Doctoral Dissertation Research: Landscape and the Production of Attractive Markets in Dubai

博士论文研究：迪拜的景观和有吸引力的市场的产生

• 批准号: 0526240
• 负责人: Richard Schein
• 金额: $ 1.19万
• 依托单位: University of Kentucky Research Foundation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-09-01 至 2007-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0526240&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Landscape; Production

The multi-faceted relationship between culture and economy has increasingly become a focus of geographic scholarship. Areas of inquiry have included inquiries into how industries such as fashion and tourism market cultures and investigations of how cultural categories like nationality and gender affect the spatial organization of firms in the uneven, globalized economy. Along such lines, this doctoral dissertation research project will examine the role played by the cultural landscape -- the human-built setting of everyday life that has long been an object of geographic study -- in the creation and maintenance of "market attractiveness" in the non-Western world. The doctoral candidate will conduct a case study of the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, a city-state that is undergoing significant landscape alteration (which includes the creation of artificial islands, mega-malls and the world's tallest building) and a foreign investment boom (covering a range of companies from Indian software firms and U.S. media conglomerates to thousands of small importers). Beyond just supplying a well-developed infrastructure, including ports, roads, and telecommunications, Dubai's landscape offers a high quality of life both at and away from workplaces, a characteristic often lacking in other locales in the Persian Gulf and Middle East region. To better understand the relationship between Dubai's landscape and investment booms and between its quality of life and status as a quality location, the doctoral candidate will employ a mix of methodologies that focus on both producers and consumers of the landscape. Methods used to investigate how the landscape is represented and how it is actually used as a material object that performs tasks like enhancing status and building trust include participant observation at four sites representing contrasting facets of Dubai's economy. The student will coordinate a landscape-use diary project with a diverse group of Dubai residents to understand the role played by landscape in economic activity. Other methods to be used include interviews with managers in both government and business regarding how the process of marketing and selecting Dubai for investment is undertaken and archival analyses at libraries and government departments in Dubai and the other emirates in order to better understand how Dubai's competitive strategy has evolved over time.This project will strengthen multi-disciplinary literatures on both cultural landscapes and the cultural-economy by bringing the theories and methods of each to bear on the other, with implications not just for geography but also fields like planning and urban governance. The project will enhance understanding of the lower Persian Gulf region, which, remains understudied and poorly understood in all its complexity despite being central to debates about what is or is not right with the current phase of globalization. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.

文化与经济的多方面关系日益成为地理学研究的焦点。 调查的领域包括调查时装和旅游市场文化等行业，以及调查国籍和性别等文化类别如何影响不均衡的全球化经济中公司的空间组织。 沿着这样的路线，这个博士论文研究项目将研究文化景观所扮演的角色-人类建造的日常生活环境，长期以来一直是地理研究的对象-在创造和维持“市场吸引力”在非西方世界。 博士生将进行迪拜阿拉伯联合酋长国的案例研究，迪拜是一个正在经历重大景观改造的城邦（包括人工岛，大型购物中心和世界上最高的建筑的创建）和外国投资热潮（涵盖从印度软件公司和美国的一系列公司媒体集团到数千家小型进口商）。 除了提供完善的基础设施，包括港口、道路和电信，迪拜的景观还提供了工作场所内外的高质量生活，这是波斯湾和中东地区其他地区通常缺乏的特点。 为了更好地了解迪拜的景观和投资繁荣之间的关系，以及其生活质量和作为优质地点的地位之间的关系，博士生将采用一种混合的方法，专注于景观的生产者和消费者。 用于调查景观是如何表现的方法，以及它是如何被实际用作执行提高地位和建立信任等任务的物质对象，包括参与者在代表迪拜经济对比方面的四个地点进行观察。 学生将与不同的迪拜居民群体协调一个可持续使用的日记项目，以了解景观在经济活动中所扮演的角色。 其他方法包括采访政府和企业的管理人员，了解如何进行营销和选择迪拜投资的过程，以及在迪拜和其他阿拉伯国家的图书馆和政府部门进行档案分析，以便更好地了解迪拜的竞争战略如何随着时间的推移而演变。通过将每一种理论和方法相互影响，不仅对地理学，而且对规划和城市治理等领域都有影响。 该项目将增进对下波斯湾地区的了解，尽管该地区是关于当前全球化阶段正确与否的辩论的核心，但其所有复杂性仍然没有得到充分研究和了解。 作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立的研究生涯。