Factors Influencing Changing Meanings of Sovereignty

在广泛的社会科学家中，主权经常被探讨为一群人从一个更大的实体中要求政治独立的关系。但人类学家已经记录了许多案例，在这些案例中，人类群体找到了追求主权的其他方法，而不是通过建立自治的民族国家。是什么因素影响人类通过政治独立以外的方式寻求主权？该项目将帮助公共政策专家努力理解和预测社会运动，不仅是在正在进行这项研究的美国，而且在主权要求采取新形式的世界其他地区。此外，该项目将加强美国大陆和波多黎各科学家之间的合作，扩大代表性不足的群体在科学领域的参与，并培训本科生和研究生掌握以科学为基础的经验数据收集方法。罗格斯大学（Rutgers University）的Yarimar Bonilla博士探讨了在主权形式不断变化和有争议的背景下，公民身份和国家身份的概念是如何被重新构想的。这项研究探讨了波多黎各建国运动，这是回答这个问题的一个重要地点，因为该运动自相矛盾地在那些主张其他形式的主权地位而不是吞并和建国的人中间获得了普及。作为美国的一块未合并领土，波多黎各与美国的关系长期以来一直模糊不清和被误解。众所周知，波多黎各被描述为“国内意义上的外国”，在这里，公民身份和国籍的概念受到了激烈的争论。多年来，该岛的联邦地位向当地居民承诺“两全其美”，即在给予美国公民身份的同时享有一定程度的地方主权。然而，由于经济在过去二十年中停滞不前，导致基础设施失败，似乎无法偿还的公共债务和历史性的外移（导致波多黎各人更多地集中在美国大陆而不是波多黎各领土上），越来越多的波多黎各人目前支持政治吞并美国。这个项目将研究大量波多黎各人如何以及为什么主张波多黎各成为第51个州。利用通过档案研究、参与观察、调查、焦点小组和个人访谈收集的数据，PI将研究其倡导者如何想象国家地位，以及它被认为能够解决哪些问题。这项研究的结果将对思考主权转移时代公民身份的文化意义，以及美国及其边缘地区当前政治可能性的格局产生广泛的影响。

Among many social scientists broadly, sovereignty has frequently been explored in relation to claims for political independence by one group of people from a larger entity. But anthropologists have documented many cases where groups of human beings find other methods for pursuing sovereignty than through the formation of autonomous nation-states. This project asks what factors influence human beings to seek sovereignty through means other than political independence. The project would aid public policy experts in their efforts to understand and anticipate social movements not only in the United States, where this research is taking place, but in other parts of the world where sovereignty claims have taken new form. In addition, the project would strengthen collaboration among scientists in the mainland U.S. and Puerto Rico, broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences, and train undergraduate and graduate students in methods of scientifically-grounded and empirical data collection. Dr. Yarimar Bonilla of Rutgers University explores how notions of citizenship and national identity are reimagined within contexts of shifting and disputed forms of sovereignty. The research explores the Puerto Rican statehood movement, an important site for answering this question as the movement has paradoxically gained popularity among those who have advocated other forms of sovereign status over annexation and statehood. As an unincorporated territory of the United States, Puerto Rico's relationship to the United States has long been ambiguous and misunderstood. Famously described as "foreign in a domestic sense," Puerto Rico is a space where notions of citizenship nationality are hotly debated. For many years the island's commonwealth status promised local residents "the best of both worlds" in the sense of offering US citizenship with a measure of local sovereignty. However, as the economy has stagnated over the past twenty years leading to failing infrastructure, a seemingly unpayable public debt, and historic levels of out-migration (resulting in a larger concentration of Puerto Ricans in the continental United States than in the Puerto Rican territory), a growing number of Puerto Ricans currently support political annexation to the United States. This project will examines how and why a large number of Puerto Ricans advocate for Puerto Rico to become the 51st state. Utilizing data collected through archival research, participant observation, surveys, focus groups and individual interviews, the PI will examine how statehood is imagined by its advocates and what problems it is deemed capable of solving. The findings of this research will have broad implications for thinking about the cultural meanings of citizenship in an era of shifting sovereignty and about the current landscape of political possibility in the United States and its margins.