Doctoral Dissertation Research: New Modes of State Governance and Mobile Communities

流动人口与国家干预之间的关系是漫长、复杂和矛盾的。地缘政治紧张局势加剧了国家在偏远地区的存在，这些流动人口在抵制和适应国家形成方面面临各种挑战。这个博士论文项目研究了流动模式如何受到国家官僚机构、基础设施和监管的影响。通过调查人们如何驾驭需要对他们的生活进行重大转变的复杂的国家官僚体系，本论文的研究推进了对社区如何以当地特定和广泛相似的方式体验新基础设施的复杂性和机遇的科学理解。这项研究的结果将被传播，以更好地理解国家发展项目，这些项目看似平庸，但对人们来说可能是重大而有意义的变化。虽然修建道路和要求不同形式的执照似乎鼓励了更安全、更方便的交通，但实际情况如何？该项目还将历史上代表性不足和地理上重要的群体带入科学知识的发现过程。这个博士研究项目通过对合法化和认证的流动在新的国家官僚治理模式中的作用的民族志研究，调查了国家形成的地方和个人经验。本研究考察了(1)在新形式的国家道路法规、驾驶执照要求和围绕流动性的纪律下，流动性是如何重塑的；(2)个人如何在日常生活中体验、导航、适应和应对这些新形式的国家干预。该项目的研究方法包括民族志参与者观察、半结构化访谈、民族志田野笔记、流动社区口述历史和官方文件审查。数据分析将侧重于将游牧民族的国家干预经历置于背景下，并将本研究与世界其他地方的类似案例联系起来。在此过程中，本研究为国家形成、本土知识、官僚基础设施模式和现代化国家发展项目的科学理论做出了贡献。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。

The relationship between mobile populations and state interventions is long, complex, and contradictory. Geopolitical tensions have intensified state presence in remote areas such mobile populations face various challenges in resisting and adapting to state formations. This doctoral dissertation project studies how modes of mobility are impacted by state bureaucracy, infrastructure, and regulation. By investigating how people navigate complex state bureaucratic systems that require major shifts to their lives, this dissertation research advances scientific understandings of how communities experience the complexities and opportunities of new infrastructure in both locally specific and broadly similar ways. Findings from this research will be disseminated to better understand state development projects that seem banal but might instead be major and meaningful changes for people. While building roads and requiring different forms of licensure seem to encourage safer and more accessible mobility, how are they actually experienced on the ground? This project also brings historically underrepresented and geographically significant groups into the discovery process of scientific knowledge. This doctoral research project investigates local and individual experiences of state formation through an ethnographic study of the role of legalized and certified mobility in modes of new state bureaucratic governance. This research examines (1) how mobility is remade under new forms of state road regulations, driving license requirements, and discipline around mobility and (2) how individuals experience, navigate, adapt, and respond to these new forms of state intervention in their day-to-day lives. Research methods for this project consist of ethnographic participant observation, semi-structured interviews, ethnographic fieldnotes, oral histories of mobile communities, and reviews of official documents. Data analysis will focus on both contextualizing nomads’ experiences of state interventions and situating this study in relation to similar cases elsewhere in the world. In doing so, this research contributes to scientific theories of state formation, Indigenous knowledge, modes of bureaucratic infrastructures, and state development projects as modernization.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.