AHRC-NSF MOU: Scale, Ambiguity and Experimentation: A Collaborative Ethnography of Regional Government in Peru

该项目是人类学家Deborah a . Poole博士（约翰霍普金斯大学）和Penelope Harvey博士（伦敦政治经济学院）的合作项目，由美国国家科学基金会和英国艺术与人文研究委员会通过两机构之间的谅解备忘录共同资助。普尔和哈维将对当代民族国家作为一个多尺度实体进行研究，以调查它如何在地方、区域和跨国组织和实践层面之间的界面上获得政治和情感力量。他们的研究将在秘鲁的库斯科进行，他们将在那里收集有关新形式的监管和技术系统的数据，这些系统是在政府行政机构重组后开发的，该重组赋予了地区政府新的权力。该研究将特别考虑国家权力的两个领域：(1)法律，以国际条约和公约的形式规范民族国家如何管理土著人口和环境；(2)基础设施工程，更具体地说，是构成现代国家改造公共空间和基础设施系统方式的工程工程的指标、技术和标准。他们为期10个月的民族志研究将集中于围绕世行资助的库斯科地区政府管理的公共工程项目的技术实践、法律解释和专家知识的争议，该项目受国际土著、环境和监管法律的约束。研究小组将追踪这些争议，因为它们与项目中的两项具体活动有关：在重要考古遗址周围建造一条旁路，以及旨在重组和合理化城乡土地的领土测绘计划。通过将法律社会科学和科学技术的观点新颖地结合起来，本研究将对社会科学的方法论和理论作出重大贡献。这个项目的发现将有助于更好地理解当代国家系统的结构和功能。该项目还将促进美国、英国和秘鲁之间的国际研究和政策制定合作。

This project is a collaboration between anthropologists Dr. Deborah A. Poole (Johns Hopkins University) and Dr. Penelope Harvey (The London School of Economics and Political Science), which is being co-funded by the National Science Foundation and the United Kingdom's Arts and Humanities Research Council through a Memorandum of Understanding between the two agencies. Poole and Harvey will undertake research on the contemporary nation state as a multiscalar entity, to investigate how it acquires political and affective force at the interface between local, regional and transnational levels of organization and practice. Their research will be conducted in Cusco, Peru, where they will collect data on new forms of regulatory and technical systems developed in the wake of a governmental administration re-organization that has given new power to regional governments. The research will consider two domains of state authority in particular: (1) law, in the form of the international treaties and conventions that regulate how nation states govern indigenous populations and the environment; and (2) infrastructural engineering, more specifically the metrics, techniques, and standards of engineering works that frame the ways in which modern states transform public space and infrastructural systems. Their ten-month ethnographic will focus on controversies surrounding technical practices, legal interpretation, and expert knowledge in a World Bank-funded public works project that is both administered by the Regional Government of Cusco and subject to international indigenous, environmental, and regulatory laws. The research team will trace these controversies as they unfold in relationship to two specific activities within the project: the construction of a by-pass around an important archaeological site, and a territorial mapping program designed to reorganize and rationalize urban and rural land.Through its novel combination of perspectives drawn from the social science of law, and of science and technology, this research will make significant contributions to social science methodology and theory. Findings from this project will contribute to better understanding of the structure and fucntioning of contempoary state systems. The project also will advance international research and policy-development collaborations between the United States, Britain, and Peru.