Doctoral Dissertation Research: Public Debt and Popular Response

自2008年全球经济衰退以来，债务和信贷已成为全球公众关注的中心问题。该奖项支持的研究旨在通过观察这些发展在地方一级的影响来了解原因。研究人员问：公共债务如何与当地生活产生实质性联系？这些问题是否会影响地方一级的个人和家庭债务和责任？这些担忧如何转化为债务政治和公众反应？探讨这些问题将有助于决策者和社会科学家更好地了解国家和全球经济危机对当地的影响以及当地应对措施的补救潜力。纽约（CUNY）人类学博士生Sarah Molinari在Ida Susser博士的建议下，将通过在波多黎各的圣胡安的研究来回答这些问题。波多黎各目前的债务危机在社会各阶层引发了辩论和反应，使之成为一个特别合适的研究网站。 Molinari将重点关注三个位于圣胡安的民间社会团体。这三个人都关心债务危机，但在年龄、社会经济地位、政治和对债务的看法上各不相同。她将通过扩展的案例方法，访谈，参与观察，文献分析和档案研究收集数据。调查结果将有助于理解“债务”和债务人/债权人关系概念的多样性;人们如何体验不同规模的债务和信贷关系;以及对最近事件的理解和反应的差异。研究结果将由纽约市立大学研究生中心的拉丁美洲、加勒比和拉丁裔研究中心传播，并在卡伊的波多黎各大学跨学科研究所举行的公开研讨会上传播。

Since the 2008 global economic downturn, debt and credit have emerged globally as central issues of public concern. The research supported by this award seeks to understand why, by looking at the effects of these developments at the local level. The researcher asks: How does public debt become materially connected to local lives? Do these concerns affect local-level experiences of personal and household debt and responsibility? How do these concerns translate into debt politics and public response? Answering these questions will help both policy makers and social scientists to better understand the local effects of national and global economic crisis and the remediating potential of local response. City University of New York (CUNY) anthropology doctoral student, Sarah Molinari, advised by Dr. Ida Susser, will undertake to answer these questions through research in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico's current debt crisis has spurred debate and response at all levels of society, making this a particularly appropriate research site. Molinari will focus on three San Juan-based civil society groups. All three are concerned with the debt crisis but differ in their make-up by age, socio-economic position, politics and ideas about debt. She will gather data through the extended case method, interviews, participant observation, documentary analysis, and archival research. Findings will contribute to understanding diversity in conceptions of "debt" and debtor/creditor relations; how people experience different scales of debt and credit relations; and variations in understanding of and responding to recent events. Research findings will be disseminated by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and during a public seminar at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey.