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.
Supervised by Dr. Fred Myers, New York University Doctoral student, Tate LeFevre conducted twelve months of ethnographic field-research (10 months with NSF funding) on the emergence of new indigenous citizen identities in cultural production among Kanak youth in Nouméa, New Caledonia. Focusing primarily on networks of cultural production outside of state-supported institutional frameworks, Tate investigated how contemporary young Kanak imagine what it means to be "Kanak" and "indigenous," and how they create and mobilize representations of "Kanak identity" in order to position themselves in particular ways vis à vis the French state, the Melanesian region, global indigeneity and each other. Her findings, which will be presented in her forthcoming doctoral dissertation, contribute to theorizations of sovereignty, citizenship and of indigeneity (an increasingly important form of identification and resistance to state dominance across the globe). The final project outcome also contributes to a greater understanding of the relationship between cultural and political identities and how this relationship effects the evolution of institutions and policies in modern (especially post-colonial or newly independent) nation states. In addition to the co-PI's forthcoming doctoral dissertation, this research has also led to the publication of a chapter in an edited volume on art and identity in contemporary Melanesia and two presentations at major academic conferences. It has also supported the training of a social scientist.
