Doctoral Dissertation Improvment Grant: Gendered Responses to Development and Climate Change: Women and the Ganges River

博士生乔治娜·德鲁将在多萝西·霍兰德博士的指导下，研究水资源生态变化的地方解释和性别社会文化反应。她的调查将在恒河主要支流沿线的印度喜马拉雅山脉进行。她将使用不同地点的比较民族志方法，从河流融化的冰川源头到地区首府Uttarkashi，调查当地对发展和气候变化的反应。她将特别注意妇女的活动、论述和动员努力，以及它们与社会运动和非政府组织协调的环境倡议工作的关系。分析将评估在具有重大象征、宗教和经济重要性的资源的未来受到质疑的情况下，妇女参与关于自然资源管理的辩论的程度和潜力。研究人员将采用广泛的社会科学方法。其中包括半结构化访谈、调查、焦点小组、观察日常实践、以事件为基础的参与者观察，以及对生活史的启发。多媒体文档将包括音频、照片和视频录制。使用照片和声音的方法，将向妇女分发一次性相机，以便她们能够协作地记录她们对河流的看法以及她们在社会运动和非政府组织进程中的经历。本研究具有重要的理论意义和现实意义。通过探索与妇女资源有关的知识和关切，它将扩大对地方一级如何经历全球进程的尺度间分析。还可以将重点放在妇女的身体和话语动员努力上，以加强将性别问题纳入环境倡议。研究的洞察力将与喜马拉雅山脉和世界其他地区的政策制定相关，这些地区正在出现关于水资源可获得性变化的争论。这项研究还将有助于社会科学家的教育。

Doctoral student Georgina Drew, with the guidance of Dr. Dorothy Holland, will undertake research on local interpretations of, and gendered socio-cultural responses to, ecological change in water resources. Her investigation will be conducted in the Indian Himalayans along the primary tributary of the Ganges River. Using a comparative ethnographic approach at different sites, from river's melting glacial source to the district capital of Uttarkashi, she will investigate local responses to development and climate change. She will pay particular attention to women's activities, discourses, and mobilization efforts, and their relation to the work of environmental initiatives, such as those coordinated by social movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Analyses will assess the extent of, and the potential for, women's inclusion in debates about natural resource management in a case where the future of a resource of great symbolic, religious, and economic importance is in question. The researcher will employ a wide range of social scientific methods. These include semi-structured interviews, surveys, focus groups, observation of daily practice, event-based participant observation, and elicitation of life histories. Multi-media documentation will incorporate audio, photo, and video recording. Using the method of photo voice, disposable cameras will be distributed to women so that they can collaboratively document their perspectives on the river as well as their experiences in social movement and NGO processes. The research has both theoretical and practical significance. Through the exploration of women's resource-related knowledge and concerns, it will broaden interscalar analysese of how global processes are experienced at the local level. The focus on women's physical and discursive mobilization efforts can also be employed to strengthen gender inclusion in environmental initiatives. Research insights will have relevance for policy formation in the Himalayas and elsewhere throughout the world where contestations over changing water resource availability are emerging. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.