Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Decentralizing Democracy: Urban Participation in Chavez's Venezuela

博士生肯德拉Fehrer Ponniah（布朗大学），由博士凯B监督。沃伦，将进行民族志研究公民参与参与社区发展计划。 研究人员的目的是了解这些项目如何塑造人们，特别是穷人，对政治，公民身份和国家的思考方式。这位研究人员将进行为期12个月的实地研究，重点关注委内瑞拉中部低收入城市社区的一个旨在促进基层参与社区发展决策的项目。 研究者将运用社会历史访谈、参与观察、参与者与政府官员的深度访谈、文献分析、比较个案研究等方法，探讨（1）社区行动者对物质文化资源的需求是如何形成的;（2）社区行动者的需求是如何与地方和国家政府的优先事项相交叉的;（3）这些新的参与场所如何影响社区获得资源;以及（4）这些举措如何塑造谁可以“算作”委内瑞拉公民。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于深入了解权力下放，民主参与，通过增加对公民参与实践的人种学研究，促进发展。 这项研究将有助于公民参与公共项目的学术和政策讨论，以及如何在不同的社会，政治和历史背景下产生公民的概念的理解。资助这项研究也支持社会科学家的教育。

Doctoral student Kendra Fehrer Ponniah (Brown University), supervised by Dr. Kay B. Warren, will undertake ethnographic research on citizen engagement in participatory community development programs. The researcher aims to understand how these programs shape the way people, particularly poor people, think about politics, citizenship, and the state.This researcher will conduct 12 months of field research focused on a program meant to foster grassroots participation in neighborhood development decisions in a low-income urban neighborhood in central Venezuela. The researcher will use the results of social history interviews, participant observation, in-depth interviews with participants and public officials, document analysis, and comparative case study to explore (1) how community actors frame their demands for material and cultural resources; (2) how community actors' demands intersect with local and national government priorities; (3) how these new venues for participation influence community access to resources; and (4) how these initiatives shape who gets to "count" as a citizen in Venezuela.This research is important because it will contribute insight into the relationship between decentralization, democratic participation, and development by adding an ethnographic study of practices of civic participation. This research will contribute to academic and policy discussions of civic participation in public programs, as well as understandings of how conceptions of citizenship are produced in different social, political, and historic contexts. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.