Environmental Stress, Political Institutions and Social Conflict

关于气候-冲突关系的快速扩展的文献提高了我们对政治暴力原因的理解，但它福尔斯没有确定可能缓和环境压力对社会冲突影响的当地背景因素。该项目推进了我们对环境压力如何影响社会冲突的科学理解。该项目侧重于围绕世系（种姓-氏族）和基于宗教的身份组织的冲突，强调必须减少社会冲突的表现形式，如剥夺获得社区资源的机会、资产挪用和公开羞辱，特别是针对边缘化社会经济群体的羞辱。这些减弱的表现在现有文献中几乎没有受到关注，这些文献几乎只关注社会冲突的突出表现，如叛乱和内战，即使局部减弱的事件可能会产生重大的突出暴力，加剧地缘政治动荡地区的不稳定，这对美国的国家安全和全球和平至关重要。除了产生理论和经验的见解，该项目将培训本科生和研究生，特别是来自代表性不足的群体，在社会科学研究的一个关键领域。PI收集高分辨率的环境压力和冲突数据，利用历史和当代政治机构在精心挑选的分区，地区和国家边界的不连续性，并部署了一系列方法工具，包括人种学工作和调查实验，以促进强有力的因果推理。他们将开发一个理论框架，建立在现有文献的基础上，以提供对历史和当代政治机构在缓和环境压力和水资源获取对社会冲突的影响方面的作用的微妙理解。在理论上一个温和的和高度上下文的关系，这个项目的挑战，在研究和环境压力及其对冲突和殖民机构的作用的研究的影响，同时突出的重要性，区分种族间和种族内的分歧占主导地位的叙述。该项目制定了一个经验框架，在仔细控制的地理环境中整合了三个不同层次的分析-地区、次地区和个人。分区一级的分析侧重于两国地理上相邻的若干省份。对于这些分析，该项目将产生：a）围绕整个社会冲突加剧-减弱范围内基于宗教和血统的身份组织的大规模高分辨率数据;以及B）两国水安全和政治机构的高度本地化纵向地图。为了验证研究结果并明确确定因果机制，PI将从地区和次地区数据分析中获得的结果与强制-选择联合实验部署在240精心挑选的主要人口普查单位在印度结合民族志工作进行的一个子集，这些社区。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持，通过评估使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

The fast-expanding literature on the climate-conflict nexus has improved our understanding of the causes of political violence, but it falls short of identifying local contextual factors that may moderate the effects of environmental stress on social conflict. This project advances our scientific understanding of how environmental stress impacts social conflict. Focusing on conflicts organized around lineage- (caste-clan) and religion-based identities, this project highlights the importance of attenuated manifestation of social conflict, such as denial of access to community resources, asset appropriations and public humiliation, particularly against marginalized socioeconomic groups. These attenuated manifestations received little attention in the existing literature, which almost exclusively focuses on accentuated manifestations of social conflict, such as insurgencies and civil wars, even though localized attenuated incidents can engender major accentuated violence, fueling instability in a geopolitically volatile region that is of vital importance to US national security and global peace. In addition to generating theoretical and empirical insights, the project will train undergraduate and graduate students, especially from under-represented groups, in a critical area of social science research. The PIs collect high resolution environmental stress and conflict data, leveraging discontinuities in historical and contemporary political institutions across carefully selected subdistrict, district and national boundaries, and deploying a range of methodological tools, including ethnographic work and a survey experiment to facilitate a strong causal inference. They will develop a theoretical framework that builds on the existing literature to offer a nuanced understanding of the role of historical and contemporary political institutions in moderating the effects of environmental stress and water access on social conflict. In theorizing a moderated and highly contextual relationship, this project challenges dominant narratives in both research and environmental stress and its impact on conflict and research on the role of colonial institutions while highlighting the importance of distinguishing between inter- and intra-ethnic divisions. The project develops an empirical framework that integrates three different levels of analysis – the district, sub-district and individual – within carefully controlled geographical settings. The sub-district level analysis focuses on selected clusters of geographically contiguous provinces in the two countries. For these analyses, the project will generate: a) large-scale, high-resolution data organized around religion- and lineage-based identities on the entire accentuated-attenuated social conflict spectrum; and, b) highly-localized longitudinal maps on water security and political institutions across the two countries. To validate the findings and clearly identify causal mechanisms, the PIs benchmark the results obtained from analyses of district and sub-district data against a forced-choice conjoint experiment deployed in 240 carefully selected primary census units in India combined with ethnographic work conducted in a subset of these communities.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.