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

流动人口和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偏远地区的国家存在，这些流动人口在抵抗和适应国家形成方面面临各种挑战。这一博士论文项目研究了国家官僚机构、基础设施和监管对流动性模式的影响。通过调查人们如何驾驭复杂的国家官僚体系，需要对他们的生活进行重大转变，这项研究促进了人们对社区如何以当地特有和大致相似的方式体验新基础设施的复杂性和机会的科学理解。这项研究的结果将被传播，以更好地理解国家发展项目，这些项目看似平淡无奇，但对人们来说可能是重大而有意义的变化。虽然修路和要求不同形式的许可证似乎会鼓励更安全、更容易获得的交通，但它们在地面上实际是如何体验的？该项目还将历史上代表性不足和具有重要地理意义的群体带入科学知识的发现过程。这一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，调查了地方和个人的国家形成经验。这项研究考察了(1)在新形式的州级公路法规、驾照要求和围绕机动性的纪律下，机动性是如何重塑的，以及(2)个人在日常生活中如何体验、导航、适应和应对这些新的国家干预形式。本项目的研究方法包括人种学参与者观察、半结构访谈、人种学田野笔记、流动社区口述历史和官方文件回顾。数据分析将侧重于将游牧民的国家干预经历与背景联系起来，并将这项研究与世界其他地方的类似案例联系起来。通过这样做，这项研究为国家形成、本土知识、官僚基础设施模式和作为现代化的国家发展项目的科学理论做出了贡献。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.