Doctoral Dissertation Research: Extra-Territorial Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Politics of Development

这个博士论文项目将探讨地缘政治中出现的问题，涉及域外主权（民族国家对境外人民和地方施加的权力），国家建设，种族民族主义和多民族对空间，地点和政治表达的相互作用。 该项目将侧重于外国直接投资和基础设施发展方面的外国投资如何使域外主权的做法合法化，国家安全如何运作以监测和控制边缘化人口的生计，以及这些人口如何应对对其施加的限制。 研究人员将分析当代社会，政治和文化变革的方式条件如何不同的民族群体重视意义和要求地理位置，以及域外主权如何塑造发展的政治，并产生新的政治信仰，期望和经验。 该项目将提供从女权主义地缘政治思想所产生的新理论的实证检验，这将推动学术参与与影响，情感，记忆和日常实践，以更好地理解宏观规模的地缘政治。 它还将有助于了解国家和域外主权如何相互作用，影响个人的日常生活。该项目还将提供支持，使研究生能够建立一个独立的研究生涯。通过对中国在尼泊尔的经济和政治影响的民族志案例研究，博士生将研究以下一系列核心问题：（1）在加德满都的一个地方，西藏民族主义和地方建设的看似平庸，日常和性别的做法如何揭示中国在尼泊尔发展的域外政治的混乱复杂性？ (2)中国的域外主权和尼泊尔的民族主义是如何产生尼泊尔藏人难民主体性的？ (3)基于地方的身份政治和尼泊尔民族主义如何在西藏难民和尼泊尔其他民族之间产生冲突？ 最近中国在尼泊尔的政治经济影响力的加强使得这个项目意义重大，而且是及时的。 除了提供有关这一特定案例的新见解外，该项目还将有助于更好地了解美国感兴趣的更广泛的其他环境中人民和国家之间复杂的政治，文化和社会经济动态。 博士生将采用定性研究方法的组合，包括访谈，焦点小组，参与者观察，视觉方法和内容/话语分析。 使用这些方法，学生将研究日常互动，事件和实践如何揭示宏观地缘政治的复杂性。 在这样做的时候，本论文将提供更多的女性主义政治地理和主权和领土地理之间的联系。

This doctoral dissertation project will explore emerging questions in geopolitics about interactions among extra-territorial sovereignty (the power nation-states exert over people and places outside their borders), state-building, ethnic nationalism, and multi-ethnic contestations over space, place, and political expression.  The project will focus on the ways through which foreign direct investments and foreign investments in infrastructure development legitimize practices of extra-territorial sovereignty, how state security operates to monitor and control the livelihoods of marginalized populations, and how those populations then navigate the restrictions placed upon them.  The investigators will analyze the way contemporary social, political, and cultural transformations condition how different ethnic groups attach meaning to and claim geographic places and how extra-territorial sovereignty shapes the politics of development and produces new political beliefs, expectations, and experiences.  The project will provide an empirical test of new theories emanating from feminist geopolitical thought that will advance scholarly engagements with affect, emotion, memory, and everyday practices to better understand macro-scale geopolitics.  It also will contribute understanding about how state and extra-territorial sovereignties interact to impact individuals in their everyday lives. The project also will provide support to enable a graduate student to establish an independent research career. Through an ethnographic case study of Chinese economic and political influence in Nepal, the doctoral student will investigate the following set of core questions: (1) How do the seemingly banal, everyday, and gendered practices of Tibetan nationalism and place making in one part of Kathmandu reveal the messy intricacies of Chinese extra-territorial politics of development in Nepal?  (2) How do Chinese extra-territorial sovereignty and Nepali ethnic nationalism produce Tibetan refugee subjectivities in Nepal?  (3) How do place based identity politics and Nepali ethnic nationalism produce contestations between Tibetan refugees and members of other ethnic groups in Nepal?  The recent intensification of Chinese politico-economic influence in Nepal makes this project significant and timely.  In addition to providing new insights regarding this specific case, the project will have great value in helping to better understand the complex political, cultural, and socioeconomic dynamics among people and states in a broader range of other settings of interest to the U.S. from a national security and foreign affairs perspective.  The doctoral student will employ a combination of qualitative research methods, including interviews, focus groups, participant observation, visual methods, and content/discourse analysis.  Using these methods, the student will examine how everyday interactions, events, and practices reveal the intricacies of macro-scale geopolitics.  In doing so, this dissertation will provide additional linkages between feminist political geography and geographies of sovereignty and territory.