This book project develops a theory of self-determination that understands peoples to be entangled rather than bounded. The constitutional histories of colonized, indigenous, and exiled peoples disclose what I term an “entanglement” between states, peoples, and individuals, which manifests in three dimensions: institutional, associational, and territorial. These three dimensions of entanglement challenge the presuppositions grounding existing theories of self-determination, which tend to take peoples as institutionally, associatively, and territorially bounded groups. By contrast, I offer an entangled theory of self-determination, which extends the non-domination principle institutionally and takes a differentiating orientation to the questions of association and territory. Taken together, this book underlines the lesson that there is conceptual and normative significance to rejecting both the state and the individual as the default units of analysis, but rather interpreting political communities as defined and differentiated by institutions, associative relationships, and territorial practices. To that end, I ground my conceptual and normative analysis with interpretative analysis of the constitutional histories (including their founding constitutions, subsequent constitutional reforms, court rulings, and grassroots contestations) of four particular peoples that are entangled with territorial sovereign states: Puerto Rico, an incorporated territory of the United States; Hong Kong, a former British colony handed over to China; Austronesian peoples in Taiwan, and; exiled Tibetans in India’s settlements.
Entangled Peoplehood is divided into two major sections. The first section of the book unpacks the three dimensions of entanglement through an interpretation of legal histories of colonized, indigenous, and exiled peoples. It puts forward the claim that entangled institutions govern the relations within both the colonizing state and the colonized people and hence re-constitute both communities in the process, a relationship that produces further associative and territorial entanglements that are more penetrating and irreversible than mere domination or exploitation. The second section of the book provides and defends a theory of self-determination that responds to these three dimensions. Taking the relational tradition of self-determination as its starting point, it develops a theory of self-determination that connects the principle of non-domination with the ethics of co-creation, such that it could empower individuals as they navigate shifting and cross-cutting relationships with the peoples and land they are entangled with.