Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Reproduction of Vulnerability in Santa Fe, Argentina

博士论文研究：阿根廷圣达菲的脆弱性再现

• 批准号: 1203183
• 负责人: Jesse Ribot
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-05-01 至 2014-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1203183&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Reproduction; Vulnerability

This doctoral dissertation research project examines the vulnerability of urban populations to hazards. As one of the most important additions to social science research on climate change in the last three decades, vulnerability studies have enriched the understanding of the factors that predispose people to climate-related risk. Yet, earlier engineering-based analyses of hazards still guide contemporary policy and practice, while the social causes are consistently overlooked. This project is a case study of Santa Fe, Argentina, a city ravaged by consecutive floods over the last decade, to analyze how social, political, and economic factors at multiple scales interact to reproduce vulnerability. Due to a legacy of hydraulic works, government officials and residents fail to question engineering-based responses (i.e. technical fixes) to floods and flood risk, allowing them to become deeply embedded in, rather than autonomous from, the local political landscape. In contrast to the development literature that often characterizes policy as a government imposition on local people, this dissertation project examines how governmental schemes work in conjunction with and through the practices and desires of local populations. By conceptualizing clientelism as both an adaptive response of the urban poor to maintain their livelihoods as well as an outcome of dynamic political-economic processes, this research will show how clientelism placates the urban poor's everyday problems, while deepening the root causes of their vulnerability. The project research questions are: 1) How has the conventional framing of hazards come to dominate and shape practice in Santa Fe?; and 2) How do local political actors and residents become complicit in sanctioning engineering fixes that emerge from this framing? In addition to surveys and mapping techniques, in-depth interviews with key informants, government officials, and local residents will provide data on how different actors influence political decisions related to floods and flood risk; who is made less vulnerable by those decisions; and how those decisions affect the urban poor's access to resources in political and social institutions. The findings from this project will help illuminate different types of human adaptive responses to climate-related change, particularly in areas persistently at risk of hazards. The investigators expect to demonstrate the complex and multiscalar interplay between the social, political and economic processes that shape how hazards affect people and the institutions that facilitate maladaptation by rendering risk technical. Over the coming decades, national governments and international development agencies will invest billions of dollars to support climate change efforts. Thus far, climate change negotiations have mostly focused on mitigation. But as the political repercussions of the 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 4th Assessment Report demonstrated, the challenge of designing effective policies to protect vulnerable people remain. Responding to the call for rigorous social science research on climate change, the results of this project will serve to fill theoretical and practical gaps in the understanding of the social dimensions of vulnerability as well as adaptive responses to climate-related hazards. In addition, research results will help identify ways that governments and international development agencies can develop more robust and politically feasible policies to protect vulnerable groups. This study of maladaptation aims to help policy makers better understand the everyday processes that produce climate-related vulnerabilities in order to identify pathways towards more sustainable policy responses. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.

该博士学位论文研究项目研究了城市人口对危害的脆弱性。作为过去三十年中社会科学研究的最重要的补充之一，脆弱性研究丰富了人们对使人们易受气候相关风险的因素的理解。然而，较早的基于工程的危害分析仍然指导当代政策和实践，而社会原因一直被忽视。该项目是对阿根廷圣达菲（Santa Fe）的一个案例研究，这是一个在过去十年中连续洪水肆虐的城市，以分析多个规模的社会，政治和经济因素如何相互作用以重现脆弱性。由于液压工作的遗产，政府官员和居民未能对基于工程的回应（即技术修复）提出洪水和洪水风险的质疑，从而使他们能够深深地嵌入而不是自治的地方，而不是自治的地方。与经常将政策描述为政府对当地人民施加政策的发展文献相反，该论文项目研究了政府计划如何与当地人口的实践和欲望结合以及与之共同工作。通过将客户主义概念化为城市贫困人口的自适应反应，以维持其生计以及动态的政治经济过程的结果，这项研究将表明客户主义如何安抚城市穷人的日常问题，同时加深其脆弱性的根源。项目研究问题是：1）在圣达菲的传统危险框架如何占主导地位和塑造实践？ 2）当地的政治行为者和居民如何在制裁此框架中裁定工程修复方面有同谋？除了调查和地图技术外，对主要线人，政府官员和当地居民的深入访谈还将提供有关不同参与者如何影响与洪水和洪水风险有关的政治决策的数据；这些决定使谁易于侵害；以及这些决定如何影响城市穷人在政治和社会机构中获得资源的机会。该项目的发现将有助于阐明不同类型的人类对与气候相关变化的反应，特别是在持续存在危害风险的地区。调查人员希望证明塑造危害如何影响人们的社会，政治和经济过程之间的复杂和多界相互作用，以及通过使风险技术促进不良适应的机构。在接下来的几十年中，各国政府和国际发展机构将投资数十亿美元来支持气候变化工作。到目前为止，气候变化谈判主要集中在缓解上。但是，正如2006年对气候变化经济学经济学和2007年政府间气候变化的第四次评估报告的政治影响所表明的那样，设计有效的保护弱势群体的政策的挑战仍然存在。在回应对气候变化的严格社会科学研究的呼吁时，该项目的结果将在理解脆弱性的社会维度以及对与气候相关危害的自适应反应方面填补理论和实际差距。此外，研究结果将有助于确定政府和国际发展机构可以制定更强大且在政治上可行的政策以保护弱势群体的方式。这项对适应不良的研究旨在帮助决策者更好地了解产生与气候相关的脆弱性的日常过程，以确定通往更可持续的政策反应的途径。作为博士学位论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生能够建立独立的研究职业。