Dissertation Research: The Corporation Next Door: Pharmaceutical Companies in Puerto Rico's Public Health and Public Trust

世界上的发展中地区经常通过吸引大公司在当地设立生产设施来寻求改善经济。 由于这一战略，波多黎各经常被视为其他拉丁美洲国家和其他发展中国家的发展典范。 然而，像制药业这样的资本密集型（而不是劳动密集型）产业为私营企业创造了成功的场所，但同时也带来了当地环境污染等公共成本，同时没有为当地工人创造大量就业机会。 这个人类学论文研究项目将调查企业如何为当地社区做出贡献，当地社区有五个跨国制药生产设施、几个超级基金基地（联邦认可的环境污染地区）和长期高失业率。 它将考虑企业管理者、地方政府官员和社区领袖、当地居民及其利益群体的观点。 该项目将研究这些公司是否被视为改善当地经济的成功手段，以及当地居民认为工厂存在哪些风险或缺点。 它专门设计用于确定是否存在基于相互认可的利益或交换、在这些不同的子群体之间共享的标准“社区”工作模式。 该研究将典型的企业影响研究从工人扩展到周围居民，并扩大了社会理论的范围，以考虑企业如何在社会政治经济领域充当公民。 更广泛的影响：这项研究的结果将引起政策制定者的兴趣，他们关心营利性机构如何与其有效“居住”的社区建立联系。 该项目还将为年轻社会科学家的培训做出重大贡献。

Developing areas in the world often seek to improve their economies by attracting large corporations to site production facilities locally. Puerto Rico has often been cited as a model of development for other Latin American nations and the rest of the developing world because of this strategy. However, capital-intensive (as opposed to labor-intensive) industries like the pharmaceutical industry have created successful sites for private corporations while incurring public costs like pollution of the local environment, while not creating significant numbers of jobs for local workers. This anthropological dissertation research project will investigate the ways corporations contribute to a local community in which there are five multinational pharmaceutical production facilities, several Superfund sites (federally-recognized areas of environmental contamination), and chronically high unemployment. It will consider the perspectives of corporate managers, local government officials and community leaders, and local residents and their interest groups. The project will examine whether the corporations are seen as a successful means for improving the local economy, and what local residents perceive to be the risks or drawbacks to the factories. It is specifically designed to identify whether there is a standard working model of "community", based upon mutually recognized benefits or exchanges, that is shared across these diverse sub-populations. The research expands typical corporate-impact research beyond the workers to the surrounding residents, and broadens the scope of social theory to consider how corporations act as citizens in the social-political-economic arena. Broader Impacts: The findings of the study will be of interest to policy makers concerned with how for-profit institutions relate to the communities in which they effectively "live." The project will also contribute significantly to the training of a young social scientist.