Managing Development and Infrastructure: Understanding State Engagements with Rural Communities in Mongolia

拟议的研究将以我在蒙古的博士研究为基础，重点了解政府管理人员如何围绕基础设施和发展项目（如世界银行的可持续生计项目和奥尤陶勒盖金矿和铜矿）与农村家庭进行互动。我的工作计划涉及GCRF的主题优先事项“理解社会制度、物质基础设施和自然环境之间的关系”以及移民、流动和发展的主题。我将利用我在博士项目过程中收集的大量定性数据，以及我在2016年2月完成博士学位后对奥尤陶勒盖矿附近农村家庭进行的社会经济调查数据。我特别感兴趣的是探索如何让农村家庭积极参与发展规划过程，从而为蒙古国家和地方层面的经济和社会福利做出贡献。我作为社会科学家在经济地理学和人类学领域的专业知识，以及我在内亚地区的长期参与，将使我能够有效地实现这些目标。自2004年以来，我在蒙古进行了长期独立的关于农村生计和流动畜牧业政治经济的民族志研究，我会说、读、写蒙古语。我的博士论文《蒙古农村工作、放牧和社会关系的变化意义》是基于一年的民族志田野调查，包括广泛的参与性观察。它审查了流动畜牧业和农村工作作为蒙古家庭社会再生产媒介的作用。这项工作报告在四篇学术文章中，研究了牧民家庭管理、决策和家庭社会经济生产的空间方面。农村工作实践被用作审视围绕性别、劳动力、金融和流动性的更广泛的社会变革进程的镜头。无论是作为独立的作品，还是作为一个整体，这些文章都表明，羊群劳动实践是政治主体性、公民概念和理想化国家的行政实践的重要参考点。政府机构（包括非国家机构）的政策和实践在关系空间化的特定形式中发挥着强大的作用。通过采用这种方法并优先考虑牧民对自己生活的批判性反思，我展示了牧民为获取资源（如儿童的正规学校教育）所做的努力如何在空间上改变了家庭的劳动力、金融和流动系统。我的工作提出了关于这些概念的三个关键论点。首先，主顾关系继续在家庭等级制度和更广泛的社会联盟中发挥重要作用，这些联盟用于获得所需的资源和服务。其次，我认为牧民工作是国家治理和道德权威的一个组成部分。最后，对家庭经济空间组织的关注，包括家庭分裂和新型流动，重申了地点在人类能动性中的重要性。这些研究结果明确了家庭决策和公共管理的主题，为解决全球气候变化报告在可持续生计和包容性增长以及建立有效制度方面的挑战提供了基础。为了应对这些挑战，我计划采取的行动是重新提交我作为博士学位的一部分撰写的学术文章，撰写新的学术文章并与同事合作开展跨学科合作，进行短期后续实地工作，巩固并继续建立与理解社会和环境变化和治理相关问题的学术和非学术网络。并参加以社会和环境保障政策为重点的工作交流。

The proposed research will to build upon my DPhil research in Mongolia by focusing on understanding how government administrators engage with rural households around infrastructure and development projects such as the World Bank's Sustainable Livelihoods Project and the Oyu Tolgoi gold and copper mega-mine. My work plan addresses the GCRF thematic priorities of "understanding the relationship between social institutions, physical infrastructure and the natural environment" and the theme of migration, mobility and development. I will draw upon the large amount of qualitative data that I collected over the course of my DPhil project as well as data from a socio-economic survey of rural households living near the Oyu Tolgoi mine, which I conducted since finishing my DPhil in February 2016. I am particularly interested in exploring ways to actively engage rural households in the development planning process in order to contribute to economic and social welfare on both national and local scales in Mongolia. My expertise as a social scientist working in the fields of economic geography and anthropology as well as my long-term engagement in the region of Inner Asia will enable me to effectively achieve these aims.I have conducted independent long-term ethnographic research on rural livelihoods and the political economy of mobile pastoralism in Mongolia since 2004 and I speak, read and write Mongolian. My DPhil thesis, The Changing Meaning of Work, Herding and Social Relations in Rural Mongolia, is based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork involving extensive participant observation. It examines the role of mobile pastoralism and rural work as a medium of social reproduction for families in Mongolia. This work is reported in four academic articles, which examine herder household management, decision-making, and the spatial aspects of household social and economic production. Rural work practices are used as a lens to examine wider processes of social change around gender, labour, finance and mobility. As standalone pieces and as a united work, the articles show that herding work practices are an important reference point in political subjectivities, concepts of citizenship and administrative practices that idealize the state. The policies and practices of government institutions, including non-state agencies, play powerful roles in the particular forms through which relations are spatialized. By taking this approach and prioritizing herder critical reflections on their own lives, I show how herder efforts to access resources, such as formal schooling for children, spatially transform the labour, finance, and mobility systems of households. My work presents three key arguments with reference to these concepts. The first is that patron-client relations continue to play a strong role in family hierarchies and wider social alliances used to gain access to needed resources and services. Secondly, I argue that pastoralist work is an integral part of governance and the moral authority of the state. Finally, attention to the spatial organisation of household economies, including household splitting and new types of mobility, reiterates the significance of place in human agency. These findings specifically identify themes around household decision making and public administration, which provide a basis to address the GCRF challenge areas around sustainable livelihoods and inclusive growth and building effective institutions. The actions I plan to take to address these challenge areas are to resubmit academic articles which I wrote as part of my DPhil, write new academic articles and collaborate with colleagues on interdisciplinary co-authorships, conduct short-term follow-up field work, consolidate and continue to build networks of academic and non-academics working on issues related to understanding social and environmental change and governance, and participate in a work exchange focused on social and environmental safeguard policies.