Doctoral Dissertation Research: Bureaucracy and Social Personhood

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Bureaucracies provide important services to communities, including facilitating understanding of policies that shape lifeways and identity. Some communities, Indigenous and tribal communities for example, express and build identity in different ways, in turn shaping the receipt of bureaucratic support. Variation in notions of kinship and individualist versus collectivist orientations affect how communities interact with bureaucracies; the desire for social change can drive the expansion or contraction of bureaucratic efforts. This research examines the extent to which bureaucracy is shaped by community identity and community social movements. In doing so, it aims to re-theorize how bureaucracies are defined and deployed to effect positive change. The research supports training of a U.S. doctoral student and results will be disseminated widely to diverse audiences. This doctoral dissertation research examines how large bureaucracies with large endowments understand and achieve their purposes to serve communities and mediate between communities and larger governmental entities. It investigates bureaucratic roles in supporting versus hindering community movements and how identity is shaped in these processes. The researcher will perform ethnographic and linguistic research in U.S. bureaucracies, examining documents and document practices, conducting participant observation of bureaucratic and community venues, and semi-structured interviews of bureaucrats and community stakeholders about their daily work. The researcher will also collect life stories of bureaucrats and community stakeholders, examining how historical events and experience over the life span articulates changes in social movements and bureaucracies. The results of this research will contribute to theories of bureaucracy and its role in social movements. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.