Estrangement from the Public Sphere: Economic Change, Democracy and Social Division in North Carolina

这个奖颁给了北卡罗来纳大学资助了几位人类学家在该地区的5个地方研究当地的政治参与。该项目的目标是研究人们参与地方政治活动的情况。将分析经济结构调整的影响，因为它会影响当地的“公众”观念，而公众的利益应该得到服务。将审查人力资本的社区组成部分在何种程度上因地方群体与参与（通过正式投票和通过在学校、执法和诊所等地方公共机构的非正式行为参与）疏远而有所不同。社区将根据其主要经济取向是来自公共部门，私营企业部门，还是社区以“消费”为导向，包括退休和教育社区而有所不同。将在五个地方进行广泛深入的当地民族志研究，以及对当地“争夺戏剧”的案例研究，或在公共领域进行的资源冲突。在实地调查结束时，将对其中一个社区的300人进行最终调查，以了解民族志材料如何为调查研究提供信息。这项研究很重要，因为它关注的是一个非常令人关注的问题：美国公共领域人力资本的社区组成部分的保存和扩展，公共领域是公众关注的问题和共同资源问题的辩论场所。它将促进我们对不断变化的美国政治经济如何影响因种族、民族或其他特征而被视为不同的人之间的当地融合和隔离做法的理解。所使用的方法侧重于当地文化叙事和对重大冲突案例的解释，将揭示对差异的文化解释如何导致公共资源分配的差异和塑造群体关系的基本过程。

This award to the University of North Carolina funds several anthropologists studying local political participation in 5 places in the region. The goal of the project is to study people's participation in local political activities. The effects of economic restructuring will be analyzed as they affect local conceptions of `the public` whose interest should be served. The extent to which the community component of Human Capital varies as local groups are estranged from participation, both formally through voting and informally through behavioral participation in local public institutions such as schools, law enforcement and health clinics will be examined. The communities will vary by whether their primary economic orientation is from the public sector, the private firm sector, or whether the communities are `consumption` oriented, including retirement and educational communities. Extensive in-depth local ethnographies will be carried out in each of the five places, as well as case studies of local `dramas of contestation`, or conflicts over resources carried out in the public sphere. At the end of the fieldwork a final survey of 300 individuals in one of the communities will be carried out to see how the ethnographic material can inform survey research. This research is important because it focuses on an issue of great concern: the preservation and extension of the community component of the Human Capital of America's public sphere, where matters of public concern and common resource problems are debated. It will advance our understanding of how the changing American political economy affects local integrating and segregating practices among people viewed as different because of their race, ethnicity, or other characteristics. The methodology used, of focusing on local cultural narratives and interpretations of significant cases of conflict, will shed light on basic processes of how cultural interpretations of differences lead to differences in public resource distributions and shape group relations.