Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Social Impacts of Rapid Urbanization in a Context of Economic Liberalization

埃默里大学博士候选人Sujit Shrestha将在David Nugent博士的指导下，对经济自由化背景下快速城市化的社会影响进行民族志研究。在世界各地，城市贫困人口越来越多地集中在棚户区。研究人员将在加德满都探索这种转变，这是调查这种社会经济变化的适当背景，因为它代表了一个在政治不稳定时期之后追求经济自由化实践的地方。研究人员提出了一个问题，考虑到居住在棚户区的人有着巨大的种族和社会多样性，他们如何在一个以高度种族化的国家政治环境为特征的背景下进行政治合作。该项目详细描述了被边缘化的城市寮屋者群体努力主张各种权利的政治过程，如土地所有权和对有保障住房的要求。研究人员将采用参与者观察、访谈、档案研究和话语分析，从寮屋群体、政府机构和其他关键行动者那里收集民族志数据。这个研究项目有可能为我们理解快速城市化做出重大的理论贡献，鉴于世界上居住在城市的人口比例的增长，这是一个重要的理论领域。研究人员还将调查经济自由化和城市化等更广泛的进程如何对特定的边缘化群体产生反直觉的意义，以及参与其中的群体如何应对由此产生的矛盾。该项目将促进对治理、社会经济变革和城市公民的科学理解。对发展中国家公民身份、地方政治和城市化竞争模式之间联系的分析，将会引起学者、政策制定者以及其他从事发展领域的人士的特别兴趣。该项目还有助于培养研究生。

Emory University doctoral candidate Sujit Shrestha, under the guidance of Dr. David Nugent, will conduct ethnographic research on the social impacts of rapid urbanization in contexts of economic liberalization. Around the world, populations of urban poor have been increasingly concentrated in squatter settlements. The researcher will explore this transformation in Kathmandu, an appropriate context for investigating such socioeconomic changes because it represents a site where economic liberalization practices have been pursued following a period of political instability. The researcher asks how individuals living in squatter communities, given their vast ethnic and social diversity, cooperate politically in a context that is otherwise characterized by a highly ethnicized national political environment. This project details the political processes through which groups of marginalized urban squatters struggle to assert various claims such as landownership and demands for secured housing. The researcher will employ participant observation, interviews, archival research, and discourse analysis to collect ethnographic data from squatter groups, governmental agencies, as well as other key actors. This research project has the potential to make significant theoretical contributions to our understanding of rapid urbanization, an important theoretical field given the growth in proportion of the world's population that is living in cities. The researcher will also investigate how broader processes such as economic liberalization and urbanization acquire counterintuitive meanings for specific marginalized groups and how the groups involved then contest the contradictions thus effected. The project will advance scientific understandings of governance, socioeconomic change, and urban citizenship. The analysis of the connections between competing modes of citizenship, local politics, and urbanization in the developing world will be of particular interest to scholars, policymakers, as well as others engaged in the field of development. The project also contributes to the training of a graduate student.