Doctoral Dissertation Research: Resilience-Building and Adversity Management in the Post-Welfare United States

博士论文研究：后福利时代美国的复原力建设和逆境管理

• 批准号: 1918159
• 负责人: Eugene Raikhel
• 金额: $ 1.99万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-08-15 至 2021-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1918159&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Resilience; Building

Resilience-Building and Adversity Management in the Post-Welfare United States The research supported by this award investigates ethnographically how people make sense of and manage experiences of adversity in the postwelfare United States, by examining resilience-building initiatives in Flint, Michigan following the city's 2014 water crisis. Over the past two decades, welfare reform in the U.S. has significantly diminished public assistance for marginalized populations. At the same time, "resilience-building" has become a national strategy for enabling communities to withstand, adapt to, or recover from adversity. However, the goals of resilience-building appear paradoxical in contexts like Flint, where the crisis remains ongoing, adversity is chronic, and the imperative to thrive coincides directly with austerity policies that continue to severely decrease welfare provision for residents. This project, which provides funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in scientific methods of rigorous data collection and analysis, will examine how the goals of resilience-building intersect with the ways that people experience, understand, and manage adversity in Flint, this project will provide key insight into the relationship between welfare state retrenchment, adversity-management, and collective life in the contemporary U.S. Talia Gordon, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, will conduct 18 months of ethnographic research in Flint, Michigan, with the oversight of Dr. Eugene Raikhel. A former hub of automotive manufacturing, Flint has become a national symbol of post-industrial decline. The 2014 water crisis drew further attention to the devastating consequences of continued disinvestment by state and federal administrations in an already socioeconomically disadvantaged community. In response to the crisis, the U.S. government expressed a commitment to support Flint's "recovery and resilience." Since 2016, this commitment has materialized in a number of initiatives specifically dedicated to building resilience in Flint. To understand why and to what consequence resilience-building has become the primary strategy for helping individuals and communities manage adversity in the postwelfare U.S., the researcher will conduct participant-observation across an array of sites dedicated to adversity-management in Flint. Findings from these sites will be enriched through ethnographic interviews with residents and other social actors involved in adversity-management practices; contextualized through analyses of discourse at each site; and supplemented by analyses of local news media, curricula, pamphlets, and online sources. The researcher will focus on 1) how resilience-building discourses and practices are enacted; that is, made socially meaningful 2) how these discourses and practices correspond with or diverge from local experiences and understandings of adversity and 3) how local value-frameworks inform adversity management. Findings from this research will contribute to understanding how and to what effects resilience-building discourses and practices are taken up by people in marginalized communities. The research will also contribute to building more robust social scientific understanding of how people experience, manage, and make sense of adversity in postwelfare settings.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.

该奖项支持的研究从人种学的角度调查了美国后福利时代人们如何理解和管理逆境的经历，研究了密歇根州弗林特市在2014年水危机后的韧性建设举措。在过去的二十年里，美国的福利改革大大减少了对边缘人群的公共援助。与此同时，“恢复力建设”已成为一项国家战略，使社区能够承受、适应或从逆境中恢复过来。然而，在弗林特这样的情况下，恢复力建设的目标似乎是矛盾的，危机仍在持续，逆境是长期的，繁荣的必要性与紧缩政策直接吻合，紧缩政策继续严重减少居民的福利供应。该项目为培养一名人类学研究生提供资金，使其掌握严谨的数据收集和分析的科学方法。该项目将研究复原力建设的目标如何与弗林特人经历、理解和管理逆境的方式相交叉。该项目将为当代美国福利国家缩减、逆境管理和集体生活之间的关系提供关键见解。他是芝加哥大学的博士生，将在尤金·雷克尔博士的监督下，在密歇根州弗林特进行为期18个月的人种学研究。弗林特曾是汽车制造中心，如今已成为后工业时代衰落的国家象征。2014年的水危机进一步引起了人们对州和联邦政府持续撤资对这个已经处于社会经济不利地位的社区造成的破坏性后果的关注。作为对这场危机的回应，美国政府表示承诺支持弗林特的“恢复和恢复力”。自2016年以来，这一承诺已在弗林特的一系列专门致力于建设复原力的举措中得以实现。为了理解复原力建设成为帮助个人和社区在后福利时代管理逆境的主要策略的原因和后果，研究人员将在弗林特一系列致力于逆境管理的地点进行参与者观察。通过与参与逆境管理实践的居民和其他社会行动者的民族志访谈，将丰富这些地点的调查结果；通过对每个地点的话语分析，语境化；并辅以对当地新闻媒体、课程、小册子和在线资源的分析。研究人员将重点关注1)如何制定弹性建设话语和实践；也就是说，具有社会意义2)这些话语和实践如何与当地经验和对逆境的理解相一致或不同，3)当地价值框架如何为逆境管理提供信息。这项研究的结果将有助于理解边缘化社区的人们如何以及如何影响恢复力建设的话语和实践。这项研究还将有助于建立更健全的社会科学理解，了解人们如何在福利后的环境中经历、管理和理解逆境。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Reimagining the Commons: Survival Ethics and Collective Endurance

重新想象公地：生存伦理和集体耐力

• DOI: 10.1002/nad.12141
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Journal for the Anthropology of North America
• 作者: Burnett, Hannah Eisler;Gordon, Talia R.
• 通讯作者: Gordon, Talia R.