Doctoral Dissertation Research: "Contrary to Public Interest": Technology, Citizenship, and Nationalism in Contemporary Singapore

研究生罗伯特菲利普斯，由博士监督托马斯Boellstorff，将进行新兴技术，个人公民和民族主义之间的新的和复杂的联系的研究。他将专注于新加坡一个有争议的身份认同社区的案例研究，该社区广泛使用互联网。研究人员将使用社会科学研究方法的组合，包括结构化调查，民族志参与者观察和半结构化访谈。研究者假设，新加坡独特的空间位置和网络空间的独特性质共同作用，混淆了全球和地方之间的界限。它们可能共同为新加坡人创造一种新的地方，让他们同时形成非主流的个人身份和主流的国家身份。这种民族志案例研究技术对民族和亚文化身份的影响将有助于围绕民族主义，全球化和新兴的大众媒体的学术辩论。 通过关注新加坡人如何使用媒体和技术，研究人员试图梳理出地方，区域和全球因素在产生社会变革方面的差异效应。 新加坡的亚文化变化将被视为了解新技术带来的更普遍的文化内部和跨文化变化的本质的窗口。这项研究将进一步社会科学调查如何将全球互联网转化为当地的文化术语和当地的社会影响。该项目还将大大有助于研究生的教育。

Graduate student Robert Phillips, supervised by Dr. Thomas Boellstorff, will undertake research on the new and complicated linkages between emerging technologies, personal citizenship, and nationalism. He will focus on a case study of one controversial identity community in Singapore that has made extensive use of the internet. The researcher, who has a working knowledge of Chinese, will use a combination of social science research methods, including structured surveys, ethnographic participant observation, and semi-structured interviewing. The researcher hypothesizes that the unique spatial location of Singapore and the unique qualities of cyberspace work together to conflate the boundaries between the global and the local. Together, they may create a new kind of place for Singaporeans to form non-mainstream personal identities and mainstream national identities at the same time. This ethnographic case study of the effects of technology on national and sub-cultural identity will contribute to the academic debates surrounding nationalism, globalization, and new and emerging mass media. By focusing on how Singaporeans in particular use media and technology, the researcher seeks to tease out the differential effects of local, regional, and global factors in producing societal change. Sub-cultural change in Singapore will be seen as window into understanding the nature of more general changes taking place within and across cultures in the wake of new technologies.This research will further social science investigations into how the worldwide internet is translated into local cultural terms and local social effects. The project will also contribute significantly to the education of a graduate student.