Doctoral Dissertation Research: Gendered Development and the Social Reproduction of Security in Southeast Turkey

政府资助的性别发展项目在土耳其平息以库尔德人为主的东南部地区的地区冲突的努力中发挥着重要作用。越来越多的国家妇女教育中心设在整个东南部拥挤的城市中心的洗衣店和清真寺内，构成了该地区社会经济一体化的重要机制。然而，在最近的政府公开对话中，这些项目与处理库尔德分离主义的更大的军事安全问题联系在一起。因此，国家安全正在扩大其概念和方法范围，将非常规人口（妇女和儿童）和空间（家庭和学校）纳入政治和领土稳定项目的重要组成部分。在这些网站上，行为、价值观的转换，以及与法律和权利的接触，支撑着国家巩固项目的展开。本博士论文研究项目将寻求以下问题的答案：(1)在土耳其东南部的背景下，土耳其国家如何正式定义“国家安全”以及“国家安全”与社会经济发展目标的关系？(2)家庭如何被发展附属机构（医生、律师和教师）和教育实践政治化，成为国家关注的领域？(3)发展参与者及其家庭成员是否在国家更大的安全考虑范围内构建他们对家庭的日常选择？他们的经历在代际和性别之间有何不同？博士候选人将对发展活动和家庭生活进行扩展的民族志研究。还将对发展参与者、他们的家庭成员和工人进行一系列访谈，以衡量个人是否以及如何在更大的国家建设地缘政治项目中构建他们对家庭、工作和娱乐的选择。考虑到在21世纪的许多全球背景下，国家对安全的高度关注，这个项目的结果将更广泛地揭示像“国家安全”这样的抽象概念是如何在政策和普通公民的谈判中体现出来的。从地区的角度来看，大众媒体和政治评论往往将中东的库尔德局势过度简化为跨境民族主义竞争的广泛问题。尤其是库尔德妇女，她们是一个在学术研究中很少受到关注的少数群体。库尔德移民妇女和她们的孩子，以及社区医生、律师和教师的不同故事，将揭示国家安全政策如何在更大的国家政治和民族归属感中发挥作用。在这种规模下，关于种族民族主义、政治派别和物理边界的单一情节地缘政治叙事，被关于家庭和社区福利、生活选择和价值观的真实而重要的决定复杂化了。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。本项目由美国国家科学基金会地理与空间科学计划和美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

Government-sponsored gendered development projects are taking on an important role in Turkey's efforts to pacify regional conflict in the predominantly Kurdish Southeast region. A growing number of women's state education centers housed in laundries and mosques in crowded urban centers throughout the Southeast constitute important mechanisms for the socioeconomic integration of the region. These projects recently have been linked in public governmental dialogue to larger militarized security concerns dealing with Kurdish separatism, however. National security therefore is broadening its conceptual and methodological scope to incorporate unconventional populations (women and children) and spaces (home and school) as important elements of a political and territorial stabilization project. These are the sites where the translation of behavior, values, and the engagements with law and rights underpinning a state consolidation project unfold. This doctoral dissertation research project will seek answers to the following questions: (1) How does the Turkish state formally define "national security" and the relationship of "national security" to socioeconomic development goals in the context of Southeast Turkey? (2) How is the household politicized as an arena of state concern by development affiliates (doctors, lawyers, and teachers) and education practices? (3) Do development participants and their family members frame their everyday choices about family within the larger security concerns of the state, and how might their experiences vary across generations and genders? The doctoral candidate will conduct an extended ethnography of development activities and home life. A series of interviews with development participants, their family members, and workers also will be conducted to measure if and how individuals frame their choices about home, work, and recreation within a larger geopolitical project of state-building.Considering the heightened preoccupation of the state with security in the 21st century in a number of global contexts, the results of this project will reveal more broadly how an abstract concept like "national security" become manifest in policy and negotiated by regular citizens. From a regional perspective, the Kurdish situation in the Middle East often is oversimplified in popular media and political commentary as a broad issue of cross-border competing nationalisms. Kurdish women, in particular, represent a minority group that has received very little attention in scholarly research. Taken together, the disparate stories of Kurdish migrant women and their children as well as community doctors, lawyers, and teachers will reveal how a policy of national security works within a larger politics of state and national belonging. At this scale, single-plot geopolitical narratives about ethno-nationalism, political affiliation, and physical boundaries are complicated by real and important decisions about family and neighborhood welfare and life choices and values. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. This project is jointly supported by the NSF Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.