Doctoral Dissertation Research in Law and Social Science

这一博士论文项目聚焦于法律话语和关于英属维尔京群岛的种族和国家认同的话语的交集。报告审查了各岛屿在二十世纪经历的持续殖民地位、旅游业促进的经济繁荣以及随之而来的来自加勒比其他岛屿的移民增加期间，族裔和国家特性相互构建的方式。英属维尔京群岛的国家身份一直被不稳定地定义为来自独立的加勒比海国家的移民(他们目前占该岛人口的近一半)、这些岛屿与英国的关系以及英属维尔京群岛人企业希望吸引的游客。与早先的研究不同的是，早期的研究将种族和国家认同视为“赋予者”，并试图从竞争稀缺的“资源”所导致的“适应”的角度来解释它们之间的相互作用，这项研究遵循了最近关于印度的研究的线索，这些研究质疑适应主义方法的前提。通过法庭案例、记录和访谈，这项研究将质疑“资源”和“竞争”的定义是不言而喻的，并检验“资源”本身是随着国家和民族认同形成的法律和文化过程而历史地构建的这一命题。这项研究将增加人类学关于民族主义、种族和法律的理论。

This doctoral dissertation project focusses on the intersection of legal discourses and discourses on ethnic and national identity in the British Virgin Islands. It examines the ways ethnic and national identities have been mutually constructed during the islands' twentieth century experience of continued colonial status, an economic boom fostered by tourism, and a concomitant increase in migration from other Caribbean islands. British Virgin Island national identity has been precariously defined against migrants from independent Caribbean nations who come to work there (who currently make up almost half of the islands' population), the islands' relationship to the UK, and the tourists British Virgin Islander businesses hope to attract. Unlike earlier research which took ethnic and national identities as "givens" and attempted to explain their interactions in terms of "adaptation" resulting from competition over scarce "resources," this study follows leads from recent work on India which questions the premises of adaptationist approaches. Using court cases, records, and interviews, the study will contest the definition of "resources" and "competition" as self-evident, and test the proposition that "resources" themselves are historically constructed along with legal and cultural processes of national and ethnic identity formation. This research will add to anthropological theory on nationalism, ethnicity and law.