Doctoral Dissertation Research: Informality and Flexibility in Loan Networks and Debt Dispute Resolution

博士论文研究：贷款网络和债务纠纷解决的非正式性和灵活性

• 批准号: 1458286
• 负责人: Thomas Hansen
• 金额: $ 1.21万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-03-01 至 2016-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1458286&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Informality; Flexibility

It was once the widely held belief among practitioners of economic development that economic growth was frequently hindered by the existence of traditional cultural practices and attachments, which could prevent the emergence of more formal institutions. That position is no longer so widely held, as several decades of globalization have produced ample evidence of culturally blended patterns in instances of robust economic development, as informal economic structures have developed with local cultural notions of fairness, flexibility, risk and trust. As a result, informality is now celebrated as a model of flexible economic growth and practitioners are increasingly encouraged to adopt parameters reflecting the diversity of economic development strategies. Scientists remain challenged, however, as to how to identify and model the pathways through which informality and flexibility benefit economic growth. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, empirically-grounded scientific fieldwork, will explore the ways in which informality, as a fundamental cultural pattern of this new flexible economy, influences existing economic structures and the propensities for economic growth. Samil Can, under the supervision of Thomas Hansen of Stanford University, will explore debt relations and dispute resolutions by tracing loan networks and practices of resolving debt disputes. The research will be conducted in Delhi, India, a commercial center in one of the world's most important and largest emerging economies. Based on preliminary research, the researcher holds that India has diverse moral and religious notions of exchange, credit, obligation and authority working to maintain informal and flexible economic structures. Based on this claim, the project whether and how these moral and religious notions socio-culturally undertake and diversify the roles fulfilled by the state, the banking system, and the regulations in an idealized formal economic model. The project investigates how Muslim traders, shopkeepers, warehouse suppliers, and retailers establish social networks to find debts and resolve debt disputes using formal and informal authorities (e.g. religious leaders, elders, court system, and police). Preliminary data suggests Muslims of Old Delhi heavily rely on religious and moral notions in their transactions, but also maintain access to other local and transnational economic networks. Therefore, this project seeks to provide generalizable insights on how flexible economic growth relies on various and ever-changing cultural notions. The project will utilize ethnographic methods (participant observation of carefully selected informants, in-depth interviews, oral histories) and spatial research methodologies (social network analysis, socio-spatial mapping) in order to document how these cultural economic transaction patterns among Muslims in Delhi relate to the larger informal economy of Delhi. The findings will significantly inform academic and intellectual debates over "flexible economic growth" by outlining its everyday practical implications and exploring the ways in which debt obligation is culturally framed. It will contribute significantly to a pressing global debate on the concept of "debt" among anthropologists, economists, political scientists, and a wide range of non-academic policy-makers. Amidst recent debates on the authority and legitimacy of creditors and debt-giving agents, the study on cultural frames of new local and global economic patterns shall also provide vital intellectual and practical insights on how current initiatives to restructure debt in financial markets should be formulated in relation to informality.

经济发展实践者曾经普遍认为，传统文化习俗和依恋的存在常常阻碍经济增长，从而阻碍更正式制度的出现。这一立场不再被广泛持有，因为几十年的全球化已经产生了在经济强劲发展的情况下文化融合模式的充分证据，因为非正规经济结构已经随着公平、灵活性、风险和信任等当地文化观念的发展而发展。因此，非正规性现在被视为灵活经济增长的一种模式，并且越来越多地鼓励从业者采用反映经济发展战略多样性的参数。然而，科学家们仍然面临着如何识别和模拟非正规性和灵活性有利于经济增长的途径的挑战。该项目培训研究生如何进行严格的、以经验为基础的科学实地考察，将探索非正规性作为这种新的灵活经济的基本文化模式，如何影响现有的经济结构和经济增长的倾向。 Samil Can 在斯坦福大学 Thomas Hansen 的指导下，将通过追踪贷款网络和解决债务纠纷的实践来探索债务关系和纠纷解决。该研究将在印度德里进行，德里是世界上最重要和最大的新兴经济体之一的商业中心。根据初步研究，研究人员认为，印度在交换、信用、义务和权威方面拥有多种道德和宗教观念，致力于维持非正式和灵活的经济结构。基于这一主张，该项目预测这些道德和宗教观念是否以及如何在社会文化上承担和多样化国家、银行体系和理想化正式经济模式中的监管所扮演的角色。该项目调查穆斯林商人、店主、仓库供应商和零售商如何建立社交网络，利用正式和非正式当局（例如宗教领袖、长老、法院系统和警察）寻找债务并解决债务纠纷。初步数据表明，旧德里的穆斯林在交易中严重依赖宗教和道德观念，但也保持与其他本地和跨国经济网络的接触。因此，该项目旨在提供关于灵活的经济增长如何依赖于各种不断变化的文化观念的普遍见解。该项目将利用民族志方法（参与者对精心挑选的线人的观察、深入访谈、口述历史）和空间研究方法（社交网络分析、社会空间绘图）来记录德里穆斯林之间的这些文化经济交易模式如何与德里更大的非正规经济相关。研究结果概述了“灵活经济增长”的日常实际影响，并探索了债务义务在文化上的构建方式，将为学术界和学术界关于“灵活经济增长”的辩论提供重要信息。它将为人类学家、经济学家、政治学家和众多非学术决策者之间关于“债务”概念的紧迫全球辩论做出重大贡献。在最近关于债权人和债务发放机构的权威和合法性的争论中，对新的本地和全球经济模式的文化框架的研究也将为如何制定与非正规性相关的当前金融市场债务重组举措提供重要的知识和实践见解。