Social, Economic, and Political Investigations into Transition Strategies and Institutional Trajectories in America's Rural Arctic

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

This project is an exploratory ethnographic study of social and economic transition processes, institutional trajectories, and ideologies of 'development' in and pertaining to rural Alaska. Analyses and opinions relating to the general characters, successes, and failures of the various public (State, Federal) and private (Corporate, NGO) intervention strategies for the purposes of social and economic development will be deduced from informed and/or critically-positioned members of relevant social, economic, and political institutions, including: State legislature, Dept of Labor, Dept of Commerce, Small Business Administration, University of Alaska, Denali Commission, First Alaskans Institute, Alaska Federation of Natives, Native Corporations, Oil Companies, Alaska General Contractors, Institute for Social and Economic Research, and the Alaska Congressional Delegation. This project is both exploratory and preparatory, seeking to compile a series of interconnected models of 1) long-term statewide social and economic processes 2) the trajectories of Alaskan institutions, particularly native tribes and corporations and 3) the topology of ideologies of social and economic development within the state. Data collection takes the form of a kind of ethnographic meta-analysis, wherein the models of social, economic, political, and historical analysis, both formal and informal, of actors are elicited through semi-structured interviews, compared with an eye to their interdependence, then analyzed as a whole. The resulting comprehensive models of significant processes within the state will provide the necessary foundations of knowledge which enable the formulation of more narrowly targeted, in-depth research proposals concerning development in Alaska. The meta-analytic models generated by this research will serve not only to provide the foundations of knowledge for future research and to inform current debates within the fields of rural sociology and the sociology of economic change and development; rural leaders and community members will surely find that the eventual final product of this research both contributes to their knowledge about social and economic conditions in their state and informs debates surrounding the formulation and implementation of local and regional policy.