Doctoral Dissertation Research: Emerging Futures: The Politics of Cultural Production Among Indigenous Kanak Youth

纽约大学博士生泰特·勒费夫尔在弗雷德·迈尔斯博士的指导下，将对前殖民地独立后产生新的土著公民身份的动态过程进行研究。这项研究将主要集中在文化生产网络上，这些网络随着新一代活动家的配置、竞争和分享原住民的意义而在中央机构框架之外演变。从根本上了解这些进程对于理解这个现代民族国家不断演变的体制和问题至关重要。这项研究将在即将举行的新喀里多尼亚脱离法国独立的全民公投所产生的政治利害关系加剧的背景下进行。这位研究人员将在该国首都努美阿进行为期12个月的人类学田野研究。她将采用一种混合方法收集数据，包括：参与者观察、视频和音频记录、生活故事的收集和分析、对话分析、档案研究和社会网络分析。通过分析土著身份是如何形成和表达的，这项研究将有助于理解作为一种日益重要的自我表征和抵制的全球策略。这将有助于社会科学理论，即独立的现代国家如何在日益一体化的世界中发展。它还将有助于为与后殖民国家的国际关系政策提供信息。为这项研究提供资金支持一名社会科学家的培训。

New York University doctoral student, Tate LeFevre, supervised by Dr. Fred Myers, will undertake research on the dynamic processes that produce new indigenous citizen identities when former colonies become independent. This research will center primarily on the networks of cultural production that evolve outside of centralized institutional frameworks as new generations of activists configure, contest, and share what it means to be indigenous. Understanding these processes from the ground up is critical to understanding the evolving institutions and problems of the modern nation state.The research will be carried out in the context of the intensified political stakes generated by an upcoming referendum on New Caledonia's independence from France. The researcher will undertake 12 months of anthropological field research in Nouméa, the country's capital. She will employ a mixed-methods strategy for data collection, including: participant observation, video and audio recording, collection and analysis of life stories, conversational analysis, archival research, and social network analysis.By analyzing how indigenous identities are formulated and expressed, this research will contribute to understanding "indigeneity" as an increasingly important strategy of self-representation and resistance around the world. This will contribute to social scientific theory of how independent modern nations develop in an increasingly integrated world. It also will help to inform policies for international relations with post-colonial countries. Funding this research supports the training of a social scientist.