The History of Tomorrow: A research proposal

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1633915
	The History of Tomorrow: A research proposal
	Gerald Sider
主持机构	CUNY College of Staten Island
项目开始年	2017
	2017-02-15
项目结束日期	2019-01-31
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Standard Grant
项目经费	28900(USD)
国家	美国
语种	英语
英文摘要	Why do the members of one community experiencing catastrophic economic and social loss retain an optimistic outlook for the future and others under similar circumstances experience stress and despair? This Early Action Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award supports the development of a new theory and methodology in the social sciences for investigating and understanding communities facing increasing uncertainty about their social and economic future. Substance abuse is just one manifestation of social stress that characterizes communities where viable futures are increasingly difficult to grasp for large segments of the population. This project is rooted in the investigator's four decades of anthropological field research in communities in the north Atlantic Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and similar comparative experience in the communities of Robeson County North Carolina. Both communities have experienced economic and social stress brought about by relocations, factory closures, and natural disasters. However, the majority of members from each community have experienced and interpreted these events in very different ways. The insights gained from this project hold promise for understanding the different ways communities experience social and economic uncertainty. From these insights, the researcher hopes to gain new knowledge about the relationship between these stressors and a vision for a viable future; insights that can inform intervention methods that support community health and well-being. This award supports a comparative study of communities in severe economic and social stress, seeking to understand the very different ways that the communities themselves conceptualize the causes and consequences both of the stressors and of their very different reactions to social and economic uncertainty. This research will examine the data from two communities in the north Atlantic Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, with comparative research with two communities in Robeson County North Carolina. In both places local communities, since the mid-1990s, have experienced major declines in employment and wages, plus declining social support programs. The researcher points out that there have been locally constructed and fairly intense efforts both to help those who suffer and to mitigate the consequences of social and economic stress, yet the differences persist. The emphasis in this research begins with seeking to understand the range of responses from community to community. Using these circumstances as a starting point, the Principal Investigator will develop new theories and methods for the study of "everyday life histories" as a means for assessing locally constructed concepts of risk and uncertainty. The research builds on the concept and methods for studying "everyday histories" first developed at the Max Planck Institute for History. This research project further develops these concepts and methods by a examining of how people have lived and currently live within and against a history that stretches into what they see as an increasingly uncertain future. Toward this end the researcher will be reviewing and reinterpreting decades of his field notes on these communities, and further developing research methods which focus both on socially constructed silences in communities and obstacles to the social recognition of both "open" and "half-hidden" pleas for help. The research will contribute not only to a more nuanced and powerful theory of social stress and stressors but has the potential developing a methodology for uncovering the complex relationships between stress as a social phenomenon and the negative behavioral and physical responses to it.
来源学科分类	Geosciences - Polar Programs
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/70779
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Gerald Sider.The History of Tomorrow: A research proposal.2017.