The difference walls make' : cultural dynamics and implications of change in Sāmoan architectural traditions and socio-spatial practices (1940-2006)

Abstract

This study features an ethnographic investigation of Sāmoan village architecture, historical and political traditions and concerns of their inhabitants in American Sāmoa and (independent) Sāmoa. Using village and family case studies, surveys, and in depth participant observation and interviews, the study analyzes how Sāmoan architecture encompasses rich cultural traditions, aesthetics, and social practices that are used to manifest, embed, and ‘advance’ social and cultural identities within social communities and physical landscapes. The ethnography describes how traditional open, round or oval house forms reflect and shape Sāmoan values, beliefs, traditions, and socio-spatial and temporal practices. It then delineates socio-cultural dynamics and implications of sixty-five years of architectural changes. Examining how the increased use of imported building materials, rectangular floor plans, and physically enclosed architectural space, affect less tangible cultural areas of a changing Samoan society forms the core research aim. A key aspect of the study is the incorporation of Sāmoan conceptual terms, such as anoafale, mata, tā, tau and vā. These terms support the integration and advancement of current anthropological theoretical developments in House Society, materiality and agency, habitus, place and space, cultural landscape, and the newly emergent General Tā-Vā (Time-Space) Theory of Reality into the analysis. These theories frame the examination of Sāmoan architectural processes and the ways in which place, space, social relationships, landscape, history, identity and processes of dwelling are constructed, reproduced and changed over time. New insights are gained about how changing architectural forms, materials and processes signify various levels and types of socio-cultural continuity and change.The study thereby contributes new understanding to how architecture, the design and construction of built forms and spaces for human uses, plays an active and integral role in broader processes of culture and society. Architectural processes and concepts concretise worldview into built forms and spaces to form the habitus, a key dimension of socio-cultural reproduction. Cultural beliefs and social systems are expressed in architecture and its related socio-spatial practices. Buildings and their spaces are not simply the settings where socio-cultural activities occur, but are central to the very processes described and analyzed by socio-cultural anthropologists.