Doctoral Dissertation Research: Extra-Territorial Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Politics of Development

这个博士论文项目将探讨地缘政治中关于域外主权（民族国家对其边界以外的人和地方施加的权力），国家建设，民族民族主义和多民族对空间，地点和政治表达的争论之间相互作用的新问题。该项目将重点关注外国直接投资和外国基础设施发展投资如何使域外主权行为合法化，国家安全部门如何监督和控制边缘化人口的生计，以及这些人口如何应对施加在他们身上的限制。研究人员将分析当代社会、政治和文化变革的方式，不同的民族如何赋予地理位置以意义和主张，以及域外主权如何塑造发展的政治，并产生新的政治信仰、期望和经验。该项目将对来自女权主义地缘政治思想的新理论进行实证检验，这些理论将促进与情感、情感、记忆和日常实践的学术合作，以更好地理解宏观地缘政治。它还将有助于了解国家和域外主权如何相互作用，影响个人的日常生活。该项目还将为研究生建立独立的研究生涯提供支持。通过对中国在尼泊尔的经济和政治影响的民族志案例研究，博士生将调查以下核心问题：(1)在加德满都的一个地区，西藏民族主义和地方制造的看似平庸的、日常的、性别化的做法如何揭示中国在尼泊尔的域外政治发展的混乱复杂性？(2)中国的域外主权和尼泊尔的民族主义是如何产生西藏难民在尼泊尔的主体性的？(3)基于地域的身份政治和尼泊尔民族主义如何在西藏难民和尼泊尔其他民族成员之间产生争论？近年来，中国在尼泊尔的政治经济影响力不断增强，这使得该项目具有重要意义和时效性。除了提供关于这一具体案例的新见解外，该项目还将从国家安全和外交事务的角度，帮助更好地理解在更广泛的其他与美国利益相关的环境中，人民和国家之间复杂的政治、文化和社会经济动态，这将具有很大的价值。博士生将采用定性研究方法的组合，包括访谈、焦点小组、参与者观察、视觉方法和内容/话语分析。使用这些方法，学生将研究日常互动、事件和实践如何揭示宏观地缘政治的复杂性。在此过程中，本文将提供女权主义政治地理学与主权和领土地理学之间的额外联系。

This doctoral dissertation project will explore emerging questions in geopolitics about interactions among extra-territorial sovereignty (the power nation-states exert over people and places outside their borders), state-building, ethnic nationalism, and multi-ethnic contestations over space, place, and political expression.  The project will focus on the ways through which foreign direct investments and foreign investments in infrastructure development legitimize practices of extra-territorial sovereignty, how state security operates to monitor and control the livelihoods of marginalized populations, and how those populations then navigate the restrictions placed upon them.  The investigators will analyze the way contemporary social, political, and cultural transformations condition how different ethnic groups attach meaning to and claim geographic places and how extra-territorial sovereignty shapes the politics of development and produces new political beliefs, expectations, and experiences.  The project will provide an empirical test of new theories emanating from feminist geopolitical thought that will advance scholarly engagements with affect, emotion, memory, and everyday practices to better understand macro-scale geopolitics.  It also will contribute understanding about how state and extra-territorial sovereignties interact to impact individuals in their everyday lives. The project also will provide support to enable a graduate student to establish an independent research career. Through an ethnographic case study of Chinese economic and political influence in Nepal, the doctoral student will investigate the following set of core questions: (1) How do the seemingly banal, everyday, and gendered practices of Tibetan nationalism and place making in one part of Kathmandu reveal the messy intricacies of Chinese extra-territorial politics of development in Nepal?  (2) How do Chinese extra-territorial sovereignty and Nepali ethnic nationalism produce Tibetan refugee subjectivities in Nepal?  (3) How do place based identity politics and Nepali ethnic nationalism produce contestations between Tibetan refugees and members of other ethnic groups in Nepal?  The recent intensification of Chinese politico-economic influence in Nepal makes this project significant and timely.  In addition to providing new insights regarding this specific case, the project will have great value in helping to better understand the complex political, cultural, and socioeconomic dynamics among people and states in a broader range of other settings of interest to the U.S. from a national security and foreign affairs perspective.  The doctoral student will employ a combination of qualitative research methods, including interviews, focus groups, participant observation, visual methods, and content/discourse analysis.  Using these methods, the student will examine how everyday interactions, events, and practices reveal the intricacies of macro-scale geopolitics.  In doing so, this dissertation will provide additional linkages between feminist political geography and geographies of sovereignty and territory.