Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gendered Development and the Social Reproduction of Security in Southeast Turkey

政府资助的性别发展项目在土耳其平息以库尔德人为主的东南部地区冲突的努力中发挥着重要作用。在整个东南部拥挤的城市中心，越来越多的女子国立教育中心设在洗衣房和清真寺，这是该区域社会经济一体化的重要机制。然而，这些项目最近在公共政府对话中与处理库尔德分离主义的更大的军事化安全问题联系在一起。因此，国家安全正在扩大其概念和方法范围，将非常规人口(妇女和儿童)和空间(家庭和学校)纳入政治和领土稳定项目的重要内容。在这些地方，行为、价值观以及与法律和权利的互动展开了，这些都是支撑国家巩固项目的基础。这项博士论文研究项目将寻求以下问题的答案：(1)在土耳其东南部的背景下，土耳其政府如何正式定义“国家安全”以及“国家安全”与社会经济发展目标的关系？(2)家庭是如何被发展分支机构(医生、律师和教师)和教育实践作为国家关注的领域而政治化的？(3)发展参与者及其家庭成员是否将他们对家庭的日常选择置于国家更大的安全考虑范围内，他们的经历在几代人和性别之间可能会有什么不同？博士生将对发展活动和家庭生活进行扩展的民族志研究。还将对发展参与者、他们的家人和工人进行一系列采访，以衡量个人是否以及如何在更大的地缘政治国家建设项目中框定他们对家庭、工作和娱乐的选择。考虑到21世纪在许多全球背景下国家对安全的高度关注，这一项目的结果将更广泛地揭示，像“国家安全”这样的抽象概念如何在政策中体现出来，并由普通公民谈判。从区域角度来看，在大众媒体和政治评论中，库尔德人在中东的局势往往被过分简单化，认为这是一个跨国界相互竞争的民族主义的广泛问题。尤其是库尔德妇女，她们代表着在学术研究中很少受到关注的少数群体。综上所述，库尔德移民妇女及其子女以及社区医生、律师和教师的不同故事将揭示国家安全政策如何在国家和民族归属的更大政治中发挥作用。在这种规模下，关于种族民族主义、政治派别和自然边界的单一情节地缘政治叙事，因有关家庭和邻里福利以及生活选择和价值观的真实而重要的决定而变得复杂。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研究生涯。该项目由NSF地理与空间科学项目和NSF国际科学与工程办公室共同支持。

Government-sponsored gendered development projects are taking on an important role in Turkey's efforts to pacify regional conflict in the predominantly Kurdish Southeast region. A growing number of women's state education centers housed in laundries and mosques in crowded urban centers throughout the Southeast constitute important mechanisms for the socioeconomic integration of the region. These projects recently have been linked in public governmental dialogue to larger militarized security concerns dealing with Kurdish separatism, however. National security therefore is broadening its conceptual and methodological scope to incorporate unconventional populations (women and children) and spaces (home and school) as important elements of a political and territorial stabilization project. These are the sites where the translation of behavior, values, and the engagements with law and rights underpinning a state consolidation project unfold. This doctoral dissertation research project will seek answers to the following questions: (1) How does the Turkish state formally define "national security" and the relationship of "national security" to socioeconomic development goals in the context of Southeast Turkey? (2) How is the household politicized as an arena of state concern by development affiliates (doctors, lawyers, and teachers) and education practices? (3) Do development participants and their family members frame their everyday choices about family within the larger security concerns of the state, and how might their experiences vary across generations and genders? The doctoral candidate will conduct an extended ethnography of development activities and home life. A series of interviews with development participants, their family members, and workers also will be conducted to measure if and how individuals frame their choices about home, work, and recreation within a larger geopolitical project of state-building.Considering the heightened preoccupation of the state with security in the 21st century in a number of global contexts, the results of this project will reveal more broadly how an abstract concept like "national security" become manifest in policy and negotiated by regular citizens. From a regional perspective, the Kurdish situation in the Middle East often is oversimplified in popular media and political commentary as a broad issue of cross-border competing nationalisms. Kurdish women, in particular, represent a minority group that has received very little attention in scholarly research. Taken together, the disparate stories of Kurdish migrant women and their children as well as community doctors, lawyers, and teachers will reveal how a policy of national security works within a larger politics of state and national belonging. At this scale, single-plot geopolitical narratives about ethno-nationalism, political affiliation, and physical boundaries are complicated by real and important decisions about family and neighborhood welfare and life choices and values. 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. This project is jointly supported by the NSF Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.