Tales of the Talā (Dollar)
Tales of the Talā (Dollar)
Notes on Cars, Consumption, and Class in American Sāmoa1
This chapter features “homework” conducted in American Sāmoa that illustrates how the intensification of transnational flows of goods, people, and ideas in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have transformed local values about cars, mobility, and social status. The mobility that the car has introduced makes a big difference between having one and not having one, enabling access to different consumer items for wider swaths of local people. In addition to accessing consumer goods more easily, car culture has enabled the transformation of everyday patterns of movement for many on the island. Because of these shifts in daily patterns of movement and consumption and their link to the cash economy, they also suggest changes in local social organization, where one's social status is not always primarily determined by one's relation to ranking titles (although clearly this is still very important).
Keywords: cars, American Sāmoa, car culture, mobility, social status, social organization, movement patterns, consumption patterns
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