Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding Community Resilience in Response to Industrial Mine Closure and Industrial Decline

在美国各地，许多与采掘业密切相关的社区都经历了蓬勃发展和往往随后出现衰退的密集时期。工业采掘业的关闭往往具有长期的社会影响，目前人们对此知之甚少。这个项目培训一名研究生如何进行严谨的、有经验的科学实地考察，探索当地的道德、伦理和宗教价值观对这些社区中与急剧的地缘政治和经济衰退作斗争的人所起的作用。这些发现可以被推断出来，并为科学家试图了解人类应对社会经济和生态压力的弹性提供信息。乔丹·豪格在加州大学圣地亚哥分校的苏珊娜·布伦纳的监督下，旨在了解工业矿山关闭和工业衰落对当地社区的影响，以及社区在应对这些影响方面的不同。这项研究是在巴布亚新几内亚的米西马岛进行的，2004年，该岛成为大洋洲最重要的工业矿场关闭地点之一。从那时起，该岛在地缘政治、基础设施和经济方面取得进步的可能性急剧下降。米西曼通过在教育、合作筹款和基督教崇拜领域参与一些道德项目来应对这些挑战。这项研究的问题是，这些道德项目是否使米西曼斯能够克服看似不可逾越的不平等和衰落压力。通过采用定性和定量相结合的方法，即参与者观察、个人访谈、小组讨论和家庭调查，该项目将设法了解关闭地雷对米西马岛的长期社会影响。通过这样做，该项目旨在为科学研究采掘业对脆弱社区的经济和社会影响以及这些社区如何寻求克服衰落的挑战作出广泛贡献。通过了解米西曼如何应对十年来的衰落，该项目寻求为世界各地的类似社区提供可能的答案，美国或许能够以类似的方式应对工业关闭和衰落的压力。

Throughout the United States many communities closely tied to extractive industries have been subject to intensive periods of booming growth and often-subsequent decline. Closures of industrial extractive industries often have long standing social impacts that are currently poorly understood. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, empirically-grounded scientific fieldwork, explores what role local moral, ethical, and religious values have for people in these communities struggling against dramatic geopolitical and economic decline. The findings can be extrapolated and inform other contexts where scientists are attempting to understand human resilience in response to socioeconomic and ecological stress. Jordan Haug, under the supervision of Suzanne Brenner of the University of California at San Diego, aims to understand the impact of industrial mine closure and industrial decline on local communities, as well as how communities vary in their response to those impacts. The research takes place on the island of Misima, Papua New Guinea, which in 2004 became the site of one of the most significant industrial mine closures in Oceania. Since that time, the possibilities for the island's geopolitical, infrastructural, and economic advancement have dramatically declined. Misimans have responded to these challenges by engaging in a number of moral projects in the area of education, cooperative fund raising, and Christian worship. This research asks whether these moral projects enable Misimans to overcome the seemingly insurmountable pressures of inequality and decline. Through a mixed qualitative and quantitative methods approach of participant observation, personal interviews, group discussions, and household surveys, this project will seek to understand the long-term social impacts of mine closure on the island of Misima. In doing so, this project aims to make broad contributions to the scientific study of the economic and social impacts of extractive industries on vulnerable communities and how such communities seek to overcome the challenges of decline. By understanding how Misimans respond to a decade of decline, this project seeks to provide possible answers for similar communities through the world, and the United States, may be able to similarly deal with the pressures of industrial closure and decline.