Doctoral Dissertation Research: Starting-up with the State: Computing, Entrepreneurship, and Governance

__创业实践和国家政策。该项目的目标是批判性地研究初创企业孵化器中计算的历史，社会技术，基础设施，政府和抱负维度，以推进对技术初创企业全球组合的比较社会科学理解和数字创新的前景。在持续的COVID-19大流行的背景下进行这项研究时，该项目还为观察破坏性的社会技术变化开辟了一个新的Vantage位置，特别是在后殖民背景下。这个项目从人种学的角度解决了三个研究问题。1)政府应用程序编程接口（API）、平台和移动的应用程序等数字基础设施如何形成--以及它们如何被--对治理和创业价值的双重追求所塑造？2)来自不同社会背景的科技企业家如何驾驭创业孵化的日常实践？在COVID-19大流行导致的持续结构性转变中，他们如何重新构想其创新和社会流动的代理能力？3)初创企业孵化器计划中的计算如何寻求将最近的全球数字创新和破坏历史与国家未来联系起来？基于多地点的实地考察，该项目比较跟踪了一个大都市和一个二线城市的初创企业孵化器，以空间化国家和初创企业之间不断增长的界面。研究人员部署历史，虚拟和面对面的民族志方法，包括参与者观察，半结构化访谈，数字档案和软件研究方法，以跟踪国家资助的初创企业孵化器的前未来和日常工作和实践。该项目结合了STS，媒体研究，人类学及相关领域的跨学科奖学金，通过后殖民国家与技术民族主义，数字创新和资本主义以及理想未来和社会流动性之间的三方关系进行思考。通过关注计算创业孵化器生态系统中数字基础设施与创新之间的新兴关系，该项目有助于全球STS对计算文化的研究。通过比较研究两个城市有抱负的年轻人的技术创业之旅，该项目旨在阐明与不断加速的数字经济相关的希望和不满。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

__________________________________________________________________________________________________NSF Abstract - Sandeep MertiaThis project is an ethnographic study of cultures of computing in start-up incubators, focusing on digital infrastructure, entrepreneurial practices, and state policies. The goal of this project is to critically examine the historical, socio-technical, infrastructural, governmental, and aspirational dimensions computing in start-up incubators, to advance comparative social scientific understandings of the global assemblages of technology start-ups and the promissory futures of digital innovation. In carrying out this research in the context of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, this project also opens a new vantage point for looking at disruptive socio-technical changes, particularly in postcolonial contexts. This project ethnographically addresses three research questions. 1) How do digital infrastructures such as government application programming interfaces (APIs), platforms, and mobile apps shape—and how are they shaped by—the dual pursuit of governance and entrepreneurial value? 2) How do techno-entrepreneurs from different social backgrounds navigate the everyday practices of start-up incubation? How are they reimagining their agential capacities for innovation and social mobility amidst the on-going structural shifts due to the COVID-19 pandemic? 3) How do computing in start-up incubators program seek to tether the recent global history of digital innovation and disruption to national futures? Based on multi-sited fieldwork, this project comparatively follows start-up incubators in a metropolitan and a tier-two city to spatialize the growing interface between the state and start-ups. The researcher deploys historical, virtual, and in-person ethnographic methods, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, digital archival and software studies approaches, to track the former futures and the everyday imaginaries and practices of state-sponsored start-up incubation. This project combines interdisciplinary scholarship in STS, media studies, anthropology and related fields, to think through the three-way relations between the postcolonial state and technological nationalism, digital innovation and capitalism, and aspirational futures and social mobility. By focusing on the emergent relations between digital infrastructure and innovation in a computing start-up incubators ecosystem, this project contributes to global STS research on cultures of computing. By comparatively studying the techno-entrepreneurial journeys of aspirational youth in two cities, this project seeks to illuminate the hopes and discontents associated with an ever-accelerating digital economy.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.