Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Social Mobilization and Institutional Origins in Catastrophically Climate Endangered Communities

阿拉斯加的农村社区正在从地球上消失。 海平面上升，越来越强的季节性风暴和融化的永久冻土使全州许多村庄处于严重的危险之中。 然而，尽管阿拉斯加有着共同的文化、经济、地理和人口特征，但它的人口结构却与阿拉斯加不同。在美国，受灾最严重的社区在应对即将降临的灾难时表现出明显的差异。 更具体地说，他们以各种方式制定、动员和使用要求承认和援助的主张。为什么同样的现象对这些偏远的北极社区的影响如此不同？是什么决定了一个社区？面对灾难性事件，中国的复原力和适应能力如何？ 是否有理由认为，在紧急危机和长期危机的情况下，这一答案会有所不同？ 特别是，这场危机如何能够成为某些社区解决其集体行动问题所需的激励因素，即使同一场危机在其他社区造成集体行动问题？本研究探讨这一令人困惑的和至关重要的经验分歧，探索如何以及在什么条件下，持续的灾难性灾害的冲击，挑战和改变长期存在的动力和秩序被围困的社区，以及这些转变如何反过来重塑集体行动和制度的适应和变化的模式。 因此，该项目代表了一个重要的贡献，在社会科学调查的关键难题：制度起源的问题。 通过追踪应对预期冲击和深刻变化的意识形态和政治过程，而不是简单地分析在发生这种冲击后对这种冲击的适应，这项研究将揭示慢性危机如何以及为什么能够在地方层面产生集体行动、社会复原力和制度创新的独特机会。 这项研究的结论将立即实际应用于地理濒危和社会经济边缘化的阿拉斯加原住民社区的中心研究，远远超出他们。 通过调查阿拉斯加不同村庄一级的努力，这项研究最终将有助于更好地协调各种努力，并为世界各地面临巨大环境变化的真实的挑战的危险社区集体寻求更广泛的解决办法。

Alaska's rural communities are slipping off the face of the Earth. Rising sea levels, increasingly strong seasonal storms, and melting permafrost have put many villages throughout the state in intense danger. Yet despite generally shared cultural, economic, geographical, and demographic characteristics, Alaska?s most dramatically imperiled communities demonstrate remarkable divergence in their response to the disaster bearing down on them. More specifically, they have formulated, mobilized, and employed claims for recognition and assistance in a variety of ways. Why is the same phenomenon affecting these remote Arctic communities so differently? What determines a community?s capacity for resilience and adaptation in the face of a catastrophic event? Are there reasons to expect that this answer will be different under conditions of urgent crisis versus chronic crisis? In particular, how can this crisis serve as precisely the incentive some communities need to resolve their collective action problems even as that same crisis serves to create collective action problems in others?This research investigates this puzzling and critically important empirical divergence by exploring how and under what conditions the sustained, routinized, total shock of catastrophic disaster challenges and transforms long-standing dynamics of power and order in besieged communities, and how those transformations in turn reshape patterns of collective action and institutional adaptation and change. The project thus represents a significant contribution to a critical puzzle in social science inquiry: the question of institutional origins. By tracing the ideological and political process of responding to anticipated shock and profound change, not simply analyzing adaptation to such shocks after they have occurred, this research will shed new light on how and why chronic crisis can generate unique opportunities for collective action, social resilience, and institutional innovation at the local level. The conclusions of this study will have immediate practical applications for the geographically endangered and socio-economically marginalized Native Alaskan communities at the center of the study and well beyond them. By investigating different village-level efforts in Alaska, this study will ultimately assist in a greater coordination of efforts and the collective search for broader solutions for imperiled communities around the world who are coping with the very real challenges of dramatic environmental change.