Doctoral Dissertation Research: Factors Influencing Cooperation and Adversity in Water Infrastructure Management

本研究考察了在资源稀缺和人口流离失所的背景下，哪些力量促成了合作或逆境。虽然人口流离失所往往被认为是造成这些人口流离失所地所在国局势紧张的原因，但人们对促进合作与团结的条件了解较少，特别是在长期流离失所和共同居住的情况下。本论文通过调查公共供水基础设施（如公共水龙头、水车输送和水井）在促进不同社会、宗教和经济背景的居民之间的合作或煽动紧张关系方面的作用来解决这些问题。除了支持培养一名博士生外，该项目的研究成果还将与各组织、发展实践者和政策专家分享。本博士论文项目考察了影响水获取和公共水基础设施维护的因素。该项目比较了两个地区：一个地区的特点是流离失所公民的合作与团结，另一个地区的特点是持续的紧张局势。这两个地方都有类似的公共供水基础设施，作为公民和难民居民的日常聚会场所。因此，该项目研究了对基础设施的共享依赖如何能够实现合作关系。除了研究居民的社会世界如何构建他们的相遇之外，该项目还探讨了基础设施的故障、修复和忽视如何重新配置社会关系。采用人种学研究方法，包括参与观察、访谈和常住人口的档案研究，以及监督基础设施的非政府行为者。这项研究通过更好地理解公共基础设施在调解和重新配置合作和冲突社会关系中的作用，为当代社会科学和人类学做出了贡献。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。

This research examines what forces contribute to cooperation or adversity in contexts of resource scarcity and population displacement. While population displacement is often characterized as contributing to tension in the host contexts to where these populations are displaced, less understood are the conditions that promote cooperation and solidarity, especially in circumstances of protracted displacement and shared residence. This dissertation research addresses these questions by investigating the role of communal water infrastructure, such as public water taps, water truck deliveries, and wells, in promoting cooperation, or instigating tension, between residents of various social, religious, and economic backgrounds. In addition to supporting the training of a doctoral student, the findings from this project will be shared with organizations, development practitioners, and policy experts.This doctoral dissertation project examines the factors influencing access to water and the maintenance of communal water infrastructure. This project compares two localities: one marked by citizen-displaced population cooperation and solidarity, and another by continued tension. Both localities contain similar communal water infrastructures which serve as routine gathering sites for both citizen and refugee residents. This project therefore investigates how a shared dependence on infrastructure can enable cooperative relations. In addition to examining how residents' social worlds frame their encounters, this project explores how infrastructure breakdown, repair, and neglect reconfigure social relations. Ethnographic research methods are employed, including participant observation, interviews, and archival research among resident populations, as well as with non-governmental actors who oversee the infrastructure. This research contributes to contemporary social science and anthropology by better understanding the role of communal infrastructure in mediating and reconfiguring cooperative and conflictual social relations.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.