Doctoral Dissertation Research: Reproducing the State: Women Community Health Volunteers

女性社区卫生志愿者如何成功地提供妇幼保健服务？此外，他们的成功告诉我们国家权力的微观运作及其塑造边缘化群体生活的能力是什么？ 本研究探讨基层官僚机构，即第一线工作者，在国家权力谈判中的重要性，以及亲密劳动与性别、阶级和种族不平等的相互关系。调查结果将显示社区卫生工作者如何谈判，往往克服，在他们的社区的社会和象征性的界限。这对全球健康有影响。社区卫生工作者计划对于在低收入和中等收入国家有效提供卫生服务至关重要，特别是对于边缘化人群。通过强调这些工作者在谈判他们的社区动态的经验，这项研究将产生关于如何更好地支持社区卫生工作者在他们的角色的政策建议。 这项研究将研究a）妇女继续作为社区卫生志愿者工作的原因; B）这项工作对她们的意义，超出了她们的正式任务;和c）种姓如何影响她们与社区和卫生系统的经验。该项目将对印度旁遮普的穆克萨尔和沙希德·巴加特·辛格（SBS）纳加尔两个地区的达利特人（以前是贱民）和占主导地位的种姓社区卫生志愿者进行关系人种学研究。印度北部的旁遮普邦相对于印度其他地区而言，在贱民的总体繁荣和社会流动性方面是一个特殊的例子。在旁遮普，穆克察尔和SBS纳加尔是两个达利特人在人口中所占比例相似的地区，但在经济流动性的关键指标上存在差异，如识字率。社区卫生志愿者主要是低种姓的工人阶级妇女。该项目预计，虽然性别和种姓制度起到补贴国家的作用，但国家也为这些妇女提供机会，通过赋予她们地位和获得她们本来无法获得的机会，减轻她们的边缘化。比较Muktsar和SBS Nagar将允许种姓的细微差别的理解不是静态的社会身份，而是在当地政治经济的背景下动态复制。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

How do women community health volunteers succeed in delivering maternal and child health services? Moreover, what does their success tell us about the micro-level workings of state power and its capacities to shape the lives of marginalized groups? This research studies the significance of street-level bureaucracy, i.e. frontline workers, in negotiating state power, and the inter-relationship of intimate labor with inequities of gender, class, and ethnicity. Findings will show how community health workers negotiate, and often overcome, social and symbolic boundaries in their communities. This has implications for global health. Community health worker programs are critical for the effective delivery of health services in low- and middle-income countries, especially for marginalized populations. By emphasizing the experiences of these workers in negotiating the dynamics of their communities, this research will generate policy recommendations about how to better support community health workers in their role. This research will study a) the reasons why women continue to work as community health volunteers; b) the meaning that this work has for them, beyond their formal tasks; and c) how caste affects their experiences with their community on the one hand, and with the health system on the other. The project will conduct a relational ethnography of Dalit, formerly untouchable, and dominant caste community health volunteers in the two districts of Muktsar and Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar in Punjab, India. The North Indian state of Punjab presents a privileged case in terms of overall prosperity and social mobility for Dalits relative to the rest of India. Within Punjab, Muktsar and SBS Nagar are two districts that have similar percentages of Dalits in the population, but differ on key indices of economic mobility, such as literacy. The community health volunteers are pre-dominantly lower caste, working class women. The project expects that while gender and caste act to subsidize the state, the state also provides opportunities for these women to mitigate their marginalization by according them status and access otherwise unavailable to them. Comparing Muktsar and SBS Nagar will allow for a nuanced understanding of caste not as static social identity, but rather as reproduced dynamically in the context of the local political economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.