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AndrewKerrProject 13 - 19 May 2010 - Main.AndrewKerr
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5/15/2010: I have completed my project for the purposes of this class, and it is ready to be graded. However, I might continue to add or upload any relevant information/ analysis. Note that my revised essay is mid-way down the text of the wiki page. Thanks, AJK. | | | Structural Change? | |
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< | From 1898 until the mid-1950s, the Chamorro population evolved from being almost exclusively agricultural - marked by a decentralized peopling of the island in the form of a network of "village" or communal living arrangements, centered in a corporatist-collectivist ethos of governance - to a more urban, tertiary economy concomitant with nuclear-family living arrangements. At first blush, these brush strokes tend to the notion of a "structural transformation," a heuristic in development economics meant to capture the process whereby the engine or motive force of a developing country is re-positioned from a traditional elite/ peasant binary model of food production to an educated middle-class capable of sustaining a post-agricultural dynamic. However, Guam in the 1940s or 1950s could not be described as industrial. In fact, it was government policy to purposely inhibit the economic development of the island (see US’ supposed need to control inflationary pressures). The US viewed Guamanian economic self-sufficiency (which effectively required trade for a small island nation) as incompatible with the martial logic of possessing Guam, as a fortress or "Galapagos" in the security nexus of the Western Pacific. Rather this demographic change from rural, collectivist to semi-rural, nuclear is better understood as tracking the land law of Guam during the first half of the century. My inquiry takes shape along the following questions: | >
> | From 1898 until the mid-1950s, the Chamorro population evolved from being almost exclusively agricultural - marked by a decentralized peopling of the island in the form of a network of "village" or communal living arrangements, centered in a corporatist-collectivist ethos of governance - to a more urban, tertiary economy concomitant with nuclear-family living arrangements. At first blush, these brush strokes tend to the notion of a "structural transformation," a heuristic in development economics meant to capture the process whereby the engine or motive force of a developing country is re-positioned from a traditional elite/ peasant binary model of food production to an educated middle-class capable of sustaining a post-agricultural dynamic. However, Guam in the 1940s or 1950s could not be described as industrial. In fact, it was government policy to purposely inhibit the economic development of the island (see US’ supposed need to control inflationary pressures). The US viewed Guamanian economic self-sufficiency (which effectively required trade for a small island nation) as incompatible with the martial logic of possessing Guam, as a fortress or "Gibraltar" in the security nexus of the Western Pacific. Rather this demographic change from rural, collectivist to semi-rural, nuclear is better understood as tracking the land law of Guam during the first half of the century. My inquiry takes shape along the following questions: | | | *Why or to what benefit did the US government enact its land policies in Guam? |
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