Doctoral Dissertation Research: Roads and Accidents in Kenya

哥伦比亚大学博士生Amiel Melnick将在Rosalind Morris博士的指导下，对肯尼亚的交通事故和道路进行研究。通过考察交通事故在肯尼亚政策和公共话语中的作用，道路安全干预的监管技术，以及那些在被称为“死亡延伸”的道路上旅行的人的生活经验，本研究将考虑基础设施、社会实践和日常危险之间的关系。本研究侧重于交通事故的专家计算和官僚管理，以及事故受害者及其家属、宗教领袖和肯尼亚公众的道德和实际反应，旨在提供基于经验的道路交通事故日常管理说明，这将有助于讨论非洲背景下的基础设施、应急和风险管理。这项研究将涉及社会科学方法，如在首都内罗毕和一个事故“黑点”（一段经常发生事故的道路）进行访谈、参与观察、档案分析和地理信息系统测绘。该研究将描述日常生活中应对意外死亡和伤害的负担，并提供有关国际和当地道路安全干预措施的重要信息。它将通过对肯尼亚易发生事故的“黑点”进行人种学案例研究，扩大对基础设施的社会科学研究。该项目还将通过研究一系列理解“事故”的认识论框架，重新研究关于偶然性和危害的经典人类学问题，这些问题传统上集中在神秘的因果关系上。交通事故是非洲造成死亡和受伤的主要原因，社会科学家对这一问题的研究仍然不足。研究人员将与广泛的受众分享他们的发现，试图为肯尼亚和其他国家的道路建设和道路安全工作提供信息。该项目还将有助于培养一名研究生。

Columbia University doctoral student Amiel Melnick, under the guidance of Dr. Rosalind Morris, will undertake research on traffic accidents and roads in Kenya. Through an examination of the role of traffic accidents in Kenyan policy and public discourse, the regulatory techniques of road safety interventions, and the lived experience of those who travel on roads known as "death stretches," this research will consider the relationship of infrastructure, social practice, and everyday hazards. Focusing on the expert calculation and bureaucratic management of traffic accidents, as well as moral and practical responses on the part of accident victims and their families, religious leaders, and the Kenyan public more generally, this study aims to provide an empirically grounded account of the everyday management of road traffic accidents that will contribute to discussions of infrastructure, contingency, and risk management in African contexts.The research will involve social science methods such as interviews, participant observation, archival analysis, and GIS mapping in both the capital Nairobi and an accident "black spot" (a stretch of road that sees frequent accidents). The study will both describe the burden of coping with accidental death and injury in everyday life and offer critical purchase on international and local road safety interventions. It will expand the social scientific study of infrastructure with an ethnographic case study of accident-prone "black spots" in Kenya. The project will also rework classic anthropological questions on contingency and hazard, which have traditionally been focused on occult causation, by studying a range of epistemological frameworks for understanding "accidents." Traffic accidents, which are a leading cause of death and injury in Africa, remain understudied by social scientists. The researchers will share their findings with a broad range of audiences in an attempt to inform road construction and road safety efforts in Kenya and beyond. The project will also contribute to the training of a graduate student.