我们对民主社会的根源、不同种族和宗教人士的广泛参与和公民互动的理解。

This project will study the social interaction in business and social settings in which people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds come together in two places in Southeast Asia, Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Building on a larger research and training project funded by the Ford Foundation, the project will carry out in-depth ethnographic research on the social resources for market and social participation in these two multiethnic urban environments. The project will study the role of middle-range businesses, religious organizations, and locally-based non-governmental organizations in fostering social pluralism and civic participation. The investigator and local colleagues will conduct participant observation and in depth interviews with a range of participants in these social environments, focusing on activities and social contexts which affect, positively and negatively, the interaction of distinct ethnic and religious groups. By studying situations where religious, ethnic, and economic divisions are full of tension as well as situations of novel initiatives to develop new structures of civility and participation, this sort of comparative ethnography will provide new knowledge to advance our understanding of the roots of democratic society, the broad-based participation and civil interaction of diverse ethnic and religious people.