AHRC-NSF MOU: Scale, Ambiguity and Experimentation: A Collaborative Ethnography of Regional Government in Peru

这个项目是由人类学家德博拉·A. Poole（约翰霍普金斯大学）和Penelope Harvey博士（伦敦经济和政治科学学院），该项目由国家科学基金会和联合王国艺术和人文研究理事会通过两个机构之间的谅解备忘录共同资助。 普尔和哈维将对当代民族国家作为一个多尺度实体进行研究，以探讨它如何在地方，区域和跨国组织和实践层面之间的界面上获得政治和情感力量。他们的研究将在秘鲁的库斯科进行，在那里他们将收集有关政府行政重组后开发的新形式的监管和技术系统的数据，该重组赋予了地方政府新的权力。该研究将特别考虑国家权力的两个领域：（1）法律，以国际条约和公约的形式，规范民族国家如何管理土著居民和环境;（2）基础设施工程，更具体地说，衡量标准，技术和工程标准，这些标准构成了现代国家改造公共空间和基础设施系统的方式。他们为期10个月的人种学将集中在世界银行资助的公共工程项目中围绕技术实践，法律的解释和专家知识的争议，该项目由库斯科地区政府管理，并受国际土著，环境和监管法律的约束。研究小组将追踪这些争议，因为它们与项目中的两个具体活动有关：在一个重要的考古遗址周围建造一条支路，以及一个旨在重新组织和合理化城市和农村土地的领土测绘计划。通过从法律社会科学和科学技术的角度得出的新颖组合，这一研究将对社会科学的方法论和理论做出重大贡献。本研究的发现将有助于更好地理解当代国家制度的结构和功能。该项目还将促进美国、英国和秘鲁之间的国际研究和政策制定合作。

This project is a collaboration between anthropologists Dr. Deborah A. Poole (Johns Hopkins University) and Dr. Penelope Harvey (The London School of Economics and Political Science), which is being co-funded by the National Science Foundation and the United Kingdom's Arts and Humanities Research Council through a Memorandum of Understanding between the two agencies. Poole and Harvey will undertake research on the contemporary nation state as a multiscalar entity, to investigate how it acquires political and affective force at the interface between local, regional and transnational levels of organization and practice. Their research will be conducted in Cusco, Peru, where they will collect data on new forms of regulatory and technical systems developed in the wake of a governmental administration re-organization that has given new power to regional governments. The research will consider two domains of state authority in particular: (1) law, in the form of the international treaties and conventions that regulate how nation states govern indigenous populations and the environment; and (2) infrastructural engineering, more specifically the metrics, techniques, and standards of engineering works that frame the ways in which modern states transform public space and infrastructural systems. Their ten-month ethnographic will focus on controversies surrounding technical practices, legal interpretation, and expert knowledge in a World Bank-funded public works project that is both administered by the Regional Government of Cusco and subject to international indigenous, environmental, and regulatory laws. The research team will trace these controversies as they unfold in relationship to two specific activities within the project: the construction of a by-pass around an important archaeological site, and a territorial mapping program designed to reorganize and rationalize urban and rural land.Through its novel combination of perspectives drawn from the social science of law, and of science and technology, this research will make significant contributions to social science methodology and theory. Findings from this project will contribute to better understanding of the structure and fucntioning of contempoary state systems. The project also will advance international research and policy-development collaborations between the United States, Britain, and Peru.