Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Susan Vanek: The Cost of Independence: National Identity and Economic Autonomy in Greenland

本项目通过格陵兰的国家建设努力，特别是“格陵兰品牌”倡议，审查格陵兰的独立运动，这是一个努力将族裔身份重新配置为国家身份的进程。格陵兰民族是世界事务中的一个新现象，因为它是由土著因纽特人组成和领导的，有望成为第一个独立的因纽特民族国家。因此，它是当代北极国家建设的少数例子之一。这种过渡正在重新配置该地区的治理面貌，格陵兰？随着丹麦的衰落，丹麦在其自身治理中的作用越来越大。格陵兰的民族品牌使人们注意到，文化和特性作为土著和少数群体经济发展和政治承认的工具，发挥着越来越大的作用。拟议的项目以关于北方和南半球土著运动的学术研究为基础，并为之作出贡献，探讨从主要是族裔的因努伊特人身份向民族身份的过渡，以及在这一过程中对格陵兰作为一个地方和格陵兰人作为一个民族的各种理解之间的争论。它研究了文化和身份如何通过政策进行配置和重新配置，以实现政治和经济自主权，以及它们如何越来越多地被政治，商业和非政府组织的各种利益作为发展的工具。该项目还有助于更好地了解政府和治理，将其从单纯侧重于政治行为体的直接自上而下的过程转变为以多重和交叉的社会、文化、政治和经济利益以及有争议的意义为特征的过程。该项目采用“边界”的概念来研究当代国家建设作为一个内部和外部的重点过程，突出民族国家在日益全球化的北极地区不断变化的作用，面对气候变化，伴随着越来越多的国际关注和越来越多的资源开发。

This project examines Greenland's independence movement through its nation-building efforts, particularly its Branding Greenland initiative, a process that strives to reconfigure an ethnic identity into a national identity. The Greenlandic Nation is a new phenomenon in world affairs as it is composed and led by an indigenous Inuit population, poised to become the first independent Inuit nation-state. As such it is one of the few contemporary examples of nation-building in the Arctic. This transition is reconfiguring the face of governance in the region, with Greenland?s role in its own governance increasing as Denmark's wanes. Nation-branding in Greenland draws attention to the increasing role of culture and identity as tools for economic development and political recognition by indigenous and minority groups. Building on and contributing to scholarship on indigenous movements in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the proposed project explores the transition from a primarily ethnic, Inuit identity to a national identity and the contention between various understandings of Greenland as a place and Greenlanders as a people embedded in this process. It examines how culture and identity have been configured and reconfigured through policy with the goal of attaining political and economic autonomy, and how they have increasingly been objectified and essentialized as tools for development by various interests in politics, business, and NGOs. This project also contributes to a more situated understanding of government and governance, moving it from a straight-forward top-down process focused solely on political actors to one characterized by multiple and intersecting social, cultural, political and economic interests and contested meanings. This project employs the notion of "bordering" to examine contemporary nation-building as an internally and externally focused process, highlighting the changing role of the nation-state in an increasingly global Arctic, facing climate change accompanied by growing international attention and increasing resource development.