CAREER: Assessing Long-Term Sociocultural Impacts in Disaster Recovery Efforts

众所周知，自然灾害后的恢复工作充满了挑战。虽然恢复工作最初得到大量政府和私人捐款的援助，但适当的评估需要考虑到可能影响恢复速度的一系列变数。这个项目探讨一旦媒体的关注减弱，援助组织开始离开该地区会发生什么。这些灾难和恢复工作是否会导致长期的社会文化变化？这些变化对这些地区的发展和经济复兴有什么影响？作为教师早期职业发展（Career）奖，该项目将研究和培训相结合，以更有效地加强进行有效科学研究所需的基础设施。基金将为研究生提供科学和方法培训、实地经验以及完成论文的支持。广泛传播的成果将有助于为未来的人道主义政策和实践提供信息，并将在灾后恢复领域建立国际科学合作。北伊利诺伊大学的马克·席勒（Mark Schiller）探讨了援助或发展项目结束后，当地社会文化机构的长期变化。海地2010年的地震是近年来世界上最致命的灾难之一。它还激发了有史以来最慷慨的国际人道主义反应之一。尽管全球经济持续衰退，但各国政府承诺提供100多亿美元，民间捐款30多亿美元。拟议的研究将为国际非政府组织在灾后恢复工作中的民族志评价提供方法学上的见解。这项为期五年的研究项目以八个农村社区为样本，这些社区在地震前后都有不同的人道主义和发展非政府组织。在研究人员与捐助者、国家和组织代表进行访谈的同时，一组研究生分担了参与观察和访谈社会指标的责任，包括依赖程度、独立动员、空间组织和研究人员所谓的“公民基础设施”，并注意到随时间的演变。教育部分包括在海地举行的研究方法讨论会和在北伊利诺伊大学与非政府组织暑期学院同时举行的为期两周的实地学校培训。

Recovery efforts following natural disasters are notoriously fraught with challenges. While recovery efforts are initially aided by large amounts of government and private contributions, appropriate assessment requires consideration of a range of variables that might influence the pace of recovery. This project explores what happens once the media attention has ebbed and aid organizations begin to leave the area. Do these disasters and the recovery efforts result in long-term sociocultural changes, and what are the implications for those changes on development and economic revitalization of these areas? As a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, the project integrates research and training to more effectively reinforce the infrastructure necessary to conduct effective scientific research. Funds would support graduate students with scientific and methodological training, field experience, and support in completing their theses. Widely-disseminated results will help inform future humanitarian policy and practice, and would forge international scientific cooperation in area of disaster recovery. Mark Schiller of Northern Illinois University explores the question of what long term changes to local socio-cultural institutions remain following the end of an aid or development project. Haiti's 2010 earthquake was one of the world's deadliest disasters in recent memory. It also inspired one of the most generous international humanitarian responses ever attempted. Despite the continuing global recession, governments pledged over $10 billion and private citizens contributed over $3 billion. The proposed research will offer methodological insights into ethnographic evaluation of INGOs (international non-governmental organizations) in disaster recovery efforts. The proposed five-year research project uses a purposive sample of eight rural communities with differing presence of humanitarian and development INGOs before and after the earthquake. While the researcher conducts interviews with donor, state, and organizational representatives, a team of graduate students shares responsibilities for participant observation and interview methods on social indicators, including level of dependence, independent mobilization, spatial organization, and what the researcher has termed "civic infrastructure," noting evolution over time. The educational component includes a research methods seminar in Haiti and a two-week Field School training, held concurrently with an NGO Summer Institute at Northern Illinois University.