Formations of United States Colonialism by Alyosha Goldstein

Author:Alyosha Goldstein [Goldstein, Alyosha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780822375968
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA IN AMERICAN SAMOA

Developmental frameworks as applied to Samoa have historically turned on a mythical narrative of modernity: the possibility of modern transformation of the island and its inhabitants, and the ensuing access (in some form) to the American dream—education, a high standard of living, consumer products and new technologies, and productive accumulation of wealth. Developmentalism in American Samoa is rooted in visions of progress and modernity that were worked out in the context of colonial politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it was also central to U.S. policy in the islands (and elsewhere) in the post–World War II Cold War era of decolonization. This latter time period is my focus here, and the case of football clearly illustrates the kinds of transformations that have been taking place in the islands in conjunction with movement abroad for the past several decades.

Over the course of the twentieth century, U.S.-led development policies in American Samoa have been focused on capital improvements (institution and infrastructure building); extending the reach of the market economy and promoting capitalist accumulation; and transforming Samoans as modern citizen-subjects of American empire. Taken together, they have stimulated what Lewthwaite, Mainzer, and Holland called a “quiet revolution in rising expectations” that could not be fulfilled within the context of the local economy, thus giving rise to a permanent condition of transnational migration and movement to the United States in search of education, capital, and life experience.32

In the 1960s and 1970s development programs on the islands were intended to showcase the United States in a positive light on the international stage, thereby demonstrating its commitment to its colonies and successful global leadership. The new developmentalism of the mid-twentieth century marked a decisive shift, even as it drew on some of the same basic assumptions about the importance of progress and proper forms of the modern. Developmentalism was an important attempt to stabilize the post–World War II world capitalist order of the time.33 It was both an ideal and institutionalized policy in that while it cast the United States as the pinnacle of industrialized civilization, it held a promise of inclusion for “First World” working classes and colonial and postcolonial populations.34 United States–based development theories of the 1950s and 1960s supplied an explicitly non-Communist, modern capitalist solution to poverty and underdevelopment that relied on large amounts of capital, technology, and modern social institutions and values to industrialize poor countries.35 These modernization efforts also worked to undermine the case for decolonization in American Samoa (and in many ways underpin the continued rejection of colonial status).36

I contend that football in Samoa must be understood not simply as another instantiation of the growth of sporting labor markets, but as part of a crystallized formation in which local agendas and desires for status and upward mobility intersect with a longer history of U.S. strategies of empire and projects of modernization. The development policies set in place in the 1960s expanded existing migration possibilities, with the sport of football being established as one route to (educational and other) opportunities in the United States.

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