Doctoral Dissertation Research: Neoliberalism, Gender, and Politics in Post-Soviet Societies

该项目将审查经济结构调整和社会和政治保守主义对后苏联社会性别角色的影响。虽然许多研究探讨了后苏联地区新自由主义经济结构调整对种族，劳动力和民族主义的影响，但很少有研究关注性别和地缘政治之间的联系以及该地区的地缘政治和经济变化。经济自由化带来的挑战导致人们要求对家庭价值观、性别角色和自律性进行新的管理。 本研究将分析新自由主义和民族主义如何重新定义性别身份，以阐明政治行为者如何利用“家”和“家庭”的象征来证明限制性的社会政策，并在某些情况下，验证参与政治冲突。了解政治和经济进程如何与亲密的家庭和家庭事务联系在一起，也将有助于阐明旨在增强妇女权能的国际发展方案的有效性。 记录妇女在日常生活中应对社会和经济变化的方式，将为区域发展政策提供信息，以努力减轻基于性别的暴力和贫困。 后苏联时期亚美尼亚的各种团体一直在与持续的经济和政治变革所造成的经济和地缘政治焦虑作斗争。 其中许多焦虑表现为对性别角色以及家庭和家庭空间的社会经济和政治意义的新的关切。为了更好地理解这些变化，本研究提出了以下问题：1）在地缘政治辩论中，非自治性的家园和实践的象征意义是什么？2)经济结构调整对城市实践和家庭空间政治的影响是什么？3)家庭的象征意义和日常家庭实践如何成为再现或质疑新自由主义和地缘政治分歧的场所？具体而言，本研究将探讨性别的话语生产和物质条件，人们的经验和导航经济变化。研究人员将采用批判性地理学的观点来阐明经济转型如何对日常生活产生重大影响，以及性别主题产生或转变的方式。 本研究采用质性研究方法，包括半结构式访谈、参与式观察，以及对新闻和杂志中有关当代大学生的文章进行文本分析。 从这些来源收集的数据将进行三角分析，以了解各种行为者-公民，政治团体和国际发展计划-如何重新谈判妇女的家务劳动的价值，作为经济结构调整和日益增长的社会保守主义的结果。

This project will examine the effects of economic restructuring and rising social and political conservatism on gender roles in post-Soviet societies. While much research has explored the effects of neoliberal economic restructuring in post-Soviet regions on ethnicity, labor, and nationalism, fewer studies have paid attention to the connections between gender and domesticity and the geopolitical and economic changes in the region. Anxieties arising from economic liberalization have led to calls for new regulations on family values, gender roles and domesticity. This study will analyze how neoliberalism and nationalism are redefining gender identities in order to shed light on how political actors draw on symbols of the "home" and "family" to justify restrictive social policies and, in some cases, validate engagement in political conflict. Understanding how political and economic processes link with intimate home and family matters will also help to elucidate the effectiveness of international development programs seeking to empower women. Documenting the way women navigate social and economic change in their everyday lives will inform regional development policies in an effort to alleviate gender based violence and poverty. Various groups in post-Soviet Armenia have been struggling with economic and geopolitical anxieties caused by continual economic and political transformations. Many of these anxieties have manifested in new concerns over gender roles and the socioeconomic and political meanings of home and domestic spaces. To better understand these changes, this study asks: 1) What is the symbolic significance of the home and practices of domesticity in geopolitical debates? 2) What are the impacts of economic restructuring on practices of domesticity and the spatial politics of home? 3) How do the symbolic meanings of the home and everyday domestic practices become sites for reproducing or contesting neoliberalism and geopolitical divides? Specifically, this research will examine the discursive production of gender and the material conditions within which people experience and navigate economic change. The researchers will employ critical geography perspectives to illuminate how economic transformations materially affect everyday lives and the ways in which gendered subjects are produced or transformed. The study relies on qualitative methods including semi- structured interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis of news and magazine articles about contemporary domesticity. Data gathered from these sources will be triangulated to understand how various actors - citizens, political groups, and international development programs - have renegotiated the value of women's domestic labor as a result of economic restructuring and growing social conservatism.