Doctoral Dissertation Research: Local Uses of Transnational Cultural Systems

该奖项支持的研究调查跨国文化运动与当地文化和社会结构之间的关系。研究人员将超越文化适应的标准问题，询问引入的外国文化实践是否以及如何被重新利用，以达到与原始介绍者的目标相反的目的。对于跨文化工作的政策制定者来说，这是一个重要的问题，他们寻求产生短期的合规，例如促进灾难应对，以及对长期社会文化变化的科学理解。这项研究将由布兰迪斯大学博士生道格拉斯·布兰德在人类学家珍妮特·麦金托什博士的指导下进行。这项研究将在南非进行，在那里，来自美国的宗教形式和意识形态已经被引入，并为当地的政治目的进行了改造。这段历史使这里成为该项目首要问题的理想地点：当一套特定的哲学、实践和道德立场被应用于截然不同的文化背景时会发生什么？数据将通过广泛的参与者观察、半结构化访谈、社交网络绘图和分析以及档案研究来收集。研究结果将有助于对社会整体论和全球化的科学理解。此外，该项目将对学生研究人员进行人类学研究和教学生涯所需的方法培训。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The research supported by this award investigates the relationship between transnational cultural movements and local culture and social structure. The researcher will go beyond standard questions of cultural adaptation to ask if and how introduced foreign cultural practices might be repurposed to ends antithetical to the goals of the original introducers. This is an important question for policy makers working across cultures who seek to produce short term compliance, such as to facilitate disaster response, as well as for scientific understanding of long-term socio-cultural change.The research will be undertaken by Brandeis University doctoral student, Douglas Bafford, with the guidance of anthropologist Dr. Janet Mcintosh. The research is to be conducted in South Africa where religious forms and ideologies from the United States have been introduced and refashioned for local political purposes. This history makes this an ideal site for the project's overarching question: what happens when a particular set of philosophies, practices, and moral stances is applied in a starkly different cultural context? Data will be collected through extended participant observation, semi-structured interviews, social network mapping and analyses, and archival research. Findings from the research will contribute to scientific understanding of social holism and globalization. In addition, this project will train the student researcher in the methods required for a research and teaching career in anthropology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.