Negotiating New Development Hybrids: State Expertise and Civil Society Participation in Irrigation Design

在过去三十年中，由于缺乏参与性规划和政府机构的公共责任，国际发展努力的影响受到限制。这个博士后项目评估了政府发展模式是如何被新的混合体所取代的，这种混合体将国家技术专家的专业知识与有意义的公民参与相结合。该项目着眼于印度中部的灌溉发展改革，以一篇由美国国家科学基金会支持的论文为基础，题为“人人有水：来自印度克里希纳河谷的人民科学经验”。这篇论文考察了印度的基层运动是如何通过设计灌溉项目来对抗干旱的，这些项目将专家和基于地方的知识结合起来，促进社会公平和环境再生。申请人现在将增加一层新的论文工作，集中在官僚的专业知识。博士后研究将把注意力转移到政府官员身上。通过对马哈拉施特拉邦克里希纳河谷开发公司（MKVDC）雇用的灌溉工程师的工作进行人种学研究，本研究将评估由于民间社会的压力，国家专家为什么以及如何改革他们的言论和行政程序。研究人员将建立该机构的机构概况，并审查主要官员在官僚改革过程中所起的作用。就知识价值而言，申请人的提案创新地整合了政治生态学和科学技术研究（STS）领域的理论方法。STS的分析工具，包括技术的社会建构和行动者网络理论，将被用来弥合官僚实践和公众批评之间的差距。特别是，研究将问：某些专业规范如何指导决策权威并创造接受文化？谁参与了知识和技术的生产，为什么？社区对知识的认知如何与国家专业人员产生的认知相协调？哪些制度特征使技术民主化？申请人的博士后项目将由哈佛大学肯尼迪政府学院Sheila Jasanoff教授资助。在Jasanoff教授的指导下，申请人将接触STS建构主义理论和定性政策研究方法。除了与Jasanoff教授合作外，申请人还将与哈佛大学的公共基础设施项目、环境和自然资源项目以及国际发展中心合作。具有更广泛的社会意义，申请人的研究将涉及社区如何在中间一级对官僚控制和决策权的需要与地方一级对技术研究和发展的参与性方法之间取得平衡。基于她将承担的STS课程，以及与政策导向学者的新网络的互动，申请人将利用奖学金期间将论文和博士后研究整合到一本书中。作为对官僚实践和社会运动组织的对称分析，本书将为重新发明国家发展专业知识做出重要的理论和实证贡献。

During the past thirty years, the impact of international development efforts has been limited by a lack of participatory planning and public accountability from government agencies. This post-doctoral project evaluates how government development paradigms are being replaced by new hybrids that combine state technocratic expertise with meaningful citizen participation. Focusing on irrigation development reforms in central India, the project builds on an NSF supported dissertation thesis, titled "Some Water for All: People's Science Lessons from the Krishna Valley in India". The thesis examines how grassroots movements in India are fighting drought by designing irrigation projects that integrate expert and locally-based knowledge toward the promotion of social equity and environmental regeneration. The applicant will now add a new layer to the dissertation work by concentrating on bureaucratic expertise. The post-doctoral research will shift attention toward government officials. By ethnographically examining the work of irrigation engineers employed by the Maharashtra Krishna Valley Development Corporation (MKVDC), this research will evaluate why and how state experts are reforming their rhetoric, and administrative procedures, as a result of civil society pressure. The researcher will create an institutional profile of the agency, as well as examine the role key officers have played in the process of bureaucratic reform. In terms of intellectual merit, the applicant's proposal innovatively integrates theoretical approaches from the fields of political ecology and science and technology studies (STS). Analytical tools from STS, including the social construction of technology and actor-network theory, will be employed to bridge the gaps between bureaucratic praxis and public critique. In particular, the research will ask: How do certain norms of expertise guide decision-making authority and create cultures of acceptance? Who is involved in knowledge and technology production and why? How do community perceptions of knowledge get reconciled with those produced by state professionals? Which institutional characteristics render technology democratifiable? The applicant's post-doctoral project will be sponsored by Professor Sheila Jasanoff of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Under Professor Jasanoff's mentorship, the applicant will engage with STS constructivist theories and qualitative policy research methods. In addition to working with Professor Jasanoff, the applicant will also collaborate with Harvard's Public Infrastructure Program, the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Center for International Development. Of broader societal relevance, the applicant's research will address how communities balance the need for bureaucratic control and decision-making authority at the meso-level with participatory approaches to technical research and development at the local level. Building on the STS coursework she will undertake, and interactions with a new network of policy-oriented scholars, the applicant will use the fellowship period to consolidate the dissertation and post-doctoral research into one book. As a symmetrical analysis of both bureaucratic practice and social movement organizing, this book will make an important theoretical and empirical contribution toward the re-invention of state development expertise.