Graduate student Schaun G. Wheeler, supervised by Dr. Roy G. D''Andrade, will undertake scientific research to build a general model of how individuals navigate group allegiances in ways that motivate them to participate in large scale social action. He will conduct nine months of field research in the Kyrgyz Republic, which he will use as a test case. The Kyrgyz Republic is a good site for this research because Kyrgyzstan is full of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and political divisions, yet its citizens have so far been able to maintain a relatively stable national government and relatively peaceful transitions of power when the government does change. The goal of the research is to use systematic methods in order to make possible accurate generalizations about cultural phenomena over a large geopolitical area.
Wheeler''s primary research methods will be cultural modeling and consensus analysis, done through staged structured interviewing, to test the idea that theoretical idea that group identity is a strategy for advancing individual interests. He also will do ethnographic participant observation to double-check and expand upon the information acquired through interviews. The research will be carried out in four different provinces of Kyrgyz. He plans to measure systematically the extent to which Kyrgyz citizens use group distinctions to navigate everyday concerns, and the extent to which this group affiliation is necessary for individuals to become interested in state institutions. If he is successful, the techniques should be generalizable to other geopolitical context.
This research is important because it will help to develop more successful policies, development programs, or social interventions because they will be based on an accurate picture of the views of the people involved. Nation-building experiments in other, similarly divided countries have not been as successful. Exploring the dynamics of group affiliations at the individual level using explicit, systematic methods to test the validity and reliability of the conclusions reached will help explain the difference and hopefully cope with conflicts that often arise from identity differences. The research also will contribute significantly to the education of a graduate student.
