Islands and Oceans
Reimagining Sovereignty and Social Change
Sasha Davis
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Imprint: University of Georgia Press
Published: 04/2020
Pages: 188
Subject: Social Science, Political Science
Print ISBN: 9780820357355
eBook ISBN: 9780820357348
DESCRIPTION
Sovereignty is a term used by stateless people seeking
decolonization as well as by dominant social groups struggling to
reassert their socially privileged positions. All sorts of
political actors, it seems, are interested in sovereignty. It is
less clear, however, just what the term means, and whether calls
for sovereignty promote a politically progressive or conservative
agenda. Examining how sovereignty functions allows us to better
understand the dangers, promise, and limitations of relying on it
as a political strategy.
Islands and Oceans explores how struggles for
decolonization, self- determination, and political rights permeate
conceptualizations of how sovereignty operates. To support his
theoretical claims, Sasha Davis works through a series of case
studies, drawing on research that he conducted between 2013 and
2017 in Korea, Guam, Yap, Palau, the Northern Marianas, Hawai‘i,
and Honshu and Okinawa in Japan. Because of the hybridized and
contested arrangements of sovereignty in these territories, these
places are excellent sites to tease out some of the differences
between official regimes of sovereignty and the actual control of
social processes on the ground. In addition, analysis of the
tensions and acute debates over sovereignty in these regions lays
bare how sovereignty works as a process. Davis’s study of these
political cases within the Asia-Pacific region advances our
understanding the nature of sovereignty more generally.
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