Doctoral Dissertation Research: Historical Memory, Temporality, and Cultural Identity

管理人类集体内部和之间的社会差异对决策和公民参与提出了独特的挑战。社会构建的关于差异的观念继续对个人如何互动产生强大的影响。然而，尽管社会科学家和历史学家将历史上的事件和过程与变化无常的概念联系在一起，但很少有实证研究关注日常行为者本身在日常社会生活过程中如何在身份和历史之间建立联系。因此，本研究项目询问时间变化或连续性的普通经验如何塑造关于文化和国家认同的观念，以及这些不断变化的个人和集体认同观念如何反过来影响历史叙事的文化意义。本项目对学生进行实证、科学的数据收集和分析方法的培训，对非正规经济场所进行个案研究。加州大学伯克利分校的博士生耶稣·古铁雷斯将在加州大学伯克利分校的查尔斯·布里格斯的指导下，探索社会差异的概念是如何通过时间性、记忆和历史的概念来调节的。这项研究将在巴西南部进行，这是一个理想的地点，因为在这里，关于种族的思想在告知公众对民族归属和当地历史的态度方面得到了宣扬。作为个案研究，这项研究将围绕阿雷格里港各种流行和外来艺术形式的艺术家网络展开。通过参与者观察、媒体和文件分析、网络地图绘制和民族志访谈等研究方法，研究人员将审查种族的重要性以及每个艺术家的工艺和社会生活中历史元素的出现。通过与接近的观众、客户和政府官员进行广泛的民族志接触，他将确定艺术品和表演的流通如何参与改变远远超出个人和地方的种族和国家认同感。这项研究的发现将促进对历史、种族和国家认同之间关系的科学和普遍理解，并将有助于产生关于全球民间艺术形式的历史和社会政治意义的更准确的理论。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

The management of social differences within and across human collectives has posed unique challenges for policymaking and civic participation. Socially constructed ideas about difference continue to exert a powerful influence on how individuals interact. However, although social scientists and historians have connected notions of alterity to events and processes in the historical past, few empirical studies have paid attention to how everyday actors themselves participate in making links between identity and history over the course of daily social life. Accordingly, this research project asks how the ordinary experience of temporal change or continuity shape ideas about cultural and national identity, and how these shifting notions of individual and collective identity in turn impact the cultural significance of historical narratives. This project, which trains a student in methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, conducts a case study of informal economic site. Doctoral student Jesus Gutierrez, supervised by Charles Briggs at the University of California-Berkeley, will explore how notions of social difference are mediated by conceptions of temporality, memory, and history. The research will take place in southern Brazil, an ideal site as this is a context where ideas about race have been pronounced in informing public attitudes toward national belonging and local history. As a case study, the research will be focused around a network of artists who work across a variety of popular and outsider art forms in the city of Porto Alegre. Through research methods that include participant observation, media and document analysis, network mapping, and ethnographic interviews, the researcher will examine both the significance of race and the emergence of historical elements in each artist's craft and social life. Through extended ethnographic engagement with proximate audiences, customers and government officials, he will determine how the circulation of artworks and performances participates in shifting perceptions of racial and national identity that reach far beyond the individual and the local. Findings from this research will advance scientific and popular understandings of the relationship between history, race and national identity, and it will contribute to the production of more precise theories about the historical and socio-political significance of folk art forms around the globe.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.