Doctoral Dissertation Research: Indigeneity, Social Movements, and Social Relations in South American Context

本研究将由德克萨斯大学博士生Tathagatan Ravindran在Charles Hale博士的指导下进行。这个项目探讨了关于土著的国际讨论如何影响当地的社会运动。这项研究的背景设在玻利维亚的埃尔阿尔托市，这里是研究全球化和本土社会运动的理想场所，原因有两点。除了是美洲最大的土著城市外，它还处于多次群众动员浪潮的中心，特别是在过去十年中。这项研究的问题是，这些政治动员可以告诉社会科学家，在种族多样化的社会中，社会关系的本质是什么。20世纪80年代和90年代对El Alto的研究表明，城市土著社区内部存在对具有更多土著文化特征的新农村移民的歧视。那么，这个城市的本土政治潮流对歧视性做法、政治稳定和社会关系有什么影响？研究将基于参与观察、访谈和收集两个城市社区的口述历史，这两个社区都是由农村移民组成的，并且一直是土著社会运动的活跃场所。这项研究将促进对城市土著、社会运动和社会经济不平等的人类学理解。特别是，该项目将改变人类学对什么加速了社会运动的理解，以及它们对当地社会关系的影响。除了培养研究生外，该研究还将有助于解决社会冲突及其解决方案的公共政策尝试。

This study will be conducted by University of Texas doctoral student Tathagatan Ravindran under the guidance of Dr. Charles Hale. This project explores how international discussions about indigeneity influence local social movements. The research is set in the Bolivian city of El Alto, which is an ideal locale for investigating globalization and indigenous social movements for a couple reasons. In addition to being the largest indigenous city in the Americas, it has also been at the center of multiple waves of mass popular mobilizations, particularly in the last decade. This research asks what these political mobilizations can tell social scientists about the nature of social relationships in ethnically diverse societies. Studies on El Alto in the 1980s and the 1990s revealed the existence of discrimination within the urban indigenous communities against recent rural immigrants who were seen to have more indigenous cultural traits. What influence then do indigenous political currents in the city have on discriminatory practices, political stability, and social relations? The research will be based on participant observation, interviews, and the collection of oral histories in two urban neighborhoods, which are both composed of rural migrants and have been active sites for indigenous social movements. The study will advance anthropological understandings of urban indigeneities, social movements and socioeconomic inequalities. In particular, the project will transform anthropological understandings about what accelerates social movements, and what their impact is on local social relations. In addition to training a graduate student, the study will also contribute to public policy attempts to address social conflict and their resolution.