Doctoral Dissertation Research : Group Allegiance and State Institutions in Kyrgyz Identity

研究生Schaun G.惠勒，由罗伊G.安德拉德将进行科学研究，以建立一个通用模型，说明个人如何以激励他们参与大规模社会行动的方式驾驭群体冲突。他将在吉尔吉斯共和国进行为期九个月的实地研究，并将其作为一个测试案例。 吉尔吉斯共和国是一个很好的研究地点，因为吉尔吉斯斯坦充满了种族，语言，宗教和政治分歧，但其公民迄今为止能够保持一个相对稳定的国家政府和相对和平的权力过渡时，政府确实改变。研究的目标是使用系统的方法，以便对一个大的地缘政治区域的文化现象做出准确的概括。 惠勒的主要研究方法将是文化建模和共识分析，通过分阶段的结构化访谈完成，以测试理论观点，即群体认同是促进个人利益的策略。他还将进行民族志参与者观察，以仔细检查和扩大通过访谈获得的信息。这项研究将在吉尔吉斯斯坦的四个不同省份进行。他计划系统地衡量吉尔吉斯斯坦公民在多大程度上利用群体差异来处理日常事务，以及这种群体归属在多大程度上是个人对国家机构感兴趣所必需的。 如果他成功了，这些技术应该可以推广到其他地缘政治背景。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于制定更成功的政策，发展计划或社会干预措施，因为它们将基于对相关人员观点的准确描述。 在其他类似分裂的国家，建国实验并不成功。 在个人层面上探索群体隶属关系的动态，使用明确的，系统的方法来测试所得出的结论的有效性和可靠性，将有助于解释差异，并有希望科普冲突，往往出现的身份差异。这项研究也将大大有助于研究生的教育。

Graduate student Schaun G. Wheeler, supervised by Dr. Roy G. D''Andrade, will undertake scientific research to build a general model of how individuals navigate group allegiances in ways that motivate them to participate in large scale social action. He will conduct nine months of field research in the Kyrgyz Republic, which he will use as a test case. The Kyrgyz Republic is a good site for this research because Kyrgyzstan is full of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and political divisions, yet its citizens have so far been able to maintain a relatively stable national government and relatively peaceful transitions of power when the government does change. The goal of the research is to use systematic methods in order to make possible accurate generalizations about cultural phenomena over a large geopolitical area. Wheeler''s primary research methods will be cultural modeling and consensus analysis, done through staged structured interviewing, to test the idea that theoretical idea that group identity is a strategy for advancing individual interests. He also will do ethnographic participant observation to double-check and expand upon the information acquired through interviews. The research will be carried out in four different provinces of Kyrgyz. He plans to measure systematically the extent to which Kyrgyz citizens use group distinctions to navigate everyday concerns, and the extent to which this group affiliation is necessary for individuals to become interested in state institutions. If he is successful, the techniques should be generalizable to other geopolitical context.This research is important because it will help to develop more successful policies, development programs, or social interventions because they will be based on an accurate picture of the views of the people involved. Nation-building experiments in other, similarly divided countries have not been as successful. Exploring the dynamics of group affiliations at the individual level using explicit, systematic methods to test the validity and reliability of the conclusions reached will help explain the difference and hopefully cope with conflicts that often arise from identity differences. The research also will contribute significantly to the education of a graduate student.