Open AccessAmerican Exceptionalism in American Samoa
Author(s) -
Karen Armstrong
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
suomen antropologi
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.141
H-Index - 7
eISSN - 1799-8972
pISSN - 0355-3930
DOI - 10.30676/jfas.v33i2.116437
Subject(s) - militarization , samoan , exceptionalism , american exceptionalism , administration (probate law) , american samoa , empire , politics , navy , ideology , political science , democracy , law , public administration , sociology , history , political economy , genealogy , philosophy , linguistics
American Samoa has been a territory of the United States for 108 years. For fifty ears of this period, American Samoa was administered by the U.S. Navy. Thepolicies of the naval administration established practices of militarization—that is, integrating the military and its values into the lives of the locals—that continue today. Significant numbers of American Samoans serve in the various branches of the U.S. military; Samoans participate in, and support, the ‘incoherent empire’ of the United States. The ideology of ‘American exceptionalism’—the incorporation of democracy, freedom and human rights as features purportedly distinguishing U.S. imperialist practice from its colonizing forebears—was never effectively part of the administration of American Samoa. Nevertheless, when debating their future political status, Samoans choose to keep the present political arrangement as long as they can control their land and titles system and practice faʻaSamoa, the Samoan way.