This planning grant will enable exploratory research for development of a full scale proposal on the transformation of legal identities. The project investigates how the identity of "leper" is being transformed on the island of Molokai, in Hawaii, in the context of international tourism and of local, regional, and international struggles over the acquisition of land in Hawaii. A central theoretical focus of the research is to flush out the process and meaning of reclaiming or reinventing legal histories and contemporary identities. The case of "the leper" is an example of a legal identity that was at one time excluded and punished and now is being transformed and mobilized to secure entitlements, such as property. This transformation is examined in the context of the colonial history of Hawaii and the present effort by remnants of the nineteenth century leper colony in Kalaupapa to retain their rights to the settlement in the process of its establishment as a national historical park. The project traces the emergence of a new local identity for "lepers" by considering how contemporary sufferers of Hansen's disease create a legal, cultural, and political space for themselves, reworking the imagery of an oppressive colonial past in the context of a neocolonialist tourist industry through which their claims to entitlement may be secured and/or threatened at the same time. The research contributes to empirical and theoretical work on the ways in which law and other institutions construct identities while at the same time structuring forums which people use to reshape their histories and make entitlement claims. It has wider theoretical implications for the intersection of legal and medical definitions, the conflict of state and federal notions of land tenure and use, and the changes wrought in the legal landscape by a dramatically changed economic situation.
