Beyond participant observation: integrating ethnographic and quantitative research methods

在奖学金期间，我将根据我的博士研究发表两篇单作者论文，准备一本书的建议，在实验和定量研究方法的培训，并在伦敦经济学院组织一个题为“超越参与者观察”的研讨会。我还将参加国家和国际会议，传播我的研究成果，并在尼泊尔开展各种与影响有关的活动，我将在奖学金期间完成的第一篇论文将有助于提高我们对身份政治和达利特人（以前被称为“贱民”）在当代尼泊尔的处境的理解。这个国家在近几十年来经历了重大的政治变革：印度教君主制的结束和世俗的联邦共和国的建立，十年的内战，种族和文化政治的巨大崛起，以及令人担忧的宪法起草过程。我在尼泊尔进行的为期18个月的民族志项目显示了这些快速的政治变化如何影响“普通”，非政治化的贱民。对这些材料的分析揭示了身份政治在促进包容性的同时，实际上如何创造新的排斥轴心。第二篇论文将调查更普遍地支持种姓歧视和社会污名化的认知和心理过程。它将特别关注一种被称为“心理本质主义”的现象，这是一种认知偏见，在经验和发展心理学中得到了广泛的研究，并被证明在西方背景下推动种族陈规定型观念和歧视方面发挥了重要作用。我认为，同样的偏见有助于其他形式的社会排斥，包括种姓歧视，并问什么样的社会过程可能会增加或减少其影响。除了允许我发表基于我的博士论文的材料，奖学金将帮助我实现发展和促进目前在社会人类学中未充分利用的研究方法的长期目标。特别是，我的希望是开发定量和实验方法，非常适合研究有关社会组织和人类认知之间的相互作用的问题。为此，奖学金包括为我自己提供重要的培训，并组织一个研讨会，将使用非传统民族志方法的社会文化人类学家聚集在一起。我将进行三次研究旅行，向学术和非学术受众传播我的研究。第一个将是我为欧洲心理人类学网络年度会议（2021年6月1日至3日）共同组织的一个五人小组，其中演讲者（包括我自己）将考虑认知科学最近发现对人类行为人类学模型的影响。第二次访问将于2021年7月前往尼泊尔。除了在尼泊尔和喜马拉雅山加德满都年度会议上发言外，我还将开展各种与影响有关的活动。这些活动将包括为尼泊尔的研究生提供研究方法强化课程，举办公开讲座，并与加德满都的一个达利特组织合作举办讲习班。我的第三次旅行将是圣安德鲁斯，在那里我将召集一个阿萨会议小组，介绍“超越参与者观察”研讨会的结果。

During the fellowship I will publish two single-author papers based on my PhD research, prepare a book proposal, train in experimental and quantitative research methods, and organise a workshop entitled 'Beyond Participant Observation' at the LSE. I will also attend national and international conferences to disseminate my findings, and conduct various impact-related activities in Nepal, where the research was conducted in the first place.The first of the papers which I will complete during the fellowship will help improve our understanding of identity politics and the situation of Dalits (previously known as 'untouchables') in contemporary Nepal. This country has undergone major political transformations in recent decades: the end of the Hindu monarchy and establishment of a secular, federal republic, a ten-year civil war, a tremendous rise in ethnic and cultural politics, and a fraught process of constitution writing. The 18-month ethnographic project which I conducted in Nepal shows how these rapid political changes have affected 'ordinary', non-politicised Dalits. The analysis of this material reveals how identity politics, while promoting inclusiveness, can in fact create new axes of exclusion. The second paper will investigate the cognitive and psychological processes that underpin caste-base discrimination and social stigmatisation more generally. It will focus in particular on a phenomenon known as 'psychological essentialism', a cognitive bias that has been studied extensively in empirical and developmental psychology and been shown to play an important role in driving racial stereotyping and discrimination in Western contexts. I argue that the same bias contributes other forms of social ostracising, including caste-based discrimination, and ask what social processes are likely to increase of decrease its effect.Besides allowing me to publish material based on my PhD, the fellowship will help me achieve the long-term goal of developing and promoting research methods that are currently under-utilised in social anthropology. In particular, my hope is to develop quantitative and experimental methods that are well-suited to study questions relating to the interplay between social organisation and human cognition. To this end, the fellowship includes a significant training component for myself, and the organisation of a workshop to bring together socio-cultural anthropologists who use non-traditionally ethnographic methods.I will undertake three research trips to disseminate my research to academic and non-academic audiences. The first will be for a five-member panel that I have co-organised for the yearly conference of the European Network for Psychological Anthropology (June 1-3, 2021), in which presenters (including myself) will consider the implications of recent findings in cognitive science for anthropological models of human behaviour. The second trip will be to Nepal, in July 2021. Besides presenting at the Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and Himalayas, I will conduct various impact-related activities. These will include offering an intensive course in research methods for research students in Nepal, giving a public lecture, and organising a workshop in collaboration with a Dalit organisation in Kathmandu. My third trip will be to St-Andrews, where I will convene a panel the ASA conference to present the results of the workshop 'Beyond Participant Observation'.