EAPSI:Understanding the Formation of Local Identities in Relation to Foreign Military Bases

这个项目将调查冲绳人和日本政府之间的紧张关系是如何影响冲绳北部美国军事设施扩建对居民表达和制定当地身份的方式。这项研究将考察基地抗议活动的激励效应是否标志着冲绳作为一个独特的民族或土著群体的新趋势，而不是日本的少数民族，以及这种转变可能带来的更广泛的影响。这项研究将与琉球大学的社会运动专家阿部小津博士合作进行。通过访谈、参与观察和新闻媒体话语分析，本研究将寻求在军事基地争议的背景下，确定冲绳文化和政治认同形成的新趋势。自第二次世界大战结束以来，冲绳的军事基地一直是紧张局势的根源。然而，除了周期性的针对基地的强烈抗议浪潮外，冲绳人总体上还是接纳了这些基地的。然而，自从1995年美国海军陆战队强奸一名冲绳女学生以来，以及最近，在日本政府开始在边野古进行填海造地活动之后，反对建设的抗议活动愈演愈烈，反对基地的候选人在最近的选举中大获全胜。政治地理学家感兴趣的是国家认同的现象，即人们的大集体如何围绕着一套共同的文化理念和实践、政治和经济利益以及领土主张，融合成一个想象中的社区。将民族认同动员到政治运动中可以对国家产生深远影响，苏格兰和加泰罗尼亚的独立公投以及乌克兰和伊拉克/叙利亚的分离主义冲突就证明了这一点。该EAPSI奖是与日本科学促进会（JSPS）合作资助的。

This project will investigate how the tensions between Okinawans and the Japanese national government over the expansion of a U.S. military facility in northern Okinawa may affect the way residents articulate and enact their local identities. This study will examine whether the galvanizing effect of the bases protests may signal an emerging trend toward Okinawan identification as a distinct national or indigenous group, as opposed to a Japanese ethnic minority, and what the broader implications of such a shift might be. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kosuzu Abe, an expert on social movements at the University of the Ryukyus. Through interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis of news media, this study will seek to identify emerging trends in Okinawan cultural and political identity formation in the context of the military bases controversy.U.S. military bases in Okinawa have been a source of tension since the end of World War II. Yet aside from periodic waves of intense protest against the bases, Okinawans have generally accommodated the bases. However, since the 1995 rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by U.S. marines, and most recently, after the national government commenced land reclamation activities in Henoko, protests against construction have intensified, and anti-base candidates swept the most recent elections. Political geographers are interested in the phenomenon of national identification, how large collectivities of people coalesce into an imagined community around a shared set of cultural ideas and practices, political and economic interests, and territorial claims. The mobilization of national identities into political movements can have profound implications for states as evidenced by independence referendums in Scotland and Catalonia and separatist conflicts in the Ukraine and Iraq/Syria. This EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).