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寻求通过吸引大公司在当地设立生产设施来改善其经济。由于这一战略，波多黎各经常被认为是其他拉丁美洲国家和其他发展中世界的发展典范。然而，资本密集型（相对于劳动密集型）行业，如制药行业，为私营企业创造了成功的场所，同时招致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公司对当地社区的贡献方式，该社区有五个跨国制药生产设施，几个超级基金站点（联邦政府承认的环境污染区域），以及长期高失业率。它将考虑企业经理、地方政府官员和社区领导人、当地居民及其利益集团的观点。该项目将调查这些企业是否被视为改善当地经济的成功手段，以及当地居民认为这些工厂存在哪些风险或缺点。它是专门设计来确定是否存在一个标准的“社区”工作模式，基于相互承认的利益或交流，在这些不同的亚群体中共享。该研究将典型的企业影响研究从工人扩展到周围居民，并拓宽了社会理论的范围，以考虑企业如何在社会政治经济舞台上作为公民行事。更广泛的影响：这项研究的结果将引起政策制定者的兴趣，他们关心的是营利性机构如何与他们有效“生活”的社区联系起来。该项目还将对培训一名青年社会科学家作出重大贡献。

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.