| 英文摘要: | This project is a sociological investigation of how social relationships form among individuals through friendship and how friendship can be affected by gender, demography, remote geography, social-cultural histories, economics, and the natural environment. PI Sine Anahita is proposing to use research methods that although standard in other fields for decades, e.g., anthropology, science and technology studies, social psychology, etc, are in less frequent use among sociologists. The primary method the PI is proposing is a more qualitative approach to visual analysis of archival films, photographs, and audiovisual recordings of interviews with manual tradesmen. The PI was inspired to propose this project when she examined the Jasper Wyman, collection at the Alaska State Museum. Wyman was a photographer and gold prospector who documented gold prospecting along a remote Arctic river basin during the winter of 1898-99. His photographs visually narrated the work and personal life experiences of men engaged in this labor under extreme Arctic environmental conditions. This led the PI to consider how the social relationships men form through their labor have changed over the last 125 years. The PI will examine materials held in public archives and private collections ranging from the 19th century Alaska gold mining period through contemporary photos and interviews of tradesmen. The project is unique in its analysis of visual data and interviews with Alaskan male tradesmen.
The PIs choice to examine tradesmen's friendships comes not only from her access to an unprecedented archive of 19th century photographs but also from the fact that employment in the trades in Alaska has been dominated by men. Although less so today, men still make up 63% of the population on the North Slope of Alaska, where jobs are primarily in the oil field trades. In addition, at a ratio of 109 men to 100 women, Alaska has the highest gender imbalance in the United States, the second highest is Wyoming at 104. Although these ratios have changed considerably from the 19th century, it supports the PIs choice to focus on men and how their work relationships are not only affected by social and environmental systems but how they have changed over time.
Because of the rich visual data from 19th century through contemporary Alaskan times, the researcher is proposing to focus on men's social relationships with other men. The PI states her case, "The vast majority of men who have worked in Alaska are engaged in manual trades such as heavy equipment operator in the oil and gas fields, construction of the oil pipeline, prospecting and mining gold, and commercial fishing." A key question that guides the research is how does the history of Alaska, its demographic makeup, its geography, its remoteness, and its climate affect tradesmen's social relationships? |