Doctoral Dissertation Research: An anthropological exploration of the role of state-sponsored educational initiatives in a context of socioeconomic inequality

布朗大学人类学博士生Yana Stainova在Kay Warren博士的指导下，正在研究在社会经济极度不平等的背景下，国家资助的建立道德和伦理社区的努力是否能成功地减少暴力。研究人员将重点关注国家资助的教育和道德项目的发展和影响，该项目旨在通过向50万年轻人提供免费的音乐教育来对抗社会经济边缘化。该计划将音乐设想为一个无党派理想社会的典范和制定，旨在通过审美形式培养对他人的社会关注。该项目探讨了在暴力、社会经济不平等和政治两极分化的背景下，这种集体学习策略的意义。这名研究人员将在委内瑞拉首都加拉加斯和西北部城市科罗的一个中下层社区进行为期一年的人种学研究。她将收集两种形式的数据：(1)宏观层面的国家权力和治理形式；(2)微观层面的学习方式在这种环境中培养了特定种类的个人和人际经验。她将采用多种定性的社会科学研究方法，包括与音乐项目的领导和教师的半结构化访谈、访谈、参与者观察和档案研究。这项研究的结果将有助于社会科学研究伦理和道德问题在日常生活中的地位，以及新的道德社区的形成。该研究还将阐明国家资助艺术作为对抗极端社会经济隔离的一种方式的具体好处，并探索该计划在其他国家的适用性。支持这项研究也支持了研究生的高等教育，使她能够收集数据，这些数据将成为她博士论文和未来出版物的基础。

Brown University anthropology doctoral student Yana Stainova, advised by Dr. Kay Warren, is researching whether state-sponsored efforts to build moral and ethical communities are successful in reducing violence in contexts of radical socioeconomic inequality. The researcher will focus on the growth and impact of a state-sponsored educational and ethics program that aims to combat socioeconomic marginalization by providing cost-free music education to half a million young people. Envisioning music as a model and enactment of a non-partisan ideal society, this program purports to foster a social concern for others through aesthetic forms. This project asks what significance this collective learning strategy has had in a context marred by violence, socioeconomic inequality, and political polarization.The researcher will be carrying out a year of ethnographic research in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, and in a lower-middle class neighborhood in the northwestern city of Coro. She will collect two forms of data: (1) the macro-level of state power and forms of governance; and (2) the micro-level of the way learning in this environment cultivates specific kinds of individual and interpersonal experiences. She will employ a variety of qualitative social science research methods including semi-structured interviews with the music program's leadership and teachers, interviews, participant observation, and archival research.Findings from this research will contribute to social science research on the place of ethical and moral questions in everyday life, as well as the formation of new moral communities. The research also will also illuminate the concrete benefits of state funding for the arts as a way of combating extreme socioeconomic segregation and explore the applicability of the program to other countries. Supporting this research also supports the advanced education of a graduate student allowing her to gather data that will be the basis of her doctoral dissertation and future publications.