Factors Influencing Changing Meanings of Sovereignty

在许多社会科学家中，主权经常被与一个更大实体的一群人的政治独立主张联系起来进行探索。但人类学家记录了许多案例，表明人类群体找到了其他方法来追求主权，而不是通过形成自治的民族国家。这个项目询问了哪些因素影响人类通过政治独立以外的其他方式寻求主权。该项目将帮助公共政策专家努力理解和预测社会运动，不仅是在进行这项研究的美国，也是在世界上其他以新的形式提出主权主张的地区。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，扩大未被充分代表的群体在科学领域的参与，并培训本科生和研究生以科学为基础的方法和经验数据收集。罗格斯大学的Yarimar Bonilla博士探索了在主权形式变化和有争议的背景下，公民身份和国家认同的概念是如何被重新想象的。这项研究探讨了波多黎各的州地位运动，这是回答这个问题的一个重要网站，因为该运动在那些主张其他形式的主权地位而不是吞并和州地位的人中反常地获得了欢迎。作为美国的一个非法领土，波多黎各与美国的关系长期以来一直模棱两可，被误解。众所周知，波多黎各被描述为“国内意义上的外国人”，在这里，公民身份的概念引发了激烈的辩论。多年来，该岛的联邦地位向当地居民承诺了“两全其美”，即向美国公民提供一定程度的地方主权。然而，由于经济在过去20年中停滞不前，导致基础设施失灵，公共债务似乎无法偿还，外流移民达到历史水平(导致波多黎各人在美国大陆的集中度超过波多黎各领土)，越来越多的波多黎各人目前支持政治并入美国。这个项目将调查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、参与者观察、调查、焦点小组和个人访谈收集的数据，PI将检查其倡导者是如何想象国家地位的，以及它认为有能力解决哪些问题。这项研究的发现将对思考主权转移时代公民身份的文化含义，以及美国及其边缘地区当前的政治可能性格局具有广泛的意义。

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.