Stable Jobs, Precarious Lives: Rural Public Servants in Ethiopia

稳定的工作，不稳定的生活：埃塞俄比亚的农村公务员

• 批准号: ES/V012282/1
• 负责人: Sarah Howard
• 金额: $ 12.61万
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FV012282%2F1
• 关键词: Stable; Jobs; Precarious; Lives; Rural

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.

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讨埃塞俄比亚国家的日常运作。关于埃塞俄比亚发展型国家的强大、专制和天生的等级性质的想法强调了政策和结构的强制性质，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监督却被忽视了。基于对北谢瓦的长期民族志田野调查，本文通过对教师、推广人员和管理人员的日常社会世界和职业责任的密切关注，对国家的最低层进行了描述。在集中于儿童营养、厕所推广和教育理念的章节中，通过个人生活史，我展示了国家工作对国家雇员本身的身体、情感和社会后果。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现不断构建而不是作为一个抽象的整体存在中的作用。我的论文的发现挑战了非洲国家就业普遍可取的概念。尽管他们在教育方面取得了成功，并在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，在社会上被孤立，并依赖当地人民。政府工作人员在村庄之间来回奔波，以求更接近城市，或者离开国家工作岗位，从事小生意的“奋斗经济”，或者非法移民的诱人诱惑。他们不稳定的流动性与关于青年、不确定性和抱负的说法形成对照，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性的纠缠，教育是普遍的公共利益，应该导致社会流动，但相反，从农村团结形式中提取国家雇员（他们在那里长大），只是为了将他们插入一种农村异化和孤立（在他们不情愿和临时安置的那些村庄）。他们渴望逃离缓慢的农村未来，他们在政府就业内外的不稳定流动性既是他们无法巩固社会关系的原因，也是其结果。这项奖学金将使我能够将我的博士研究发展并建立在专着，期刊文章和学术界内外不同受众的多个演讲上。这也将使我能够发展我的职业生涯作为一个研究人员，并建立专业技能，通过合作发展未来的研究建议，并通过建立关系和网络。

项目成果

Marco Di Nunzio, The Act of Living: street life, marginality, and development in urban Ethiopia. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press (hb US$115 - 978 1 501 73512 7; pb US$29.95 - 978 1 501 73626 1). 2019, 264 pp.

Marco Di Nunzio，《生活的行为：埃塞俄比亚城市的街头生活、边缘性和发展》。

• DOI: 10.1017/s0001972020000893
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Africa
• 影响因子: 1.2
• 作者: Howard S