Doctoral Dissertation Research: Developing Futures: Oil, Visas, and the Senegalese Nation

AbstractThis拟议中的研究，在塞内加尔达喀尔进行的初步研究的基础上，旨在合并法律和发展与人类学的时间和未来的探索，以研究如何新自由主义的政策，话语，和法律的结构影响塞内加尔的国家未来的概念的sociolegal研究。特别是，该项目比较了法律和科学为基础的发展举措的交叉点与法律和劳动力迁移在塞内加尔的交叉点。自1994年1月以来，塞内加尔进行了一系列改革，使商业法现代化，保护和促进私营部门的活动。这些监管改革优先考虑了跨国投资和在科学和金融部门创造就业机会，但也促使新的移民流出塞内加尔，到国外寻找工作。本项目将这两种现象置于同一民族志框架中，以更好地理解法律和发展的矛盾影响。它侧重于两项活动：塞内加尔国家石油公司Petrosen努力促进石油勘探方面的多国投资（尽管没有发现大量石油储藏）;塞内加尔努力获得外国工作签证（尽管实际上很少有申请人获得签证）。本研究采用档案研究、深入访谈和参与者观察，以回答三个问题：（1）哪些国家政策和法律激励了塞内加尔的发展，这些监管计划如何随着时间的推移而变化？(2)这些法律的变化和政策的转变对人们认为有价值、可行或有前途的地方战略有什么影响？（3）这些变化激发了人们对未来可能性和不可能性的什么概念？这一建议的学术价值在于它调查了法律和发展学术与人类学对时间性和变化的研究交叉的关键问题。许多学者都集中研究了外国法律的结构进入第三世界的情况，以及这些法律对家庭生产和结构不平等的影响。人类学家研究了时间的文化结构，分析了人们对未来的概念，以便更好地理解现在的现象。与许多以前的研究相比，这个项目侧重于两个看似不可能的发展项目，以更好地理解全球话语和法律对当地战略和未来的复杂和矛盾的影响。这个项目将有助于重新理论化的发展声称失败，因为它问：如果人们继续参与这些战略，这可能会说什么地方的发展和国家的未来的理解？ 该研究的更广泛影响包括其对Co-PI培训的重大贡献以及将其研究结果纳入博士论文。关于非洲发展和未来的新辩论使这个项目特别及时。这项研究将使负责起草国际移徙或自然资源开采条例的政策专家以及在西非和其他地方执行和评价发展政策和做法的国际从业人员非常感兴趣。新自由主义的批评者指责说，从西方引进的发展政策和法律的结构忽视或过于简单化了第三世界人民面临的复杂挑战。这项研究将为评估未来的政策决定及其对当地人口可能产生的影响提供坚实的经验基础。

AbstractThis proposed research, based on preliminary research conducted in Dakar, Senegal, seeks to merge sociolegal studies of law and development with anthropological explorations of time and the future in order to examine how neoliberal policies, discourses, and legal structures influence Senegalese conceptions of the nations future. In particular, this project compares the intersection of law and science-based development initiatives with the intersection of law and labor migration in Senegal. Since January of 1994, Senegal has adopted a series of reforms to modernize business laws and to protect and promote private sector activities. These regulatory changes have prioritized multinational investment and the creation of jobs in scientific and financial sectors, but have also prompted new flows of migrants out of Senegal in search of work abroad. This project places these two phenomena in the same ethnographic frame to better understand the contradictory effects of law and development. It focuses on two activities: the efforts of Petrosen, Senegals national oil company, to promote multinational investment in petroleum exploration (despite the fact that no significant oil deposits have been found); and Senegalese efforts to obtain foreign employment visas (even as few applicants are actually granted their requests). The research employs archival research, intensive interviewing, and participant observation in order to answer three questions: (1) What state policies and laws animate development in Senegal, and how have these regulatory schemes shifted through time?; (2) What effects do these legal changes and policy shifts have on which local strategies people consider worthwhile, feasible, or promising?; and (3) What conceptions of future possibilities and impossibilities do these changes inspire?. The intellectual merit of this proposal lies in its investigation of key issues at the intersection of law and development scholarship and anthropological studies of temporality and change. Various scholars have focused on the importation of foreign legal structures into Third World contexts and on the impacts these laws have on household production and structural inequality. Anthropologists have examined cultural configurations of time and have analyzed peoples conceptions of the future in order to better understand present phenomena. In contrast to many previous studies, this project focuses on two seemingly improbable development projects in order to better understand the complex and contradictory effects of global discourses and laws on local strategies and futures. This project will help re-theorize developments purported failure, as it asks: If people continue to participate in these strategies, what might this say about local understandings of development and national futures? The broader impacts of the research include its significant contribution to the training of the Co-PI and the incorporation of its findings into a doctoral dissertation. Renewed debates over African development and futures make this project particularly timely. This research would be of great interest to policy experts charged with drafting regulations regarding international migration or natural resource extraction, and to international practitioners who implement and evaluate development policy and practice, both in West Africa and elsewhere. Critics of neoliberalism have charged that development policies and legal structures imported from the West have ignored or oversimplified the complex challenges facing Third World peoples. This research will provide a solid empirical basis on which to assess future policy decisions and their likely effects on local populations.