Doctoral Dissertation Research: Resilience, Religion, and Political Change

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。政教分离是民主政体的共同原则。在宗教信仰与遗产和个人身份的其他方面联系在一起的情况下，世俗主义的原则可能以不同的方式实施。这篇博士论文研究调查了世俗主义和政治变革之间的相互关系，通过弹性的理论镜头，询问是否以及如何虔诚的个人纳入新的概念和身份，以适应政治转变远离世俗主义。除了培养一名博士生外，该项目还计划向学术和非学术受众广泛传播研究成果。具体来说，这个项目测试了民主政治转型导致宗教和世俗主义之间日益接近的假设，以及个人利用这种接近作为针对身份的政治变革的弹性手段。在为期12个月的民族志实地调查中，研究人员结合了参与者观察、半结构化访谈、数字民族志和日记方法来检验这些假设。研究问题包括：(1)宗教人士如何理解和解释世俗主义作为应对政治变革的一种方式；(2)个人如何将传统的宗教原则与新元素结合起来，以应对政治变革。这项研究将弹性理论和宗教结合起来，研究了人类适应不断变化的政治环境的广泛手段。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 award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).The separation of religious institutions from governmental affairs is a common principle of democratic governments. In settings where religious affiliations are associated with other aspects of heritage and individuals’ identities, the principles of secularism may be implemented in varying ways. This doctoral dissertation research investigates reciprocal relationships between secularism and political change through the theoretical lens of resilience, asking whether and how devout individuals incorporate new concepts and identities to accommodate political shifts away from secularism. In addition to training a doctoral student, the project plans to disseminate findings widely to academic and non-academic audiences. Specifically, this project tests the hypotheses that democratic political transformations result in increasing proximity between religion and secularism, and that individuals leverage this proximity as a means of resilience to political changes targeting identity. Over twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork, the investigators use a combination of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, digital ethnography, and diary methods to test these hypotheses. Research questions include (1) how religious individuals understand and interpret secularism as a way of responding to political change; and (2) how individuals use traditional religious principles in conjunction with novel elements in response to political change. The research contributes a novel synthesis of resilience theory and religion to investigate the broad means by which humans adjust to changing political environments.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.