Stable Jobs, Precarious Lives: Rural Public Servants in Ethiopia

我的论文通过阿姆哈拉地区边境地区农村公务员的生活和工作来探索埃塞俄比亚国家的日常运作。关于埃塞俄比亚发展型国家强大、专制和天生等级制性质的观点，强调了政策和结构的强制性，这些政策和结构影响到越来越小的人口单位。然而，对负责开展这项工作的人的审查一直被忽视。本文基于对北蛇洼长期的民族志田野调查，通过对教师、推广工作者和行政人员的日常社会世界和职业责任的密切关注，提供了对国家最低层的描述。在专注于儿童营养、厕所推广和教育理念的章节中，我通过个人的生活史，展示了国家工作对国家雇员本身的身体、情感和社会影响。我还研究了物质--包括母乳、粪便和咖啡--在国家如何通过日常实践和表演不断构建，而不是作为抽象的铁板一块存在的过程中所扮演的角色。我论文的发现挑战了非洲国家就业普遍可取性的概念。尽管他们在教育方面取得了成功，并在此类工作稀缺的情况下获得了稳定的正式工作，但这些公务员感到自己被边缘化、社会孤立和依赖当地人。政府工作人员在村庄之间跳跃，寻求更接近城市，或者为了小额贸易的挣扎经济或非法移民的诱惑而退出国家工作岗位。他们不稳定的流动性与关于青年、不确定性和抱负的叙述形成了鲜明对比，后者认为正规就业是社会和经济进步的一种手段。我在教育的背景下讨论了流动的纠葛，这是一种普遍的公共产品，本应导致社会流动，但相反，将国家雇员从农村形式的团结中剥离出来(他们在那里长大)，只会让他们陷入一种农村的疏离和孤立(在他们不情愿和暂时驻扎的村庄)。他们渴望逃离缓慢的农村未来，他们在政府内部和外部工作的不稳定流动性既是他们无法巩固社会关系的原因，也是他们无法巩固社会关系的结果。这种奖学金将使我能够将我的博士研究发展为一本专著、一篇期刊文章和面向学术界内外不同受众的多个演讲。它还将使我能够发展我的研究人员职业生涯，并通过在未来研究提案的开发方面进行合作，以及通过建立关系和网络来培养专业技能。

My thesis explores the everyday workings of the Ethiopian state through the lives and work of rural public servants in a border area of Amhara Region. Ideas about the strong, authoritarian and innately hierarchical nature of Ethiopia's developmental state emphasise the coercive nature of policies and structures that reach down to ever smaller units of the population. However, scrutiny of those charged with carrying out this work has been neglected. Based on long term ethnographic fieldwork in North Shewa, this thesis provides an account of the lowest level of the state through close attention to the everyday social worlds and professional responsibilities of teachers, extension workers and administrators. In chapters that concentrate on child nutrition, latrine promotion and the idea of education, and through an individual life history, I show the physical, emotional and social consequences of state work on state employees themselves. I also look at the role of substances - including breastmilk, excrement and coffee - in how the state is continually constructed through everyday practices and performances, rather than existing as an abstracted monolith.The findings of my thesis challenge the notion of the universal desirability of state employment in Africa. Despite their success in education and achievement of stable, formal work in a context where such jobs are scarce, these public servants feel themselves to be marginalised, socially isolated and dependent on local people. Government workers bounce between villages in a quest to get closer to the urban, or exit from state employment for the 'struggle economy' of petty trade or the siren lure of illegal migration. Their precarious mobility stands in contrast to narratives about youth, uncertainty and aspiration, which assume formal employment to be a means of social and economic progress. I discuss the entanglement of mobilities in the context of education, the universal public good that is supposed to lead to social mobility, but instead extracts state employees from rural forms of solidarity (where they grew up) only to insert them into a kind of rural alienation and isolation (in the villages where they are unwillingly and temporarily posted). In their desire to escape a slow rural future, their precarious mobility within and outside government employment is both cause and consequence of their inability to cement social ties.This fellowship would allow me to develop and build upon my PhD research into a monograph, a journal article and multiple presentations for different audiences, within and outside academia. It would also allow me to develop my career as a researcher and build professional skills by collaborating on the development of a future research proposal, and through building relationships and networks.