A treatment of the spin-statistics relation in nonrelativistic quantum
mechanics due to Berry and Robbins [Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A (1997) 453,
1771-1790] is generalised within a group-theoretical framework. The
construction of Berry and Robbins is re-formulated in terms of certain locally
flat vector bundles over n-particle configuration space. It is shown how
families of such bundles can be constructed from irreducible representations of
the group SU(2n). The construction of Berry and Robbins, which leads to a
definite connection between spin and statistics (the physically correct
connection), is shown to correspond to the completely symmetric
representations. The spin-statistics connection is typically broken for general
SU(2n) representations, which may admit, for a given value of spin, both bose
and fermi statistics, as well as parastatistics. The determination of the
allowed values of the spin and statistics reduces to the decomposition of
certain zero-weight representations of a (generalised) Weyl group of SU(2n). A
formula for this decomposition is obtained using the Littlewood-Richardson
theorem for the decomposition of representations of U(m+n) into representations
of U(m)*U(n).