Doctoral Dissertation Research: Labor Dynamics and Social Memory in Contexts of Economic Transformation

本论文旨在加深对社会记忆对劳动活动、社会认同和政治经济合作形式的影响的理解。对于采矿在社会和经济生活中占据中心地位的社区来说，社会记忆和文化遗产在文化上尤其重要。对这些社区内部组织的关注提高了人们对哪些变量一直在推动美国国家劳资关系委员会所说的劳工活动激增的理解。除了对美国研究生进行实证、科学数据收集和分析方法的培训外，该项目还通过促进遗产工作从业者、研究人员和其他关注社会和劳动关系的利益相关者之间的交流，提高了公众对科学和科学方法的理解。博士生广泛传播研究结果，包括在就业研究机构的演讲中。此外，本论文项目通过开发一种新的人种学、视觉和档案方法的组合来推动科学的发展，该方法使用照片启发来促进对个人和家庭档案的参与性分析。通过对矿工劳工组织和文化遗产团体进行为期18个月的人种学研究，该项目调查了在后工业化劳动力市场重组的背景下，记忆如何影响劳动力动态。这个项目问的是，经济、社会和历史因素在多大程度上和以多大比例改变着劳动力动态。博士生结合参与者观察、访谈和档案研究，对1)劳工行动和工会大会等事件的历史叙述；2)遗产机构和纪念活动的行动和话语；3)人们在个人档案中收集的材料和照片，以及他们与这些材料的互动进行实证研究。收集的数据将针对不同的人口和经济活动变量进行编码，以确定人们讲述了什么故事，以及为什么讲述关于阶级团结和工会主义的故事，并调查工人阶级对过去的记忆与他们对现在的投资之间的潜在联系。通过这样做，博士论文项目通过对社会记忆的关注，推动了对后工业劳动力市场的跨学科研究。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。

This dissertation project seeks to enhance understanding of the implications of social memory on labor activity, social identities, and forms of political-economic collaboration. Social memory and cultural heritage have been especially significant culturally for communities where mining has occupied a central role in social and economic life. A focus on organizing within those communities improves understanding of what variables have been driving what the U.S. National Labor Relations Board has described as a surge in labor activity. In addition to training a U.S.-based graduate student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the project improves public understanding of science and the scientific method by facilitating exchanges between practitioners of heritage work, researchers, and other stakeholders focusing on social and labor relations. The doctoral student disseminates findings widely, including in presentations to employment research institutes. Further, this dissertation project advances science through development of a new combination of ethnographic, visual, and archival methods that uses photo elicitation to facilitate participatory analysis of personal and family archives. Through an eighteen-month ethnographic study with mineworker labor organizations and cultural heritage groups, the project investigates how memory impacts labor dynamics in the context of post-industrial labor market restructuring. This project asks to what degree and in what proportion are changing labor dynamics are driven by economic, social, and historical factors. The doctoral student combines participant observation, interviews, and archival research to empirically examine 1) historical narratives of events like labor actions and union hall meetings; 2) actions and discourses at heritage institutions and commemorative events; 3) materials and photographs that people collect in their personal archives, and their interactions with these materials. The data collected will be coded for different demographic and economic activity variables in order to identify what stories people tell, and why, about class solidarity and unionism, and to investigate potential connections between how working-class people remember the past and the investments they have in the present. In doing so, the doctoral dissertation project advances interdisciplinary studies of post-industrial labor markets through a focus on social memory.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.