Doctoral Dissertation Research: Neoliberalism, Gender, and Politics in Post-Soviet Societies

本项目将研究经济结构调整和日益高涨的社会和政治保守主义对后苏联社会性别角色的影响。虽然许多研究探索了后苏联地区新自由主义经济结构对种族、劳动力和民族主义的影响，但很少有研究关注性别和家庭生活与该地区地缘政治和经济变化之间的联系。经济自由化引发的焦虑导致了对家庭价值观、性别角色和家庭生活的新规定的呼声。这项研究将分析新自由主义和民族主义如何重新定义性别身份，以阐明政治行为者如何利用“家”和“家庭”的象征来为限制性的社会政策辩护，在某些情况下，证明参与政治冲突是合理的。了解政治和经济进程如何与亲密的家庭和家庭事务相联系，也将有助于阐明寻求赋予妇女权力的国际发展方案的有效性。记录妇女在日常生活中应对社会和经济变化的方式将为区域发展政策提供信息，以努力减轻基于性别的暴力和贫困。苏联解体后的亚美尼亚的各种团体一直在与持续的经济和政治变革造成的经济和地缘政治焦虑作斗争。其中许多焦虑表现为对性别角色以及家庭和家庭空间的社会经济和政治意义的新担忧。为了更好地理解这些变化，本研究问：1)家庭和家庭实践在地缘政治辩论中的象征意义是什么？2)经济结构调整对家庭生活实践和家庭空间政治有什么影响？3)家庭和日常家庭实践的象征意义如何成为复制或争夺新自由主义和地缘政治分歧的场所？具体地说，这项研究将考察性别的话语生产以及人们体验和驾驭经济变化的物质条件。研究人员将使用批判性的地理学观点来阐明经济转型如何对日常生活产生实质性影响，以及性别主题是如何产生或转变的。本研究依赖于定性的方法，包括半结构化访谈、参与者观察以及对有关当代家庭生活的新闻和杂志文章的文本分析。从这些来源收集的数据将被三角处理，以了解由于经济结构调整和日益增长的社会保守主义，各种行为者--公民、政治团体和国际发展项目--如何重新谈判女性家务劳动的价值。

This project will examine the effects of economic restructuring and rising social and political conservatism on gender roles in post-Soviet societies. While much research has explored the effects of neoliberal economic restructuring in post-Soviet regions on ethnicity, labor, and nationalism, fewer studies have paid attention to the connections between gender and domesticity and the geopolitical and economic changes in the region. Anxieties arising from economic liberalization have led to calls for new regulations on family values, gender roles and domesticity. This study will analyze how neoliberalism and nationalism are redefining gender identities in order to shed light on how political actors draw on symbols of the "home" and "family" to justify restrictive social policies and, in some cases, validate engagement in political conflict. Understanding how political and economic processes link with intimate home and family matters will also help to elucidate the effectiveness of international development programs seeking to empower women. Documenting the way women navigate social and economic change in their everyday lives will inform regional development policies in an effort to alleviate gender based violence and poverty. Various groups in post-Soviet Armenia have been struggling with economic and geopolitical anxieties caused by continual economic and political transformations. Many of these anxieties have manifested in new concerns over gender roles and the socioeconomic and political meanings of home and domestic spaces. To better understand these changes, this study asks: 1) What is the symbolic significance of the home and practices of domesticity in geopolitical debates? 2) What are the impacts of economic restructuring on practices of domesticity and the spatial politics of home? 3) How do the symbolic meanings of the home and everyday domestic practices become sites for reproducing or contesting neoliberalism and geopolitical divides? Specifically, this research will examine the discursive production of gender and the material conditions within which people experience and navigate economic change. The researchers will employ critical geography perspectives to illuminate how economic transformations materially affect everyday lives and the ways in which gendered subjects are produced or transformed. The study relies on qualitative methods including semi- structured interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis of news and magazine articles about contemporary domesticity. Data gathered from these sources will be triangulated to understand how various actors - citizens, political groups, and international development programs - have renegotiated the value of women's domestic labor as a result of economic restructuring and growing social conservatism.