EAPSI:Understanding the Formation of Local Identities in Relation to Foreign Military Bases

本项目将调查冲绳人和日本政府之间的紧张关系如何在北方冲绳的美军设施的扩张可能会影响居民表达和制定他们的地方身份的方式。本研究将探讨基地抗议活动的激励效应是否可能标志着冲绳人作为一个独特的民族或土著群体，而不是日本少数民族的新兴趋势，以及这种转变可能产生的更广泛的影响。这项研究将与琉球大学社会运动专家Kosuzu Abe博士合作进行。通过访谈、参与观察和新闻媒体的话语分析，本研究将试图在军事基地争议的背景下，找出冲绳文化和政治认同形成的新趋势。美军在冲绳的军事基地自二战结束以来一直是紧张局势的根源。然而，除了对基地的周期性强烈抗议浪潮之外，冲绳人普遍接受了基地。然而，自1995年美国海军陆战队强奸冲绳女学生以来，以及最近政府开始在边野古进行填海造地活动后，反对建设的抗议活动愈演愈烈，反基地候选人在最近的选举中获胜。政治地理学家感兴趣的是民族认同的现象，即人们的大集体如何围绕着一套共同的文化观念和实践、政治和经济利益以及领土要求而结合成一个想象中的社区。将民族认同动员到政治运动中可以对国家产生深远的影响，苏格兰和加泰罗尼亚的独立公投以及乌克兰和伊拉克/叙利亚的分离主义冲突就是明证。EAPSI奖由日本科学促进会（JSPS）资助。

This project will investigate how the tensions between Okinawans and the Japanese national government over the expansion of a U.S. military facility in northern Okinawa may affect the way residents articulate and enact their local identities. This study will examine whether the galvanizing effect of the bases protests may signal an emerging trend toward Okinawan identification as a distinct national or indigenous group, as opposed to a Japanese ethnic minority, and what the broader implications of such a shift might be. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kosuzu Abe, an expert on social movements at the University of the Ryukyus. Through interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis of news media, this study will seek to identify emerging trends in Okinawan cultural and political identity formation in the context of the military bases controversy.U.S. military bases in Okinawa have been a source of tension since the end of World War II. Yet aside from periodic waves of intense protest against the bases, Okinawans have generally accommodated the bases. However, since the 1995 rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by U.S. marines, and most recently, after the national government commenced land reclamation activities in Henoko, protests against construction have intensified, and anti-base candidates swept the most recent elections. Political geographers are interested in the phenomenon of national identification, how large collectivities of people coalesce into an imagined community around a shared set of cultural ideas and practices, political and economic interests, and territorial claims. The mobilization of national identities into political movements can have profound implications for states as evidenced by independence referendums in Scotland and Catalonia and separatist conflicts in the Ukraine and Iraq/Syria. This EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).