Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding Community Resilience in Response to Industrial Mine Closure and Industrial Decline

在美国各地，许多与采掘业密切相关的社区都经历了密集的繁荣增长期，随后往往出现衰退。工业采掘业的关闭往往会产生长期的社会影响，而目前人们对这种影响知之甚少。这个项目训练一名研究生如何进行严谨的、以经验为基础的科学实地考察，探讨当地的道德、伦理和宗教价值观对这些社区的人们在对抗戏剧性的地缘政治和经济衰退中所起的作用。这些发现可以外推，并为科学家们试图了解人类对社会经济和生态压力的适应能力的其他背景提供信息。乔丹·豪格在加州大学圣地亚哥分校的苏珊娜·布伦纳的指导下，旨在了解工业矿山关闭和工业衰退对当地社区的影响，以及社区如何对这些影响做出不同的反应。这项研究在巴布亚新几内亚的米西马岛进行，2004年，该岛成为大洋洲最重要的工业矿山关闭地点之一。从那时起，该岛的地缘政治、基础设施和经济发展的可能性急剧下降。米西曼人通过在教育、合作筹款和基督教敬拜等领域开展一系列道德项目来应对这些挑战。这项研究的问题是，这些道德项目是否能让米西曼人克服不平等和衰落带来的看似无法克服的压力。通过参与观察、个人访谈、小组讨论和家庭调查等混合定性和定量方法，该项目将设法了解关闭矿井对三岛的长期社会影响。在此过程中，本项目旨在为科学研究采掘业对脆弱社区的经济和社会影响以及这些社区如何寻求克服衰退的挑战作出广泛贡献。通过了解米西曼人如何应对十年的衰退，该项目试图为世界各地的类似社区提供可能的答案，美国也许能够类似地应对工业关闭和衰退的压力。

Throughout the United States many communities closely tied to extractive industries have been subject to intensive periods of booming growth and often-subsequent decline. Closures of industrial extractive industries often have long standing social impacts that are currently poorly understood. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, empirically-grounded scientific fieldwork, explores what role local moral, ethical, and religious values have for people in these communities struggling against dramatic geopolitical and economic decline. The findings can be extrapolated and inform other contexts where scientists are attempting to understand human resilience in response to socioeconomic and ecological stress. Jordan Haug, under the supervision of Suzanne Brenner of the University of California at San Diego, aims to understand the impact of industrial mine closure and industrial decline on local communities, as well as how communities vary in their response to those impacts. The research takes place on the island of Misima, Papua New Guinea, which in 2004 became the site of one of the most significant industrial mine closures in Oceania. Since that time, the possibilities for the island's geopolitical, infrastructural, and economic advancement have dramatically declined. Misimans have responded to these challenges by engaging in a number of moral projects in the area of education, cooperative fund raising, and Christian worship. This research asks whether these moral projects enable Misimans to overcome the seemingly insurmountable pressures of inequality and decline. Through a mixed qualitative and quantitative methods approach of participant observation, personal interviews, group discussions, and household surveys, this project will seek to understand the long-term social impacts of mine closure on the island of Misima. In doing so, this project aims to make broad contributions to the scientific study of the economic and social impacts of extractive industries on vulnerable communities and how such communities seek to overcome the challenges of decline. By understanding how Misimans respond to a decade of decline, this project seeks to provide possible answers for similar communities through the world, and the United States, may be able to similarly deal with the pressures of industrial closure and decline.