Doctoral Dissertation Research: Local Uses of Transnational Cultural Systems

该奖项支持的研究调查了跨国文化运动与当地文化和社会结构之间的关系。研究者将超越文化适应的标准问题，询问引进的外国文化习俗是否以及如何被重新利用，以达到与最初引进者的目标相反的目的。这是一个重要的问题，为政策制定者在跨文化的工作，谁寻求产生短期的遵守，如促进灾害反应，以及为科学的理解长期的社会文化变化。这项研究将由布兰迪斯大学博士生，道格拉斯巴福德进行，与人类学家博士珍妮特麦金托什的指导。这项研究将在南非进行，在那里，美国的宗教形式和意识形态已经被引入并被改造为当地的政治目的。这段历史使这里成为该项目首要问题的理想场所：当一套特定的哲学、实践和道德立场应用于完全不同的文化背景时，会发生什么？将通过扩展参与者观察、半结构化访谈、社会网络绘图和分析以及档案研究收集数据。研究结果将有助于科学地理解社会整体主义和全球化。此外，该项目将培训学生研究人员在人类学的研究和教学生涯所需的方法。该奖项反映了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。

The research supported by this award investigates the relationship between transnational cultural movements and local culture and social structure. The researcher will go beyond standard questions of cultural adaptation to ask if and how introduced foreign cultural practices might be repurposed to ends antithetical to the goals of the original introducers. This is an important question for policy makers working across cultures who seek to produce short term compliance, such as to facilitate disaster response, as well as for scientific understanding of long-term socio-cultural change.The research will be undertaken by Brandeis University doctoral student, Douglas Bafford, with the guidance of anthropologist Dr. Janet Mcintosh. The research is to be conducted in South Africa where religious forms and ideologies from the United States have been introduced and refashioned for local political purposes. This history makes this an ideal site for the project's overarching question: what happens when a particular set of philosophies, practices, and moral stances is applied in a starkly different cultural context? Data will be collected through extended participant observation, semi-structured interviews, social network mapping and analyses, and archival research. Findings from the research will contribute to scientific understanding of social holism and globalization. In addition, this project will train the student researcher in the methods required for a research and teaching career in anthropology.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.