Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Knowledge, Memory, and Science in Southwest China

美国伊利诺伊大学香槟分校人类学博士生张文毅，导师为美国哈佛大学教授。K. Lehman将研究科学知识的流通、社会共识的产生和个人决策之间的关系。这项研究将在居住在中缅边境的景颇族中进行。虽然繁荣的边境贸易给景颇人带来了艾滋病和毒品依赖，但预防计划并没有刺激景颇人学习和运用可能保护他们的科学知识。这种情况提供了一个天然的实验室，在其中调查i）个人如何构建他们对自然现象的理解; ii）地方知识如何在社会群体中传播; iii）社会共识如何从这种传播中产生; iv）共识知识如何影响行为。研究人员将进行18个月的实地研究。他将观察行为，进行个人和团体访谈，并拍摄和分析仪式。他将特别关注共识如何从知识的变化中产生，运用数学混沌理论来分析微观层面的变化与宏观层面或集体协议的出现之间的关系。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于复杂性理论在社会科学中的应用，并有助于更好地理解在现实生活中达成社会共识的认知基础。此外，研究成果将为制定干预措施提供信息，使人们能够按照自己的方式利用科学知识。该奖项还有助于社会科学家的教育。

Anthropology doctoral student, Wenyi Zhang of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, supervised by Professor F. K. Lehman, will undertake research on the relationship between the circulation of scientific knowledge, the production of social consensus, and individual decision making. The research will be conducted among the ethnic Jinghpo people who live astride the China-Burma border. Although a thriving border trade has brought HIV/AIDS and drug dependence to the Jinghpo, prevention programs have not stimulated the Jinghpo to learn and act on scientific knowledge that might protect them. This situation provides a natural laboratory in which to investigate i) how individuals construct their understandings of natural phenomenon; ii) how local knowledge circulates in a social group; iii) how social consensus emerges from such circulation; and iv) how consensual knowledge affects behavior.The researcher will undertake 18 months of field research. He will observe behavior, conduct individual and group interviews, and film and analyze rituals. He will focus particuarly on how consensus emerges out of knowledge variability, employing mathematical chaos theory to analyze the relationship between micro-level variability and the emergence of macro-level or collective agreement. The research is important because it will contribute to the application of complexity theory to social science, and to better understanding of the cognitive basis for achieving social consensus in real-life contexts. In addition, the research outcome will inform the development of interventions that enable people to employ scientific knowledge on their own terms. The award also contributes to the education of a social scientist.