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.

福利后美国的复原力建设和逆境管理该奖项支持的研究通过考察密歇根州弗林特市2014年水危机后的复原力建设倡议，从人种学的角度调查了人们如何理解和管理福利后美国的逆境经历。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，“复原力建设”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，建立韧性的目标似乎是自相矛盾的。在弗林特，危机仍在继续，逆境是长期的，繁荣的当务之急与继续严重减少居民福利供应的紧缩政策直接重合。该项目为人类学研究生提供严格数据收集和分析的科学方法方面的培训提供资金，将研究复原力建设的目标如何与人们在弗林特体验、理解和管理逆境的方式相结合。该项目将提供对当代美国福利国家紧缩、逆境管理和集体生活之间关系的关键洞察。芝加哥大学博士生塔莉亚·戈登将在尤金·莱科尔博士的监督下，在密歇根州弗林特进行为期18个月的人种学研究。弗林特曾经是汽车制造业的中心，现在已经成为后工业时代衰落的全国象征。2014年的水危机进一步引起了人们对州和联邦政府在本已处于社会经济不利地位的社区继续撤资的破坏性后果的关注。作为对危机的回应，美国政府表达了支持范智廉“恢复和恢复元气”的承诺。自2016年以来，这一承诺在一系列专门致力于建设弗林特复原力的倡议中得以实现。为了了解为什么韧性建设成为帮助个人和社区在福利后的美国管理逆境的主要战略，研究人员将在弗林特一系列致力于逆境管理的网站上进行参与者观察。这些网站的调查结果将通过对参与逆境管理实践的居民和其他社会行为者进行人种学访谈来丰富；通过分析每个网站的话语来了解背景；并辅之以对当地新闻媒体、课程、小册子和在线来源的分析。研究人员将关注1)如何制定韧性建设的话语和实践；即如何使这些话语和实践具有社会意义；2)这些话语和实践如何与当地对逆境的经验和理解相对应或背离；3)当地的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中的人如何以及如何采取建立复原力的话语和做法，以及这些做法会产生什么效果。这项研究还将有助于建立更强大的社会科学理解，了解人们如何在福利后的环境中体验、管理和理解逆境。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.