Struggles over racial boundaries are a perennial feature of racialized societies -- where social, political, and economic resources are differentially distributed along racial lines. Yet, most studies of the transformation of racialized societies adopt a macro-level political and institutional perspective, overlooking how transformation is experienced, perceived, and participated in by concrete actors, on the ground. The project promises to make the following contributions to the study of race and racial boundaries: (1) to examine how racial discourses inform the transformation of state institutional logics, and the ways in which the racial/cultural identities of bureaucrats shape and are shaped by everyday organizational interactions; (2) to reveal how race works by examining how racial boundaries are maintained, challenged, and changed in everyday life; and (3) to better specify the link between everyday discourses and practices in the transformation of racial boundaries.
Through 12 months of ethnographic research and interviews this project studies the micro-dynamics of state decolonization, and the articulation of a new state structure in Bolivia. The research focuses on one facet of the larger project, the decolonization of public administration, which has, in part, resulted in the opening up of positions within the civil service to indigenous men and women. Following the process of decolonization of one state agency and using the sociological concepts of symbolic and social boundaries as analytical tools, this research seeks to understand how, in the context of macro-political change, bureaucrats on the ground interpret, negotiate, and rearticulate racial boundaries and institutional change, and to what effect.
Broader Impacts
The study will have practical implications of relevance to policy practitioners. It will shed light on the generally obscured area between official racial policies and their implementation on the ground. The lessons learned could possibly inform institutional change beyond the public sector and in other contexts. These lessons are important in light of the resilience of racial inequalities despite policies that seek to address them. In addition, this project will build and promote lasting research collaboration networks between researchers in Bolivia and the United States.
