Transcultured states: Elite political culture in Puerto Rico and the Philippines during United States colonial rule (c. 1898--1912)

This dissertation analyzes and theorizes transcultural reception through a comparative historical analysis of US colonial rule in Puerto Rico and the Philippines. During colonial rule in both colonies, US administrators attempted to impose their own political culture upon Puerto Ricans and Filipinos. I compare how the Puerto Rican and Filipino elites, who already had their own particular political cultures, received this cultural imposition. I demonstrate that in the first years of US rule, cultural imposition did not effect cultural transformation in either colony. Both the Puerto Rican and Filipino elite domesticated the Americans' signs and institutional forms into traditional order. But a divergence emerged thereafter. The Puerto Rican elite adopted the Americans' concepts of government and thereby effected politico-cultural change. By contrast, the Filipino elite persisted in their preexisting political culture and continued to domesticate.;I track the divergence in cultural outcome to differences in underlying social conditions during US rule. In Puerto Rico, US rule was accompanied by a transformation in the preexisting social structure. This caused what I call a "disjunction" between the Puerto Rican elites' preexisting political culture and the referential field of social relations, in turn bringing a breakdown in the preexisting cultural system. Ultimately, this compelled the Puerto Ricans to search for new models, and they found them in the Americans' offerings. By contrast, in the Philippines, US rule was accompanied by sociohistorical continuity. There remained an "ontological correspondence" between cultural system and referential field, despite US rule and its attempt to impose American-styled political institutions. Consequently, the Filipino elite continued to domesticate imposed institutional forms and merely elaborated upon their preexisting cultural system.;The analysis brings a theoretical resolution to the tension between structuralist theories of culture and common sense thinking on culture contact under colonialism. Culture contact, even in the form of direct cultural imposition under colonialism, will only result in cultural transformation if it coincides with a disjunction between cultural system and referential field. Without that coincidence, the preexisting cultural system will be reproduced.