Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Negotiating Lives in Islamic Southern Thailand: Competing Sovereignties, Contested Identities, and Mediated Agency in a Disputed Land

博士生Anusorn Unno（华盛顿大学）将在Celia Lowe博士的指导下，通过调查当地公民如何在多民族内乱局势中处理相互竞争的主权形式，对公民与政府之间不断变化的关系进行研究。这项研究将在泰国最南部地区的一个马来穆斯林村庄进行。该地区是泰国佛教国家内以马来穆斯林为主的地区，目睹了多轮叛乱。目前的叛乱，从2004年开始，已经把普通的马来穆斯林带到了前线。他们不仅占伤亡人数的大多数，而且还被卷入身份和效忠的新问题。这种情况提供了一个很好的网站，调查公民，在这种情况下，从少数民族人口，谈判的身份和忠诚关系到nations.The研究人员将集中在马来穆斯林如何体验和解释目前的叛乱;身份和忠诚的问题是如何在日常生活中提出的，国家遇到，和公民参与的背景下;以及马来穆斯林如何通过参与各种形式的主权来寻求和制定代理权。研究人员将用各种社会科学方法收集数据，包括：参与者观察动乱条件下的日常生活和生计;半结构化和非正式访谈;学校课程内容分析和与学校代表的访谈;与政府代表一起旅行并观察他们的日常工作;这项研究是重要的，因为马来穆斯林所经历的情况与许多少数民族在没有宗教信仰的情况下所经历的情况相似。改变政府角色的观念。因此，研究将有助于社会科学理论。这项研究还将记录在世界上一个政治重要性日益增加的地区，一个未得到充分研究的穆尔西姆少数民族人口的生活。最后，这个奖项有助于社会科学家的教育。

Doctoral student Anusorn Unno (University of Washington), under the guidance of Dr. Celia Lowe, will undertake research on changing relationships between citizens and governments by investigating how local citizens deal with competing forms of sovereignty in a multi-ethnic situation of civil unrest. The research will be carried out in a Malay Muslim village in the southernmost region of Thailand. A predominantly Malay Muslim area within the Thai Buddhist state, the region has witnessed multiple rounds of insurgency. The current insurgency, which dates from 2004, has brought ordinary Malay Muslims to the forefront. They not only account for the majority of casualties, but they also have been drawn into new questions of identity and allegiance. This situation provides an excellent site for investigating how citizens, in this case from a minority population, negotiate identity and allegiance in relation to the nation.The researcher will focus on how Malay Muslims experience and explain the current insurgency; how questions of identity and allegiance are raised in the contexts of everyday life, state encounters, and civic engagements; and how Malay Muslims seek and enact agency by engaging with various forms of sovereignty. The researcher will collect data with a variety of social science methods, including: participant observation of daily life and livelihood under conditions of unrest; semi-structured and informal interviews; content analyses of school curriculum and interviews with school representatives; travel with and observation of the routines of government representatives; and content analyses of religious media and interviews with religious representatives.The research is important because the situation experienced by the Malay Muslims parallels that experienced by many minorities under conditions of changing notions of the role of government. Thus the research will contribute to social science theory. The research also will document the lives of an understudied Mulsim minority population in an area of the world of increasing political importance. Finally, this award contributes to the education of a social scientist.