Doctoral Dissertation Research: Bureaucracy and Social Personhood

官僚机构为社区提供重要服务，包括促进对影响生活方式和身份的政策的理解。一些社区，例如土著社区和部落社区，以不同的方式表达和建立身份，从而决定了获得官僚支持的方式。亲属关系和个人主义与集体主义取向观念的差异影响了社区与官僚机构的互动方式；对社会变革的渴望可以推动官僚努力的扩张或收缩。本研究考察了社区认同和社区社会运动在多大程度上塑造了官僚主义。在这样做的过程中，它的目的是重新理论化如何定义和部署官僚机构，以实现积极的变化。这项研究支持对一名美国博士生的培训，研究结果将广泛传播给不同的受众。本博士论文研究考察了拥有大量捐赠的大型官僚机构如何理解和实现其服务社区的目的，并在社区和更大的政府实体之间进行调解。它调查了官僚在支持和阻碍社区运动中的作用，以及在这些过程中身份是如何形成的。研究人员将在美国官僚机构中进行民族志和语言学研究，检查文件和文件实践，对官僚机构和社区场所进行参与性观察，并对官僚机构和社区利益相关者进行半结构化访谈，了解他们的日常工作。研究人员还将收集官僚和社区利益相关者的生活故事，研究生命周期中的历史事件和经验如何阐明社会运动和官僚机构的变化。这项研究的结果将有助于官僚主义理论及其在社会运动中的作用。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。

Bureaucracies provide important services to communities, including facilitating understanding of policies that shape lifeways and identity. Some communities, Indigenous and tribal communities for example, express and build identity in different ways, in turn shaping the receipt of bureaucratic support. Variation in notions of kinship and individualist versus collectivist orientations affect how communities interact with bureaucracies; the desire for social change can drive the expansion or contraction of bureaucratic efforts. This research examines the extent to which bureaucracy is shaped by community identity and community social movements. In doing so, it aims to re-theorize how bureaucracies are defined and deployed to effect positive change. The research supports training of a U.S. doctoral student and results will be disseminated widely to diverse audiences.This doctoral dissertation research examines how large bureaucracies with large endowments understand and achieve their purposes to serve communities and mediate between communities and larger governmental entities. It investigates bureaucratic roles in supporting versus hindering community movements and how identity is shaped in these processes. The researcher will perform ethnographic and linguistic research in U.S. bureaucracies, examining documents and document practices, conducting participant observation of bureaucratic and community venues, and semi-structured interviews of bureaucrats and community stakeholders about their daily work. The researcher will also collect life stories of bureaucrats and community stakeholders, examining how historical events and experience over the life span articulates changes in social movements and bureaucracies. The results of this research will contribute to theories of bureaucracy and its role in social movements.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.