Doctoral Dissertation Research: State-Making Amidst Precarity

新的民族国家，无论是非法的还是合法的，都在现代世界中不断出现。有些国家受到国际社会的欢迎，而另一些国家仍然处于边缘，它们可能成为重大政治和经济关切的根源。社会科学家知道，新的国家不是一蹴而就的。相反，它们是一个长期过程的结果，在这个过程中，个人走到一起，创造了新的制度、集体身份和使命感。这个过程早在一个国家得到承认之前就开始了，并在之后很长一段时间内持续下去。然而，尽管新成立的国家对全球安全至关重要，但它们究竟如何发展，尤其是在独立后如何发展，还没有得到很好的理解。在这项由该奖项资助的研究中，加州大学戴维斯分校的研究生克里斯蒂安·多尔（Christian Doll）将在詹姆斯·h·史密斯（James H. Smith）博士的指导下，利用最近一个特别不稳定的新国家成立所提供的难得机会，实地调查独立后建国的最初阶段。多尔将分析2011年才成立的新国家南苏丹的建国过程。他将在南苏丹首都朱巴进行为期一年的民族志研究。在朱巴，关于国家和民族认同的观念正在积极讨论和制定。他将采用多种社会科学研究方法，从多个利益相关者和组织层面收集数据。他将与国家规划者、监管者和社区代表进行半结构化访谈。他将在国家法定假日的国家仪式上采用参与式观察方法，以了解南苏丹国家和南苏丹民族认同的官方观念是如何形成和执行的。他还将在朱巴的一个社区进行参与性观察，以收集有关国家如何在日常互动和体验中形成和体验的数据。特别关注的是土地纠纷、新建住宅和办公楼、企业经营、政府和国际组织项目的实施、时事舆论等。通过捕捉官方和地方的想法和行动，这项研究将为当今世界的国家建立如何发生提供必要的理解，这是社会理论家和政策制定者所需要的信息。

New nation states, both outlaw and legitimate, continue to arise in the modern world. Some are welcomed into the world community while others remain on the fringes, where they may be the source of significant political and economic concerns. Social scientists know that new states do not come about at a single moment. Rather, they are the outcome of a long process in which individual people come together to create new institutions and a collective identity and sense of purpose. The process begins long before a state receives recognition and it continues long afterward. However, despite the importance of new states for global security, exactly how they develop, particularly post-independence, is not well understood. In the research funded by this award, University of California at Davis graduate student, Christian Doll, who is supervised by Dr. James H. Smith, will take advantage of the rare opportunity provided by the recent coming into existence of a particularly precarious new state to investigate the initial stages of post-independence state-making on the ground.Doll will analyze state-making in the new nation of South Sudan, which was founded only in 2011. He will undertake a year of ethnographic research in South Sudan's capital city, Juba, where ideas of the state and of national identity are being actively debated and newly enacted. He will employ a mix of social science research methods to gather data from multiple stakeholders and organizational levels. He will conduct semi-structured interviews with state planners, regulators, and community representatives. He will employ participant observation methodologies during state ceremonies on national holidays to understand how official ideas of the South Sudanese state and South Sudanese national identity are formed and performed. He also will conduct participant observation in a Juba neighborhood to collect data on how the state is made and experienced in everyday interactions and experiences. Specific attention will be paid to contestation over land, the building of new housing and offices, the running of businesses, the implementation of government and international organization projects, and public discussions of current events. By capturing official and local ideas and actions, the research will provide a needed understanding of how state-making takes place in the world today, information needed both for social theorists and for policy makers.