American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures in the Philippines and Puerto Rico during U.S. Colonialism

by Julian Go

When the United States took control of the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the wake of the Spanish-American War, it declared that it would transform its new colonies through lessons in self-government and the ways of American-style democracy. In both territories, U.S. colonial officials built extensive public school systems, and they set up American-style elections and governmental institutions. The officials aimed their lessons in democratic government at the political the relatively small class of the wealthy, educated, and politically powerful within each colony. While they retained ultimate control for themselves, the Americans let the elite vote, hold local office, and formulate legislation in national assemblies. American Empire and the Politics of Meaning is an examination of how these efforts to provide the elite of Puerto Rico and the Philippines a practical education in self-government played out on the ground in the early years of American colonial rule, from 1898 until 1912. It is the first systematic comparative analysis of these early exercises in American imperial power. The sociologist Julian Go unravels how American authorities used “culture” as both a tool and a target of rule, and how the Puerto Rican and Philippine elite received, creatively engaged, and sometimes silently subverted the Americans’ ostensibly benign intentions. Rather than finding that the attempt to transplant American-style democracy led to incommensurable “culture clashes,” Go assesses complex processes of cultural accommodation and transformation. By combining rich historical detail with broader theories of meaning, culture, and colonialism, he provides an innovative study of the hidden intersections of political power and cultural meaning-making in America’s earliest overseas empire.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

392 pages, Paperback

Published March 14, 2008

About the author

Julian Go is a Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate in the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture & The Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago.

Julian Go’s research explores the social logics, forms and impact of empires and colonialism; postcolonial/decolonial thought and related questions of social theory, epistemology, and knowledge; and global historical sociology.

Much of Go’s work has focused on the US empire. His other work is on postcolonial thought and social theory. His most recent book, Policing Empires: Militarization and Race in Britain and America, 1829-present (Oxford, 2023) explores imperialism’s impact upon police militarization in the US and Britain. He is also working on a project that recovers anticolonial thought as a critical form of social theory.

His scholarship has won prizes from the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, the American Political Science Association, and the International Studies Association, among other institutions. He is the winner of Lewis A. Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting in Sociology given by the American Sociological Association. In 2021-2022, Julian serves as the President of the Social Science History Association.

Reviews

[stella! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Do not try to cram this book in three days for a book report or you’ll have an aneurysm but overall interesting although repetitive

[Rusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Go's argument and structure of the book makes it easy to follow and understand the evolution of the politics of the elites in Puerto Rico and the Philippines at the beginning of American rule. However, the over all writing of the book feels repetitive to an unnecessary point, and seems to fall into the style that seems to hamper down so many academics.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Go's model of culture as a "semiotic system-in-practice" is interesting inasmuch as he tries to walk a line between structuralism and discourse, but the book is highly repetitive, and fails to make up in depth what it lacks in breadth. Also, I effing hate reading sociology.

[Aren Lerner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating look at the cultures of Puerto Rico and the Philippines under US rule. Gives thought-provoking suggestions that I had not heard anywhere else for why democracy in former Spanish colonies has not succeeded as peacefully and stably as in former British areas.