Industrial Development in Uncertain Times: Industrial Labour, Maoist Revolution and Natural Disaster in Nepal; an ethnography.

自然灾害、武装冲突和起义：世界正在经历一个不确定和不稳定的时期。这种影响在世界上最贫穷的地区尤为明显。这个项目的重点是一个受影响特别严重的国家：尼泊尔。自2006年毛派革命结束以来，政治和经济危机一直持续。2015年4月造成数千人死亡的创纪录地震也摧毁了该国许多地区的大部分基础设施。这个研究项目从人类学的角度来研究工业发展是如何在这些极端不确定和危机的时期发生的。该项目的目的是通过强调武装冲突和自然灾害在工业环境中影响劳资关系的复杂方式，对在极不确定时期研究当代工业化进程作出经验和理论贡献。该项目并没有为全球南方工业劳工的当代困境寻找宏大的替代模式，而是专注于尼泊尔当地具体的工业场地，这些场地以武装冲突和自然灾害的历史为标志。在这种极不确定的环境中，这似乎是全球南方许多地方的特征，该项目旨在发展一种民族志知识理论，以便在极不确定的条件下掌握工业化。​工业工作场所可以用来处理地震后的创伤吗？诸如此类的问题都是由项目来调查的。这项研究将主要基于在加德满都的食品工厂及其周边环境中进行的为期9个月的民族志实地调查。在九个月的时间里，我打算访问该地区的所有工厂，并与雇主、雇员和劳工协会进行调查，以获得劳工条件的总体概况。我的目标之一是了解工人如何在不同的工业层次和不同的空间领域（工厂内外）概念化、理解和评估他们的工作。我将选择两到三家代表不同类型的车间文化的企业进行广泛的调查，这将在整个实地工作中继续进行。因此，研究的一个主要部分将是对一个地区内不同车间的比较研究。在政治危机和灾难时期的工业化也是巴基斯坦和孟加拉国等其他南亚国家的关键问题之一。这些领域的研究可以大大有助于更深入地了解工业家、管理人员和工人如何处理这些现象，以及在政策、公共辩论和社区行动主义层面上制定新的方法。

Natural disasters, armed conflicts and uprisings: The world is experiencing a period of uncertainty and destabilization. The effects are felt strongly in the world's poorest regions. This project focuses on a country that is particularly affected: Nepal. There is a political and economic crisis that has lasted since the end of the Maoist revolution in 2006. The record earthquake in April 2015 with thousands of deaths also destroyed large parts of the infrastructure in many areas of the country. This research project takes an anthropological perspective on how industrial development is taking place during these times of extreme uncertainty and crises.The aim of the project is to make an empirical as well as theoretical contribution to the study of contemporary industrialization processes in times of great uncertainty by highlighting the complex ways in which both armed conflicts and natural disasters shape labour relations in an industrial environment. Instead of searching for grand alternative models for the contemporary predicament of industrial labour in the global south, this project focuses on concrete local industrial field sites in Nepal, which are marked by a history of armed conflict and natural disaster. In this milieu of great uncertainty, which seems characteristic of many places in the global South, the project aims to develop an ethnographically informed theory for the grasp of industrialization under conditions of great uncertainty. How do social relations within a factory change after a Maoist revolution? Can an industrial workplace be used to manage trauma after an earthquake? Such and other questions are investigated by the project.This study will be primarily based on a nine month long ethnographic fieldwork within food factories in Kathmandu and in their immediate environment. Over the course of nine months, I intend to visit all factories within the area and conduct surveys with employers, employees and labour associations to get a general overview of labour conditions. One of my aims is to understand how workers conceptualize, understand and evaluate their work at different levels of the industrial hierarchy and in different spatial arenas (within/outside the factory). I will select two or three enterprises that represent different types of shop floor culture for extensive investigation that will continue throughout the fieldwork. Thus, a major part of the research will be a comparative study of different shop floors within one area. Industrialization in times of political crisis and disaster also represents one of the crucial issues in other South Asian countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Research in these domains can contribute significantly to a deeper understanding of how industrialists, managers and workers deal with these phenomena, as well as to the elaboration of novel approaches at the levels of policy, public debate and community activism.