Doctoral Dissertation Research: Local-level Social and Cultural Change in the Context of National Economic Shifts

博士生克里斯·格罗夫（纽约城市大学研究生中心）将在唐纳德·罗博瑟姆博士的指导下，在国家经济和政治转变的背景下，对社区层面的社会重组进行民族志研究。这种微观层面的视角将使研究人员能够调查国家层面统计数据中明显的当代变化是否实际上构成了对历史文化框架和普通人生活中理所当然的理解的背离。这项研究将在印第安纳州的埃尔克哈特进行，选择它有两个原因。首先，这座城市近年来经历了重大的经济变化。其次，埃尔克哈特的居民可能会特别意识到这些变化，因为在2009年，他们的城市被用作宣布新的国家经济改善计划的地点，因此成为相当多媒体关注的焦点。因此，如果在经济转型之后出现了真正的文化和社会变化，那么在这个“风向标”的城市，它们应该是显而易见的。格罗夫将进行15个月的现场研究。他将结合社会科学方法收集数据，包括半结构化和口述历史访谈，参与者观察和档案研究。他将在政治光谱中定位和探索新的形态，同时记录参与者的生活史，以了解这些形态的吸引力、需求、策略和组织。这项研究是重要的，因为它将是第一个社会科学研究之一，明确了经常使用的“危机”概念的社会和文化参数。位于通常被描述为美国的心脏地带，研究结果将有助于理解复杂的利益、规范和历史，通过这些利益、规范和历史，美国和其他地方的当地人参与了关键的国家变革。这项研究的资金也支持了社会科学家的教育。

Doctoral student Chris Grove (The Graduate Center, City University of New York), with the guidance of Dr. Donald Robotham, will undertake ethnographic research on community-level social realignments in a context of national economic and political shifts. This micro-level perspective will allow the researcher to investigage the question of whether contemporary changes evident in national-level statistics actually comprise a departure from historical cultural frameworks and taken-for-granted understandings in ordinary people's lives.The research will be conducted in Elkhart, Indiana, which was chosen for two reasons. The first is that the city has witnessed significant economic change in recent years. The second, is that Elkhart residents can be expected to be particularly conscious of these changes because in 2009, their city was used as the site to announce a new national economic improvement program and thereby was the focus of considerable media attention. Thus if there are true cultural and social changes in the wake of economic transformation, they should be discernible in this "bellweather" city. Grove will conduct 15 months of on-site research. He will gather data with a combination of social science methods, including semi-structured and oral history interviews, participant observation, and archival research. He will locate and explore new formations across the political spectrum, while documenting life histories of participants to understand the appeal, demands, strategies and organization of these formations. This research is important because it will be one of the first social scientific studies to specify the social and cultural prameters of the much used concept of "crisis." Situated in what is often described as the United States heartland, findings from the research will contribute to understanding the complex interests, norms, and histories through which local people, in the United States and elsewhere, engage critical national change. Funding for this research also supports the education of a social scientist.