Anna Lim

Cultural Anthropology

Regional focus:France, French Caribbean.

Topical interests: Topical interests: social inclusion/exclusion, colonialism, nation-states, race/racism, citizenship and social rights, reproduction, family, ethnographic film.

The research questions that excite and inspire me the most are those that touch on issues of social inclusion and exclusion, and offer a way of thinking through the complex negotiation of rights and social justice in today's world. Though a cultural anthropologist now, I began my graduate studies in historical archaeology. At that time, I wanted to look at issues of ethnicity in 19th-century mining towns in California. Seeing that the kinds of research questions that interested me were difficult to examine within the archaeological record, I later switched to cultural anthropology. I currently work in France and the non-sovereign French Caribbean, exploring ideas of nation and belonging, and more generally, constructions of difference in the context of France's shift from empire to nation. In my dissertation I examine the intersection of French demographic concerns, the development of the welfare state, and the collapse of the colonial empire to show how issues of reproduction and family were at the center of 20th-century European projects of nation-building and crucial to the creation of a post-colonial/post-imperial citizenship. My research focuses specifically on a contrast set up by the state between depopulation in metropolitan France and overpopulation in its former colonies in the Caribbean-colonies that did not gain independence but were integrated into the French nation in 1946 as full administrative departments of France. I argue that in invoking ideas of family, fertility, and "population," the state subtly distinguished between members of the new nation in an effort to limit the social rights of its former colonial subjects, now full French citizens. In my dissertation I examine the claims of equality and colorblindness of the French state, asking how those claims operated in the construction of the new nation without empire. Likewise, I examine how France's new overseas citizens negotiated state claims about "difference" in their struggles for equal rights and political voice.

My experiences in French academics while working on my dissertation sparked in me a strong interest in international collaboration and opened my eyes to other models of scholarship and teaching. In particular, my experiences in French academics pushed me to reflect on the role of academics in larger society. Since my return to the US in 2006, I have been committed to promoting discussions within the department on the political role of anthropologists and anthropological research, and the meaning of anthropological engagement both inside and outside the academy.

Publications:

2005 "Making Family: Depopulation and Social Crisis in France" in Barren States: The Population Implosion in Europe, Carrie Douglas, ed. New York: Berg Publishers