Transformation of Legal Identities and the Relation to Entitlement Claims

这笔规划赠款将使人们能够进行探索性研究，制定一项关于法律身份转变的全面提案。该项目调查了在夏威夷的莫洛凯岛上，在国际旅游业以及当地、地区和国际上争夺夏威夷土地的斗争中，麻风病患者的身份是如何转变的。这项研究的一个中心理论焦点是揭示重塑或重塑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，这种身份曾经被排除在外并受到惩罚，现在正在被改造和动员起来，以保护财产等应得权利。结合夏威夷的殖民历史以及卡劳帕帕19世纪麻风病人殖民地的残余者在将其建立为国家历史公园的过程中为保留其定居点权利所作的努力，对这一转变进行了审查。该项目通过思考当代汉森氏病患者如何为自己创造一个法律、文化和政治空间，在新殖民主义旅游业的背景下重新塑造过去压迫的殖民地形象，追溯了麻风病患者新的地方身份的出现，通过新殖民主义旅游业，他们的权利主张可能得到保障和/或同时受到威胁。这项研究有助于关于法律和其他机构如何构建身份的经验和理论工作，同时构建人们用来重塑其历史和提出权利主张的论坛。它对于法律和医学定义的交叉，州和联邦关于土地保有权和使用的概念的冲突，以及经济形势急剧变化给法律格局带来的变化，具有更广泛的理论意义。

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.