Doctoral Dissertation Research: Rail Infrastructure and the Emergence of National Identity and the Nation-State

本博士论文研究项目将分析铁路基础设施在国家规模的领土形成中的作用。这项研究将探讨火车站和车厢的结构以及旅客和工作人员的做法和行为沿着如何有助于国家空间和民族社区的形成，并被国家用作政治统一的手段。世纪以来，铁路一直将各国联系在一起，并促进了许多国家民族主义的发展。这在过去对美国是如此，现在对其他发展中国家也是如此。本研究项目将通过将铁路等物质基础设施的作用纳入国家的概念化，有助于对国家，国家建设和民族主义的基本理解。因此，铁路基础设施是一个重要的手段，通过它，国家可以通过它所连接的人和地方来想象。这是发生的具体过程和民族认同和国家决策的影响是这个研究项目的重点。 中国铁路运输的历史地位，加上近几十年来铁路系统的显著扩张，使中国成为研究铁路对社会影响的理想地点。民族主义在中国的日益突出也使得这项研究非常及时。本研究是由以下问题驱动的：1）中国铁路网是如何通过其物质基础设施和乘客和铁路工作人员的日常实践构成和复制的？2)随着时间的推移，规划者和用户是如何对中国铁路网进行概念化的？这些概念如何表现为嵌入在铁路空间中的物质表现？3)轨道空间如何为中华民族的物质化做出贡献？该项目将采用双管齐下的方法，结合“自上而下”的地理信息系统（GIS）分析空间整合和人口流动，以及“自下而上”的铁路空间（火车和车站）和其中的人的旅行民族志。这将使调查人员能够确定铁路在领土和社会上发挥国家建设力量的具体机制，而不会忽视铁路作为一个单一的连贯系统。地理空间分析将显示该网络在全国范围内整合中国广阔领土的位置和方式，同时还将确定一些地区变得相对孤立的剪切点。人种学将整个铁路系统视为一个单一的分散的基础设施“现场”，将展示铁路空间如何在全国范围内以标准化的方式设计，结构和维护，并调查精明的铁路旅行者使用它们的无数方式。这项研究将产生一个多标量的铁路基础设施的影响，在今天的中国，这将有助于广泛的国家和基础设施的理论化和研究人类/基础设施组合的方法。了解当代中国民族主义的根源也可能为美国的国际政策提供信息。

This doctoral dissertation research project will analyze the role of rail infrastructure in the formation of territory at the scale of the nation. The research will address how the structures of rail stations and carriages, along with the practices and behaviors of travelers and personnel, contribute to the production of national spaces and national communities and are used by the State as a means of political unification. Railways have served to bind nations together for more than a century and have contributed to the development of nationalism in many countries. This was true for the United States in the past and continues to be true for other developing states. This research project will contribute to basic understanding of the nation, nation-building, and nationalism by incorporating the role of material infrastructure like rail into conceptualizations of the nation. Rail infrastructure is thus one important means through which the nation becomes imaginable through the people and places it connects. The specific process by which this is takes place and the implications for national identity and state-making are the focus of this research project. The historical prominence of rail travel in China, combined with the system's significant expansion in recent decades, makes China an ideal location to examine the impact of rail on society. The increasing salience of nationalism in China also makes this research timely. This research is driven by questions such as: 1) How is the Chinese rail network constituted and reproduced through both its material infrastructure and everyday practices of passengers and railway personnel? 2) How have planners and users conceptualized the Chinese rail network over time? How do these concepts manifest as representations materially embedded in the rail spaces? 3) How do rail spaces contribute to materializing the Chinese nation? The project will adopt a two-pronged approach coupling 'top-down' geographic information systems (GIS) analysis of spatial integration and population circulation, with a 'bottom-up' traveling ethnography of rail spaces (trains and stations) and the people within them. This will allow the investigators to identify the concrete mechanisms through which rail exerts a nation-building force on territory and society without losing sight of rail as a single coherent system. Geo-spatial analysis will show where and how the network has served to integrate China's vast territory at the national scale, while also identifying points of shear where some areas become relatively isolated. The ethnography, which treats the whole rail system as a single dispersed, infrastructural 'field site,' will show how rail spaces are designed, structured, and maintained in standardized ways across the country, and also investigate the myriad ways they are put into use by savvy rail travelers. This research will produce a multi-scalar account of the impacts of rail infrastructure on material processes of territory-making and nation-building in today's China, which will contribute broadly to the theorization of nation and infrastructure and methodologies for studying human/infrastructural assemblages. Understanding the roots of contemporary Chinese nationalism may also inform U.S. international policy.