This year's doctoral student jury, consisting of Robert Y. Chang (NYU), João Felipe Gonçalves (U Chicago), and Marry Murrell (UC Berkeley), writes:
Jessica Cattelino’s rich essay explores “need-based sovereignty” as a modality of settler colonialism in the United States. Focusing on the Florida Seminoles, Cattelino juxtaposes two historical moments: the 1950s, when the tribe successfully repelled the threat of termination; and 2007, when they celebrated the 50th anniversary of their tribal reorganization. Between the two moments the Florida Seminoles moved from impoverishment to wealth, attracting renewed calls for the end to their sovereignty. A fundamental tension marks both historical moments: is the federal government’s relationship with indigenous polities based on need or is it based on recognition and a trust relationship?
Cattelino uses Gregory Bateson’s concept of a “double bind” to describe the predicament of the Florida Seminoles: sovereignty brings wealth and yet, due to the structures of expectation within the settler-colonial society, wealth may undermine sovereignty. Cattelino suggests that this double bind cannot be undone by the Florida Seminoles alone because individuals caught in double binds can neither comment on the contradictory demands placed on them nor totally control the terms of their own representation. It is up to others, perhaps especially the anthropologist, to change the cultural expectations of settler colonialism.
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This year the jury also designated an honorable mention:
Marisol de la Cadena
(UC Davis)
for her article
“Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes:
Conceptual Reflections beyond 'Politics'”
(Cultural
Anthropology
25, no. 2 (May 2010): 335-370).
Read the entire 2011 commendation here.
