Transformation of Legal Identities and the Relation to Entitlement Claims

这项规划补助金将用于探索性研究，以制定有关法律身份转变的全面建议。该项目调查了夏威夷莫洛凯岛上“麻风病人”的身份是如何在国际旅游以及当地、地区和国际上争夺夏威夷土地的背景下转变的。该研究的一个核心理论焦点是清理出收回或重新发明法律历史和当代身份的过程和意义。“麻风病人”的案例是一个法律身份的例子，这种身份一度被排斥和惩罚，现在正在转变和动员起来，以确保财产等权利。这种转变是在夏威夷殖民历史的背景下进行的，以及19世纪在卡拉劳帕帕的麻风病人殖民地的残余人员在将其建立为国家历史公园的过程中保留其对该定居点的权利的努力。该项目通过思考当代汉森病患者如何为自己创造法律、文化和政治空间，追溯了“麻风病人”一种新的地方身份的出现，在新殖民主义旅游业的背景下，重新塑造压迫性殖民历史的形象，通过这种方式，他们的权利主张可能同时得到保障和/或威胁。这项研究对法律和其他机构构建身份的方式的实证和理论工作做出了贡献，同时也构建了人们用来重塑他们的历史和提出权利主张的论坛。它对法律和医学定义的交叉、州和联邦对土地所有权和使用概念的冲突以及经济形势急剧变化所造成的法律格局的变化具有更广泛的理论影响。

This planning grant will enable exploratory research for development of a full scale proposal on the transformation of legal identities. The project investigates how the identity of "leper" is being transformed on the island of Molokai, in Hawaii, in the context of international tourism and of local, regional, and international struggles over the acquisition of land in Hawaii. A central theoretical focus of the research is to flush out the process and meaning of reclaiming or reinventing legal histories and contemporary identities. The case of "the leper" is an example of a legal identity that was at one time excluded and punished and now is being transformed and mobilized to secure entitlements, such as property. This transformation is examined in the context of the colonial history of Hawaii and the present effort by remnants of the nineteenth century leper colony in Kalaupapa to retain their rights to the settlement in the process of its establishment as a national historical park. The project traces the emergence of a new local identity for "lepers" by considering how contemporary sufferers of Hansen's disease create a legal, cultural, and political space for themselves, reworking the imagery of an oppressive colonial past in the context of a neocolonialist tourist industry through which their claims to entitlement may be secured and/or threatened at the same time. The research contributes to empirical and theoretical work on the ways in which law and other institutions construct identities while at the same time structuring forums which people use to reshape their histories and make entitlement claims. It has wider theoretical implications for the intersection of legal and medical definitions, the conflict of state and federal notions of land tenure and use, and the changes wrought in the legal landscape by a dramatically changed economic situation.