Doctoral Dissertation Research: Rail Infrastructure and the Emergence of National Identity and the Nation-State

这篇博士论文研究项目将在全国范围内分析铁路基础设施在领土形成中的作用。这项研究将探讨火车站和车厢的结构以及旅客和人员的做法和行为如何有助于国家空间和民族社区的生产，并被国家用作政治统一的手段。一个多世纪以来，铁路一直将各国联系在一起，并促进了许多国家民族主义的发展。美国过去是如此，其他发展中国家也是如此。这项研究项目将把铁路等物质基础设施的作用纳入对国家的概念化，从而有助于对国家、国家建设和民族主义的基本理解。因此，铁路基础设施是一个重要的手段，通过它连接的人和地方，国家变得可以想象。这一过程的具体过程及其对国家认同和国家形成的影响是本研究项目的重点。中国在历史上对铁路旅行的突出地位，再加上近几十年来铁路系统的显著扩张，使中国成为研究铁路对社会影响的理想地点。《中国》中民族主义意识的日益凸显也使得本文的研究切合时宜。这项研究是由以下问题驱动的：1)中国铁路网是如何通过其物质基础设施以及乘客和铁路人员的日常实践来构建和复制的？2)随着时间的推移，规划者和用户是如何概念化中国铁路网的？这些概念如何表现为物质上嵌入到铁路空间中的表现？3)铁路空间如何为实现中华民族做出贡献？该项目将采用双管齐下的方法，将空间整合和人口流动的地理信息系统(GIS)分析结合起来，并对铁路空间(火车和车站)及其内部的人进行“自下而上”的旅行人种学研究。这将使调查人员能够确定铁路对领土和社会施加国家建设力量的具体机制，而不会忽视铁路作为一个单一的连贯系统。地理空间分析将显示该网络在哪里以及如何在全国范围内整合了中国的广阔领土，同时也确定了一些地区变得相对孤立的切入点。这份民族志将整个铁路系统视为一个分散的基础设施现场，它将展示全国各地铁路空间是如何以标准化的方式设计、结构和维护的，并将调查精明的铁路旅客使用铁路空间的各种方式。这项研究将在今天的中国一书中对铁路基础设施对开垦领土和国家建设的物质过程的影响进行多标度描述，这将对国家和基础设施的理论化以及研究人/基础设施组合的方法做出广泛贡献。了解当代中国民族主义的根源也可能为美国的国际政策提供参考。

This doctoral dissertation research project will analyze the role of rail infrastructure in the formation of territory at the scale of the nation. The research will address how the structures of rail stations and carriages, along with the practices and behaviors of travelers and personnel, contribute to the production of national spaces and national communities and are used by the State as a means of political unification. Railways have served to bind nations together for more than a century and have contributed to the development of nationalism in many countries. This was true for the United States in the past and continues to be true for other developing states. This research project will contribute to basic understanding of the nation, nation-building, and nationalism by incorporating the role of material infrastructure like rail into conceptualizations of the nation. Rail infrastructure is thus one important means through which the nation becomes imaginable through the people and places it connects. The specific process by which this is takes place and the implications for national identity and state-making are the focus of this research project. The historical prominence of rail travel in China, combined with the system's significant expansion in recent decades, makes China an ideal location to examine the impact of rail on society. The increasing salience of nationalism in China also makes this research timely. This research is driven by questions such as: 1) How is the Chinese rail network constituted and reproduced through both its material infrastructure and everyday practices of passengers and railway personnel? 2) How have planners and users conceptualized the Chinese rail network over time? How do these concepts manifest as representations materially embedded in the rail spaces? 3) How do rail spaces contribute to materializing the Chinese nation? The project will adopt a two-pronged approach coupling 'top-down' geographic information systems (GIS) analysis of spatial integration and population circulation, with a 'bottom-up' traveling ethnography of rail spaces (trains and stations) and the people within them. This will allow the investigators to identify the concrete mechanisms through which rail exerts a nation-building force on territory and society without losing sight of rail as a single coherent system. Geo-spatial analysis will show where and how the network has served to integrate China's vast territory at the national scale, while also identifying points of shear where some areas become relatively isolated. The ethnography, which treats the whole rail system as a single dispersed, infrastructural 'field site,' will show how rail spaces are designed, structured, and maintained in standardized ways across the country, and also investigate the myriad ways they are put into use by savvy rail travelers. This research will produce a multi-scalar account of the impacts of rail infrastructure on material processes of territory-making and nation-building in today's China, which will contribute broadly to the theorization of nation and infrastructure and methodologies for studying human/infrastructural assemblages. Understanding the roots of contemporary Chinese nationalism may also inform U.S. international policy.