Abstracts - Silliman University

Transcription

Session A1
POWER, IDENTITY, AND MEANING-MAKING
The Struggle of Social Positioning: Human Dignity in Lowland Culture and Society in Oriental Mindoro
Natsuko Shiraishi
Kyoto University, Japan
In the 1970s, the majority of socioeconomic studies conducted on rural rice-growing communities in Asian countries
emphasized local problems of social class, social justice, and welfare. Also in the Philippines, such communities relied
on strong power structures, as well as moral and judicial systems for the lower classes, which were aspects of the
dominant patron-client relationship. Further studies in the 1990s of these communities underscored the trend of
surreptitious resistance by the lower classes against their patrons, and the subtleties in the social relationships between
patron and client, as well as those within the peasant community. However, such studies neglect the possibility of
diverse ethnicities within these rural communities, and there is no analytical description beyond the introduction of
the struggle of the positioning of one’s identity inside the community.
This study focuses on the politics of ethnicity and social acceptance of the indigenous people in Oriental Mindoro
(Mangyan) by lowland farmers through the case study method. What rationale is behind the farmers’ acceptance of
the katutubo (indigenous people) in their fields as sharecroppers? How does this diversify the ideas of “Others” and
“ethnicity” in rural communities, socially, economically, culturally, and politically? Finally, how do the Mangyan see
themselves in such a context? This study explores the struggle of social positioning in a rural community, and rethinks
the concept of human dignity within the context of Philippine lowland culture and society.
To Become “Christian Bajau”: The Sama Dilaut’s Conversion to Pentecostal Christianity in
Davao City, Philippines
Waka Aoyama
University of Tokyo
The predicament of the Sama Dilaut who fled conflict-mired areas in the Southern Philippines northward to other
cities in the Philippines was recently reported through various media; yet little research work has been done to explore
the meaning of the changes they experienced. This paper attempts to analyze the mechanism of their conversion to
Pentecostal Christianity and its impact among the Sama Dilaut migrants in Davao City at the turn of the 21st century.
The bulk of the data for this paper was collected through ethnographic fieldwork from 1997 to 2014.
I will examine three questions: (1) how the Philippine government’s policies on poverty alleviation for cultural
minorities framed the life of the Sama Dilaut migrants; (2) why the Sama Dilaut migrants chose Pentecostal
Christianity, not other organizations that were also willing to help; and (3) how their conversion reconfigured the
Sama Dilaut community from within and in relation to its host society.
I will argue that in contrast to the study of the “the Sama Dilaut experience with official Islam in Sabah, Malaysia” by
Japanese anthropologist Nagatsu Kazufumi, the acceptance of the Christian faith among the Sama Dilaut in Davao
City has not offered them upward social mobility in the main stream society; instead, it served as a significant
apparatus to reconstruct their ethnic identity to survive as the “Christian Bajau” in the multi-ethnic urban market
society. I will also argue that it created space for the converts to conceptualize and operate an economy of gifts which
does not contradict the individualism that Pentecostalism brings its followers.
Yaya-alaga relationship: An Alternative Way of “Family”
Yukika Ohmura
Kyoto University
In the Philippines, “the family is basic to the life of Filipinos” and kinship is traced through blood ties to extend to
religious rituals. The family possesses the role to reproduce family members, rear children, and discipline children.
However, some of these family roles in Filipino families are substituted by other kinship members and even by non-
family members. The yaya, nanny or caretaker, is almost a necessary figure in middle and upper class Filipino families.
The yaya has the role to rear children but for some alagas (children in their charge), the yaya is more than a caretaker
and rather a second mother figure or an alternative way of parenting figure. At the same time, yayas also consider the
alaga and alaga’s parents as part of her family. Also the yaya is an ambiguous figure in the “family” due to the
existence of hierarchy which changes over the time between yaya and alaga. At the same time there is another
hierarchy existing between the yaya and other kasambahays that distinguish yayas from other kasambahays as “part
of the family”. In the panel presentation, the boundary of the “family” between the Filipino middle and upper class
families and the yaya is discussed in terms of “fictive kinship”, “milk kinship” “mater/social motherhood” and also
“relatedness”. This is to provide a conception of yayas in the Filipino upper and middle class families as a “figure that
erodes the boundary of divided private spheres coming from social class difference”.
Session 1B
RE-NARRATING THE NATION
A Study of Historicity of Rene O. Villanueva's Works in Children's Literature (1978-2007)
Eliezar L. Iñigo
University of the Philippines Los Baños
Rene O. Villanueva (1954-2007) was a multi-awarded writer (children's story writer, playwright, essayist) and
regarded by some scholars as “The Father of Modern Children's Literature in the Philippines”. He was one of the first
writers when the Aklat Adarna Kasaysayan series of then Children's Communication Center was founded in the late
1970's. He also became known as the head writer of the popular children's television program Batibot in the 1980s
and 1990s. In his three decades of writing for children, he often wrote about myths, legends, lives of heroes and
historical events. A reason why he did so, it should be noted, was that he graduated with a bachelor's degree in History.
To know how faithful or accurate to our history were his children's stories is something worthwhile, especially if we
consider how powerful their influence can be on children.
This paper will investigate the historical accuracy of Rene O. Villanueva works in children's literature by analyzing
all of his stories categorized or considered as 'historical'. This would give us a view of how valid his stories are in
relation to our 'history' and how his historical imagination was used to portray our history to. This study attempts to
contribute to the field of children's literature and history.
Authenticity or Wholeness? Filipino-ness in Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado
Jessica Gross
St. Louis College of Pharmacy
St.Louis, Missouri, USA
Questions of Filipino-ness run throughout Miguel Syjuco’s 2010 novel Ilustrado. One of its protagonists, Filipino
author Crispin Salvador, is several times accused by his critics of not being an authentic Filipino writer. The novel
puts the terms “authentic” and “whole” (a term whose meaning is not apparent until the end of the novel) into
opposition. I argue that Filipino identify is unsettled, and then ultimately redefined, in Ilustrado. This is done primarily
in a scene in the last chapter when Miguel, the book’s other main character, finds the boxes – supposedly filled with
a missing book manuscript – for which he has been searching in the entire novel. The boxes are empty, but Miguel
realizes that, in fact, the empty boxes contain the totality of human life and, therefore, his journey looking for the
missing book manuscript is complete.
In his meditation on the boxes, the narrator muses that “…one cannot help but look at what has just been made
whole…” (299). Ilustrado suggests that Filipino identity can be located in the sense of wholeness—which both
Ilustrado’s protagonists find at the end as they return to the Philippines—rather than in authenticity, which, the novel
points out, is a constantly moving target that was never “authentic” to begin with. Wholeness, Ilustrado argues, is a
putting together of the pieces of a multivalent identity while at the same time respecting that what is missing as just
as constituent of identity as what is present.
Poetry and the State (Or how poets defined the Filipino nation during martial law)
Lilia Quindoza Santiago
University of Hawai’i at Mano’a
Do poems have the power to oust a dictator? In ancient Greece, Plato declared that poets must be banished from the
Republic. He argued that poets and the practice of art and poetry are impediments to a lawful and just social order.
My paper interrogates Plato’s assumptions about art and poetry in the Philippine context. I read the poetry of Filipinos
written from 1966 – 1986 during the Presidency of Ferdinand Marcos. These poems are written in three important
languages of the country - English the international lingua franca, Filipino, the Tagalog based national language, and
Ilokano the common language of peoples in Northern Luzon.
The poets writing in English show how the language of the empire is wielded to wage resistance to a fascist regime.
Poets writing in Ilokano illustrate how folk wisdom is a greater force than kinship and political patronage, Ferdinand
Marcos being their fellow Ilokano. Poets writing in Tagalog, even as they were divided into different poetic and
political orientations, chronicle modes of engagement with Philippine society and revolution. Poets in these major
Philippine languages exhorted readers to write and fight. Their voices were united in the dismantling of an unjust
social and political order. Their verses show how poetics influences politics. The poetical becomes political.
My final argument is that modern Philippine poetics is rooted in Philippine discursive and normative practices that
helped define the Filipino nation in the 20th century. The poets and their texts of socially engaged poetry helped set
the Filipino people free.
Session 1C
NARRATIVE INTERVENTIONS
National Dreams, Liberating Fantasies: Problematizing the Cinematic “Bonifacio”, “Aguinaldo”, and “Luna”
Kevin Ansel Dy, University of the Philippines Diliman
Hansley A. Juliano, Ateneo de Manila University
As a period of founding significance to the Philippine nation-state, the Philippine Revolution (and its figures) has
captured our collective imagination. While the legacies of the major figures of the Revolution are subject to competing
representations of various historians, a “textbook narrative” consensus has filtered into popular consciousness. It is
from this context that recent representations in film emerge, becoming occasions for audiences to reflect on
contemporary political conditions. How, then, are each of these films inscribed in existing historical debates and
competing forms of historico-political imagination? In this study, we argue that in remembering and re-imagining the
Revolution through their chosen “heroes”, these films recruit the audience in demarcated historical debates of not only
who among them personifies the Revolution, but more importantly, what is the legacy of the Revolution itself – with
consequences to societal discourse.
It is in this light that we propose to examine the following films: Mark Meilly’s El Presidente, Enzo Williams’s
Bonifacio: Ang Unang Pangulo, and Jerrold Tarog’s Heneral Luna (the most recent and, so far, most commercially
successful). We shall do this by: (1) reassessing the historical literature on the Philippine Revolution and the respective
figures portrayed in the films; (2) tracing the genealog(ies) from historiography to portrayal-in-film; and (3) examining
how these films attempt to frame our contemporary political and national imagination(s). In doing so, we aim to shed
light on the struggle for control over the representations and symbolic significance of this founding period and its
personages.
Love, Politics, Desire and the Public Sphere: A Close Reading of Two Filipino Biographical Movies as Narrative
Interventions in Our Imagination of the Nation
Odine Maria M. De Guzman
University of the Philippines Diliman
This paper is a close reading of two Filipino movies as narrative interventions that have the potential to contribute to
the expansion of the public sphere and, thereby, to social change. The bio-movies under discussion are Markova:
Comfort Gay (2000) and Aishite imasu, 1941 (2004). Both are set during the Japanese occupation of Manila, take on
a biographical mode, and present a narrative lens for looking at complex issues that are often muted, such as sexuality,
sexual slavery, love and betrayal. A review of online public commentaries and movie reviews suggests that an attitude
of openness and judiciousness about these issues among the general viewership may be forthcoming. The paper argues
the movies and their narrative-telling contribute an alternative way of understanding and even re-acting toward these
issues—a way that resonates with a sense of a ‘compassionate community’.
The paper emphasizes the important ability of the arts, in this case, film and narrative, to intervene in public discourse
and history-making, offer space for pause, and perhaps, a rethinking or an evaluation of certain dominant, received
ideas about gender, violence, and the enemy or the ‘Other’. The reading and the ideational interventions asserted are
necessary, and especially relevant in light of vitriolic public, online commentary during the investigation and trial –
and then silence – of the murder of Jennifer Laude, a Filipino transgender woman by a US marine, who was deceived
by her gender identity. Although this was another case of American GIs violating Philippine laws, ironically, many
Filipinos, this time, engaged in victim-blaming instead of calling for mass action against the Balikatan, the processes
of the judiciary, or the weak political system. The nation was relatively quiet.
In this matter, the paper scrutinizes the reasons for the calm – the undercurrents of passion, dispassion, nationalism
and sexism.
Framing Intsik: A Glimpse of Perceptions towards the Chinese as Gleaned from Various Frames in
Philippine Society
Michael Anthony R. Ngo
Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technogy (MSU-IIT)
The perception towards the Chinese or Intsik, as they are popularly called, is mostly molded by the information, images
and stories presented through various mediums that are accessible to people. Such mediums are contributory to the
emerging (mis)conceptions that have been circulating in Philippine society even during the Spanish era. As a result,
anti-Chinese sentiments or Sinophobia existed among Filipinos causing discrimination, riots, and trust issues against
the Intsik. By employing archival research, the main aim of this study is to look into these mediums and see how the
perceptions were (re)created from the selected sources where “Chineseness” was mostly articulated and presented.
For this study, the Framing Model Theory is utilized to provide such frames to (re)create the images, information and
stories of the Intsik from the following arenas: Family Oral History, Media and selected scholarly works.
Session 1D
MUSLIMS IN THE PHILIPPINES OR FILIPINO MUSLIMS?
The Lanao Uprising in 1972
Tirmizy E. Abdullah
Mindanao State University Marawi
The Lanao Uprising took place on October 21 to 23, 1972, one hundred years after the Cavite Mutiny in 1872 and
precisely one month after the declaration of Martial Law in 1972. It was an armed and violent uprising of the
Bangsamoro people in Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte led by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). It was
the sharpest response of the Bangsamoro people to the Martial Law declared by President Ferdinand Marcos on
September 21, 1972. The Lanao areas, particularly the Muslim city of Marawi, were attacked by several hundred
angry rebels, who succeeded in occupying Camp Amai Pakpak and Pantar Bridge which connects the two Lanao
provinces. They took complete control of the Mindanao State University (MSU)-Marawi open campus where the
Japanese Ambassador to the Philippines, Toshio Urabe, was almost captured. It is historically significant for the
Bangsamoros because it served as the inception of larger-scale violence in Mindanao in the 1970s. The armed conflict
swiftly spread to the Bangsamoro areas of the provinces of undivided Cotabato and Sulu. After this uprising in 1972,
the Bangsamoro people and Muslim Mindanao were never the same again; It served as a most indispensable historical
turning point.
This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive account of the Lanao Uprising through interviews with the surviving
real actors and players. It begins by determining the factors surrounding its inception. It then tries to reconstruct and
investigate the claim that it was the most important event in the birth of the Bangsamoro rebellion. It seeks to shed
some light into the real motivations and underpinnings of the uprising; was it based on personal grudge or was it really
part of the nationalist struggle?
Bouncing Back After the War: The Case of Muslim and Christian Communities After the 2008 MILF Siege
in Lanao del Norte
Sulpecia L. Ponce, Sittie Aisah D. Abubacar, and Annie Joy A. Dagpin
Mindanao State University- Iligan Institute of Technology
The municipality of Kolambugan, Lanao del Norte, was attacked by the MILF on August 18, 2008 which resulted in
hostage-taking and the death of civilians, and the burning of houses and public facilities. This study describes the
experiences of Muslims and Christians during and after the said incident. It also examines the economic, peace and
order condition, Muslim-Christian relations and the recovery after the war. The researchers found out that the thriving
economic activity of Kolambugan before the conflict is now less lucrative with the decline in the income of business
establishments and the absence of more business investors in the area. The peaceful situation of the community prior
to the siege is now replaced by security threats, incidence of vendetta in the hinterland communities and kidnapping.
The friendly coexistence of Muslims and Christians before the conflict is now muddled with suspicion and social
distance. At present, the community finds it hard to recover economically, but attempts to restore the relations between
the Muslims and Christians have been facilitated through engagement which increase the frequent contacts of both
groups like the regular conduct of physical fitness activities, among others. The road to socio-economic recovery still
has a long way to go.
Marrying Your Neighbor: The Marital Bridge to Peace in Mindanao
Eric S. Casino, Independent Scholar
Alano T. Kadil, Notre Dame University, Cotabato City
The diverse peoples of Mindanao are simplistically classified as “Tri-People,” corresponding to Muslims, Lumads,
and Settlers. Popularized in the media, even by academics and politicians, Tri-People is a construct that avoids
multiplicity of social groups on the ground. It is a generic classification that can lead to divisiveness and exclusivity,
a dark underside of identity politics. Constructed categories are lifeless abstractions, or conceptual systems that do
not interact. To experience real-life interaction, investigators need to step out of the box of an idealized concept, into
the world of flesh and blood individuals.
One such interaction is in cases of mixed marriages. People who marry across social boundaries of religion, ethnicity,
occupation, or geography tend to regard partners not in terms of Tri-People abstractions, but in concrete personal and
social attributes. They marry someone from Davao, Butuan, Cotabato, or Cebu; or who is ethnically Maranao
(Meranao), Ilonggo, or Tagalog; or one who works as teacher, market vendor, or nurse. The saying that love is blind
has particular resonance with many cases of mixed marriages.
Mixed marriages are under-appreciated bridges towards peace and prosperity in Mindanao. The trend to marry across
traditional Tri-People categories cries for more; it is a contributor to peaceful communities. The purposes of this paper
are: to better define and understand this practice, to discover the social conditions that promote cross-ethnic marriages,
and to outline how this practice contributes to peace building. We will approach this topic through case-studies,
reserving a broader, statistically oriented study of its frequency and distribution in future follow-up studies.
Session 1E
DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO DISASTER MANAGEMENT
E-Government Service Delivery and Citizen Participation: The Case of Disaster Risk Reduction and
Management in Metro Manila
Natividad Cristina J. Gruet
De La Salle University
The advent of Web 2.0, or the development of a more user-dynamic internet technology, has opened a new wave of
conversation regarding its impact on human interaction and communities. The Internet has allowed a multi-way
process of communication between individuals, localities, and institutions. Thus, there is a demand for a more nuanced
approach within the context of an oscillating process of shaping both the technology and society rather than treating
the Internet as a single-directional phenomenon. This has implications on citizen-government relationships
particularly in government service delivery areas that require shared responsibility, such as Disaster Risk Reduction
and Management (DRRM). In DRRM, the underlying need for channels and methods that will enable coordination
and cooperation have resulted in certain government agencies adopting a more “social” approach to information
dissemination and crowd-sourcing. The establishment of a strong and constant presence of key government agencies,
such as the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and PAGASA-DOST on various Web 2.0 platforms,
creation of crowd-sourcing technologies, such as “Project Noah”, and the appropriation of official country-specific
keywords or hashtags – such as #walangpasok, #floodPH, #rescuePH – enable significant levels of participation and
government-citizen interaction. The result is more direct multi-way and multi-level methods of communicating local
information that have contextualized a universal platform and technological language. This study will look into how
the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies by communities and government affects government service delivery particularly
in the area of DRRM.
Climate Justice and the Protection of Future Generations: A Philippine Perspective
Lowell Bautista
University of Wollonggong, Australia
Climate change by its nature and scale is an inherently intergenerational problem with extremely serious implications
for equity between the present and future generations. In the context of global climate justice, the issue of
intergenerational ecological justice is both controversial and not very clearly defined. The core of the debate concerns
the question of whether future generations have legal rights and the corresponding legal duties of present generations
to protect them. The issue is particularly contentious because it raises issues concerning ethics, morality, human rights,
economics, law, and justice, among others.
This paper will discuss, examine, and critically evaluate the issue of the protection of future generations in the context
of climate justice from a Philippine perspective. It will examine the historical, normative and theoretical foundations
of the concept of intergenerational equity in international law in the context of climate justice debates in the
Philippines. The paper will also review and analyze the existing international legal and policy frameworks and relevant
international and regional laws and mechanisms on climate change, and how these principles have been interpreted,
embodied or applied in Philippine laws, policies, and jurisprudence on climate change. Finally, it will evaluate whether
distributive justice and corrective justice mechanisms addressing climate change in the Philippine context are
sustainable and viable options to protect future generations from the challenges of climate change.
State and Non-State Actors as Agents of Human Security and Resilience? Three Localities in Leyte
after Yolanda
Maria Ela L. Atienza, Clarinda L. Berja, Jan Robert R. Go
Leyte province is characterized by huge social and economic inequalities as evidenced by poverty and other human
development indicators. When super typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda hit the province and neighboring provinces in 2013,
Leyte was severely affected, with large numbers of deaths as well as displaced and homeless people. However, the
area has received massive national and international relief funding, particularly in post-disaster reconstruction and
poverty alleviation. There is thus an opportunity to actually address issues of redistribution, poverty alleviation, human
security threats and vulnerabilities, and helplessness in the face of natural risks.
Guided by the frameworks of multilevel participatory governance and human security in its various dimensions
(freedom from fear and want and freedom to live in dignity), this paper seeks to evaluate in the short-term (about two
years after Haiyan), the effectiveness of state and non-state actors in promoting human security, especially poverty
relief strategies and resilience, from the perspectives of people in the affected areas. State actors include both national
and local governments while non-state actors refer to people’s organizations, religious groups, non-governmental
organizations, international agencies and the private sector. How do these actors impact on human security in three
local government units in Leyte? Do they contribute to capacity-building to address problems of livelihood, resilience
against various threats and vulnerabilities, and disempowerment? Data will be taken from three localities (Tacloban,
Tanauan, and Palo). Data gathering methods include review of related literature and documents, key informant
interviews, focus group discussions among vulnerable groups, and household surveys.
Session 2A
LEARNING IN CONTEXT
Schooling and Silencing of Dropouts’ Voices
Peter G. Romerosa
Arellano University
Dropouts’ voices speak of two conflicting perspectives about school leaving. Monolithic lens attributes this
phenomenon to individual and family deficiencies on the one hand while critical lens imputes the issue to constraining
bureaucratic functions of schooling and power relations that exist within education and the broader society on the
other. The former labels school leavers as dropouts while the latter opposes the social label by describing them as
pushed-outs. By listening to the voices of the victims themselves and of actors directly involved in community life
and education, this quasi-ethnographic study extrapolates that school leaving is profoundly mediated by structural
constraints of schooling and disabling power relations that exist within education and the broader society. Thus, the
weight and tension between these conflicting social forces at both macro and micro level are received by the most
marginalized and unheard voices of the unwitting victims.
The 21st Century Learner and the Arts: The Case for Student Artists in Philippine Higher Education
Maria Luisa M. Susa
Colegio de San Juan de Letrán Calamba
In Philippine higher educational institutions, it is not uncommon to find student artists in dance troupes, theater
companies, choral ensembles, and the like who spend hours on rehearsals, performances and other related activities.
For the occasional privilege of being in the limelight, these student artists have to strike a balance between involvement
in the arts and academic course work, without much institutional support from their university. As Philippine higher
education shifts to “outcome-based education,” it is worth it to look into these student involvements.
The very limited literature on student involvement in extracurricular activities says that students who engage in
activities outside the formal structure of the curriculum have improved self-confidence, personal organization, time
management, and increased flexibility and adaptability (Fredricks & Eccles, 2006). The arts is one area of student
involvement that provides learners a regular engagement in acquiring multiple skills and abilities which nurture the
development of cognitive, social, and personal competencies (Fiske, 2015). This paper looks into the competencies
acquired by student-artists from their involvement in campus arts companies (or popularly known as cultural
groups/performing arts groups). With Colegio de San Juan de Letrán Calamba as the locus of research and the O-B-E
movement as the context, the paper aims to analyze how these competencies contribute to the realization of the
school’s institutional intended learning outcomes and graduate attributes.
Legitimizing Embodied Knowledge: Learning Ballet Dancing in the Philippines
Monica Fides Amada Wong Santos
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
In this paper, I examine local learning practices among ballet practitioners in the Philippines, specifically the ways in
which ‘competence’ in the performance of ballet dancing is evaluated, measured, and legitimized. I suggest that these
practices are informed by imaginations of cosmopolitanism arising from the transnational cultural encounters of local
ballet practitioners. More significantly, they also unveil local hierarchies of knowledge-bearing within this community
of practitioners, and within the larger Philippine society. This study provides a nuanced look at a process of
localization of a foreign dance form and draws on the analytical tools in linguistic anthropology and the anthropology
of human movement which view human movements as “dynamically embodied knowledge” and culturally meaningful
social acts. As such, the notion of ballet dancing as a ‘universal dance form’ is re-considered in this study, which
inquire into the local meanings of the movements within the vocabulary of ballet dancing as well as the dance form
itself, as articulated in the learning practices promoted by ballet practitioners in the Philippines. This study is based
on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Philippines, mostly in Metro Manila, in 2010 and in 2012-2013.
Session 2B
THE DISTANT PAST REVISITED
Indian Influences in Tausug Culture: A Brief Description
Kamaruddin Bin Alawi Mohammad
Indian influence has always been pervasive in this area of the Southeast Asia. This influence is traced back to two
great empires in the past – Sri Vijaya and Majapahit. The cultures of said empires are collectively known in the
literature as Buddhist-Hindu culture. It is in this area of culture that Indian influence is more articulated. In the case
of the Philippines, Buddhist-Hindu culture had a stronger influence in places like the Sulu Archipelago and the
Visayan region due to earlier contact and consistent exposure in the past through trading ports and even conflicts. In
the case of Sulu, geographical location was a plus factor.
In Sulu – with its ports well established ports and strategic geographical location – Indian influence is entrenched in
the language, arts, and traditional practices of the people. Albeit suppressed by the coming of Islam, Muslim preachers
never eradicated traditional practices, radically causing it to be incorporated into syncretic practices by some Muslim
converts. It is still practiced by some Muslim Filipinos and is referred to in recent literature as pre-Islamic traditional
practices. The dominant culture in Sulu is that of the Tausug, one of the major ethno-linguistic group in the Southern
Philippines. This paper is an attempt to call attention to Indian influence in Tausug culture. I limited the coverage to
two topics – language (loan words) and selected Buddhist-Hindu influenced traditional rites still in practice up to the
present time.
Ancient Goldworking Tradition in Butuan, Northeastern Mindanao, Philippines
Victor Estrella
A couple of decades ago, gold objects, in the form of worked and unworked items, were found together with objects
deemed to be tools (i.e., crucibles, wooden implements, and other paraphernalia) in Ambangan and Libertad sites in
Butuan, Northeastern Mindanao. This assemblage was initially analysed through the Intra-ASEAN Excavation and
Conservation Programme, but little has been published since then. This research project tries to analyse the gold and
other materials attributed to gold working activities found in these sites in Butuan in order to establish meaningful
systems and subsystems of gold-working technology in the region. The paper argues that such gold working
technology consisted of physical activities influenced by Southeast Asian technological style and mental activities
influenced by their own culture’s belief system. Through inferences from the materials and the information provided
by ethno-historic and ethnographic accounts, as well as by contemporary literature, the study will be able to reconstruct
the different activities involved in the transformations of gold’s socio-technological system during the last 1,000 years
in Butuan.
Deciphering Ancient Bisayan Writing on Recently-Discovered Artifacts
Rolando O. Borrinaga
University of the Philippines Manila at Tacloban
In 2008, this author cracked a 50-year-old puzzle, the inscription in old Philippine script (baybayin) around the mouth
of the Calatagan Pot, a declared National Cultural Treasure now permanently displayed at the Baybayin Gallery of
the National Museum of Anthropology in Manila. He thereafter presented and published a paper which proved that
the inscription on this artifact was in the Bisayan language, and his transcription and analysis has been adopted and
given credence by the National Museum in a poster and in the narrative of a running video presentation at the gallery.
The method and approach developed by the author in deciphering the Calatagan Pot inscription soon proved useful in
deciphering the baybayin writings on the two Monreal Stones, artifacts discovered on Ticao Island in Masbate in 2011.
His findings showed that the writing on the two stones was also in the Bisayan language. The writings on the Calatagan
Pot and the Monreal Stones provide outline-guides for performing some ancient rituals.
In October 2015, the author deciphered the purported ancient writing on the Intramuros Pot Shard, which was likened
to the Calatagan Pot upon its discovery in 2008 and is now also displayed in the Baybayin Gallery of the National
Museum. However, the writing is not baybayin but a crude cursive Roman script of two undivided Bisayan words –
(B)agtingue [bagtingi; ring it] and tvvsan [tuusan; archaic, show respect] – acts related to the performance of a ritual.
In November 2015, the author and some companions discovered a tiny celadon pot that dates back to the Song Dynasty
(960-1279 AD) while conducting Cultural Mapping field work in Limasawa, Southern Leyte. This artifact, apparently
a burial send-off item, was embossed with baybayin writing in the Bisayan language, which after decipherment
presented the outline of a related ritual for disposing the dead body from a bakalag, human sacrifice. In the bakalag
ritual practiced by the ancient Filipinos, they crushed to death some slaves or captives during the launching to the sea
of their war-boats or large vessels to invoke luck from their deities.
This paper presents the key findings and highlights of the author’s efforts in deciphering ancient Bisayan writing on
recently-discovered artifacts in the country.
Session 2C
TECHNOLOGY, POWER, AND IDENTITY: EXPLORATIONS IN FILIPINO ART
The Narrative of the Work-in-Progress: Creative Process and Production on the World Wide Web
Zeny May Dy Recidoro
This paper aims to explore the characteristics and nuances of presenting the art process and the representation of
finished artwork in online platforms, as expressed by the hashtags #ArtPH and #WIP (or Work-in-Progress), such as
tumblr, instagram, and facebook to name a few. It asks questions of how the interweb and -net transforms how we
view and create art, how it affects the creative process (as expressed in the gesture of making updates, hashtagged
#WIP, under the pretext of the statement “pics or it didn't happen”) as it becomes not only a period of meditative
creation but also an event, and how these digital platforms affect the intangible and material value of an artwork. The
study lends its focus to young creative Filipinos, ultimately calling into discourse the (dis)connect and discontent of
representing identity and aesthetic in a supposedly neutral space.
More Than Just Pakulo? Shop 6 and the Rise of Philippine Conceptual Art
Tina Le
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Shop 6 was the name given to a commercial space in Sining Kamalig shopping arcade that briefly served as a
temporary art exhibition space in Manila from 1974-1975. Shop 6 additionally referred to the group of loosely
affiliated conceptual artists who exhibited at the stall and were active during the 1970s. These artists also frequently
exhibited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), First Lady Imelda Marcos’ cultural institution, which had
been inaugurated in 1969, three years after President Ferdinand Marcos’ Executive Order No. 30 to establish it. They
presented works as part of the 13 Artists Awards, an award conceived by Roberto Chabet that afforded young,
upcoming artists the opportunity to exhibit works at the CCP. Shop 6 artists continued to be active with the CCP with
a group exhibition in 1975 after they stopped exhibiting in their shop space. While the CCP gave artists a space to
make art for a local authoritative institution, the use of debris and everyday objects in their installation practices denied
complicity with Lady Marcos’ cultural nation-building agenda and her ideas of beauty. My paper examines the use of
“alternative” materials in art from the late 1960s to 70s in the Philippines and its relationship to temporality and power.
How do these artists manage to negotiate between state interests of developing a local arts culture and their own
interests of fitting themselves within a global context? My project will further examine how artists called into question
the value of artistic labor outside of monetary exchange or exported nationalism through their engagement with
alternative materials.
Art and Anthropology
Almira Astudillo Gilles
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
Anthropological research in studying material culture involves reconstruction and representation. Artistic creation is
likewise engaged, and both work on the premise that an ethnographic object is incomplete, and that the “archive” of
that object is open and ongoing. The recently concluded Art and Anthropology: Portrait of the Object as
Filipino focuses on this intersection, with a goal of enacting the creation of meaning or knowledge by re-engaging
with ethnographic objects. Focusing on both the process of art creation and its outcome, five painters from the
Philippines and five Filipino Americans from Chicago created art that portrayed their cultural identity and relationship
to an ethnographic object. The artists and their work traveled to and from the Philippines and Chicago (home of the
Field Museum of Natural History which houses 10,000 Philippine artifacts in storage). In addition, two collaborative
works were created by all ten artists, Art in Plenty in the Philippines and Deconstructing “Filipino” in Chicago. One
of the more interesting outcomes from the interaction between the Filipino and Filipino American artists was a strong
dichotomy perceived by the two groups regarding their cultural identities, which was reflected in the mural design in
Chicago. In the course of their art creation and interaction, tension arose around issues of cultural appropriation,
ethnicity, and creative expression. Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, this project is an
extension of a global heritage management initiative of the Field Museum which will host the exhibition through June
2016. The project will be included in a book on art and anthropology to be released in 2017.
Session 2D
MAPPING FILIPINO/ASIAN SPIRITUALITY (IES): STEWARDSHIP,
CLIMATE CHANGE AND DISASTERS
The panel “Mapping Filipino/Asian Spirituality (ies): Stewardship, Climate Change, and Disasters focuses on issues
of climate change related to efforts to rebuild communities of resilience in areas affected by human induced disasters
and natural hazards, and increasing vulnerabilities resulting from malgovernance and unsustainable development
paradigms. It considers community level responses to the effects of climate change from the perspective of liberation
anthropologies and geographies, liberation psychologies, and liberation theologies and spiritualities. The panel
addresses (1) some of the contradictions of development vis-à-vis a case analysis of local organized community
responses to some of the adverse effects of governmental mining policies on their lives and livelihoods and that of the
natural environment and wildlife habitat and (2) some of the responses of frontline church based social action networks
and organizations working in the face of climate change and its disastrous impact such as Cat5 Haiyan (Yolanda) in
2013, and Cat5 Bopha (Pablo) in 2013.
Walking on a Tightrope: Local Autonomy, Mining Moratorium, and House Bill 6753
Meriam Bravante
University of Calgary, Canada
Can the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) come up with a mining policy that can cater to the
interests of various stakeholders? Will House Bill 5367 reconcile the opposing interests of mining stakeholders? When
it comes to mining in the Philippines, decision-makers have to walk a fine line when prescribing solutions to improve
economic growth. Mining is a controversial issue. On one hand, there is the national government attempting to shore
up the country’s economy primarily by tapping its vast mineral reserves. There is also the mining industry encouraged
by previous administrations, and high global demand for minerals, but stymied by strong local opposition. At the
other end of the spectrum, the local government units (LGUs) continue to assert their local autonomy and test the
extent of their powers, especially through local legislation. Being closest to their constituents, they find a lot of
pressure from local communities who are very concerned with the environmental effects of government programs and
activities, yet seem to offer them little, if any, economic benefits but many negative consequences.
The Supreme Court of the Philippines has played a key role in shaping the debate and policies on the extent of powers
of local governments. This paper will analyze the latest attempts to reconcile these opposing concerns through House
Bill 5367 (HB 5367). It is primarily descriptive and secondarily prescriptive. Initial analysis of HB 5367 indicates that
it waters down the legal abilities of local communities to magnify their voice and it curtails the powers of LGUs under
the Local Government Code. This is another example wherein the GRP prioritizes resource extraction in pursuit of
economic growth over local conditions and concerns when engaged in environmentally destructive activities.
Faith-Based Organizations and Resilience-Building Initiatives in Post-Disaster Areas
Milet B. Mendoza
Independent Humanitarian and Development Practitioner
Faith-based organizations (FBOs) in the Philippines play critical roles in creating alternatives or complementary
ground-based mechanisms for disaster preparedness, recovery and risk reduction, and for sustainable development of
communities. This is especially crucial where governance systems are weak or sometimes hardly existent, especially
in disadvantaged hinterlands. This paper argues that post-disaster recovery and resilience-building in Bopha (local
name Pablo) affected areas were very much associated with the chapel-based ecclesial communities’ construction of
“social geographies of compassion” over the last few years in Mindanao.
Based on ethnographic and survey data bases, this paper argues that FBOs provide the crucial social capital (i.e.,
bonding, bridging. and linking capital) as well as mediating/brokering functions between national/local governments,
outside humanitarian agencies, civil society organizations (CSOs), community-based group, and the poor people
trying to recover from damage and losses from typhoons and floods.
Mapping Gender and Spirituality in Post-Haiyan/Yolanda Areas: Crafting and Contesting Community
Resilience Initiatives
Emma E. Porio
Ateneo de Manila University
Mapping spirituality in post-disaster recovery and resilience-building initiatives among marginalized women’s groups
need multi-layered and intersecting trans-disciplinary approaches. Utilizing both qualitative (e.g., narratives,
family/local history of disasters, adaptation and resilience-building) and quantitative (national/community surveys)
approaches, this study tried to measure the dimensions and role of women’s spirituality/ies and community resilience
in post-Haiyan areas. The study found that (1) there is a strong intersection of micro-meso-macro level factors
associated with spirituality and community resilience initiatives, and (2) these intersections and their effects become
stronger when contested/challenged by both internal and external forces. Women-led post-disaster
programs/initiatives, which are contextually mobilized with faith-based organizations (FBOs) and other people’s
organizations, decrease contestations within/without and increase the support/promotion of community-resilience
building approaches to post-disaster recovery.
Toward an Anthropologies/Geographies of Liberation: Culture/Faith-Based Approaches to Philippine
Reconstruction Efforts, Unite (Capitalist Models, Divide)
Kathleen G. Nadeau
California State University, San Bernardino
This paper will take the position that there is a strong link between poverty and environmental degradation, which
makes poor people more vulnerable to climate-change related disasters. It argues that neoliberal approaches to
redressing the problems of climate change are further increasing the gap between the rich and poor by promoting
development projects in the affected communities that tend to empower some people but not everyone. Some
individuals benefit by being given jobs and material goods but other individuals are left wanting. An alternative
approach can be found by looking at multi-indigenous and pre- and semi-capitalist Philippine cultural frameworks
that promote a more community-oriented and collaborative ethos of care for each individual human being and the
environment and all living things as a whole. Many organic intellectuals in the Philippines are involved in these semicapitalistic and collaboratively oriented local faith-based communities. Their practical works on the ground are the
inspiration for feminist liberation theologies, liberation psychologies (indigenous psychology), and liberation
anthropologies and geographies. These organic intellectuals and social action workers already are encouraging the
communities with whom they work to view the land as sacred. This paper will argue, by way of comparative case
analyses, for the inclusion of organic intellectuals on disaster assessment teams. They are well positioned to partner
with the affected communities to design feasible, environmentally-friendly plans for rebuilding lost communities in
ways that, simultaneously, will replenish the natural environment.
Session 2E
THE SOCIAL LIVES OF INDIGENOUS OBJECTS
Traditional Meranao Woven Malong: A Fashionable Garment among the People of the Lake lanao Area
Labi Hadji Sarip Riwarung
Mindanao State University Marawi
The Meranaos who inhabit the Lake Lanao area are one of the thirteen Muslim ethno-linguistic groups in the
Philippines. They are noted for their artistic, colorful, and sophisticated ornamentation called the “okir” that is used
to decorate everything in a Meranao household, including their garments and the architecture of the house. Weaving
is part of the cultural heritage of the Meranao since it plays an important role in the survival of the people. It is a
traditional and widely practiced craft among the Meranaos as early as the darangen civilization.
This woman’s art is best exhibited in the weaving of mats, baskets, and textiles like malong, langkits, and blanket.
Thus, weaving is mainly a woman’s work that demonstrates the okir visual art of the Meranao. The malong is one of
the best products of the Meranaos in their weaving industry that is expressive of the rich artistic tradition of the people.
It is a tube-like garment with equal circumferential openings at both ends either of which the wearer may regard as
top or bottom. It is the traditional dress of the Meranaos for both men and women, and up to the present they still use
it as principal garment especially during important occasions. Hence, it is a part of the customs, culture, and life of a
Meranao.
This paper is an attempt to showcase the Meranao exotic woven Malong. It will include what a malong is, its colors,
designs, and meanings, the different kinds of malong, and its different uses and ways of wearing it. It will highlight
why the malong is a heritage industry of the Meranao women.
Survey of Igorot Weapons: Their Origins, Types, and Representations
Iӧ M. Jularbal
University of the Philippines Baguio
Weapons, among other tools, measure a people’s sophistication in terms of civilization and technology. But in the
case of the Igorot, it is these tools which colonial minds used as symbols in the establishment of a genocidal headhunting trope. With the discovery of the Igorot came a classification of their being – socially, geographically,
ethnically, and materialistically. Weapons, on the other hand, for the colonizing gaze were seen as items which can
never be separated from the image of the savage other; therefore, representations of the Igorot would always come
equipped with weapons and in battle-ready poses.
This paper proposes to address the following points concerning Igorot weapons:
a. That colonial discourse through travel writing has mis-appropriated such tools and that these notions have
become reinforced and solidified throughout the years as factual and historically accurate.
b. That several primary texts on Igorot weaponry have indeed been produced but these still adhere to savage
and barbaric tropes, even failing to exhibit the wide array of differences and metamorphoses of such weapons
and their position as ethnic and individualistic markers of distinct cultures rather than mere interchangeable
death-dealing devices.
In addressing these issues, this paper will establish and present an initial survey of Igorot weapons based on their
types, uses, production processes, among others, in order to create objective and verifiable taxonomy of weapons.
Acceptance of the Togotong in Japanese Music Education
Motohide Taguchi
Freelance Composer, Japan
The togatong (bamboo stamping tubes) is a musical instrument of the Kalinga of North Luzon. This instrument is now
introduced in some music textbooks for secondary schools in Japan. This is because of the acceptance of this
instrument in Japanese music education through creative music-making (CMM) activities. CMM is a way of music
education to nurture the creativity of students through practical trials of compositions by exploring sounds in
improvisation using various materials. It was officially introduced in Japanese music education in the schools in 1989
by the course of study of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
This paper examines this interesting example of the acceptance of something from a foreign culture in Japan by
exploring why and how this instrument was introduced into CMM in Japanese schools and the influences of Filipino
musicians on this process. One of the examples of the latter is the lecture on the music of the Kalinga by the late Dr.
Jose Maceda, a National Artist of the Philippines for music, in the Tokyo Contemporary Music Festival in 1991.
These explorations present us both good and problematic points of this acceptance. Now in Japanese schools, there
are many students of foreign descent. Those having a Filipino father and/or mother are a part of them. Therefore, to
find some benefits from the results it is important to attain mutual understanding between one another with foreign
countries (in this case, Japan and the Philippines) through school music education.
Session 2F
COLONIAL SUBJECTS AND SUBJECTIVITIES
Bittersweet Harvest: Race, Labor, and Capital in the Making of the U.S. Empire
Roneva Keel
University of Washington, Seattle, USA
This paper studies the making of imperial subjects in and through the movements of labor and capital in the U.S.
colonization of Hawai’i and the Philippines. From 1906 to 1946, over 125,000 Filipinos traveled to Hawai’i, most of
them recruited to work in the territory’s lucrative sugar industry, while Hawaiian capital flowed in the opposite
direction to transform the Philippine economy. These transpacific migrations of labor and capital were a central means
through which the United States extended power in the Pacific. Focusing on U.S. trade policy and the efforts of sugar
producers to secure favorable trade arrangements with the United States, this paper investigates how the U.S. state
promoted transpacific exchanges of labor and capital that bound Hawai’i and the Philippines together in complicated
ways. For instance, just as Hawaiian sugar planters increased their efforts to recruit labor from the Philippines,
Congress passed major tariff legislation in 1909 and 1913 that eventually eliminated tariff duties on Philippine sugar.
With the subsequent expansion of the Philippine sugar industry, Philippine sugar interests became increasingly
agitated that Filipino labor needed at home was being siphoned off to Hawai’i. Concerted opposition to the emigration
of Filipino laborers emerged from Filipino elites, the Manila Chamber of Commerce, and others. The competition for
Filipino labor among the various interests provides a window onto the emerging logics of racial capitalism in the
context of empire. This paper investigates how these logics emerged, not only through labor and immigration, but also
through tariff legislation and land policy.
Past and Present of Filipino Deaf Culture: Genealogy of the Filipino Deaf Culture Discourse
Eri Yamashita
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
The dissemination of American Sign Language during the American Colonial Period made it difficult to note the
existence of an “original” Filipino Deaf Culture. In the 1990s, Filipino linguists demonstrated that Filipino Sign
Language (FSL) possessed characteristics common to other natural sign languages. The results of those studies
enabled Filipino Deaf Communities to redefine themselves as an ethnic group. Since then, Filipino Deaf Culture has
been in the purview of the linguistics field.
However, there has been very little documentation on the history of the formation of Filipino Deaf Culture examining
the impact of Deaf Education under the American Colonial Period and the American Deaf Culture, this research
explores how the uniqueness and originality of Filipino Deaf Culture was established. The paper has three parts. The
first part explores the relationship between early twenty-century colonialism and the construction of the first Filipino
Deaf community. I examine how the category of “deaf” was established during this period. The second part probes
how the Filipino Deaf Community in Manila achieved a degree of success unprecedented in the world under the
welfare policy of the Marcos Era.
Finally, I suggest that the many significant topics Deaf studies has to offer Philippine history to be explored.
Philippine Legal System as an American Legal Tradition
Lance D. Collins
Hawai’i Institute of Philippine Studies
El original es infiel a la traducción. [The original is unfaithful to the translation.] - Jorge Luis Borges
Amy Rossabi's “The Colonial Roots of Criminal Procedure in the Philippines” provides an important description of
Philippine legal history that is otherwise lacking in the scholarship. Although the article describes the origins of
criminal procedure as colonial in nature flowing from the Spanish period, the only continuity between the Spanish
period and the American period were American colonial officials’ beliefs about Spanish law and the fashioning of an
American legal system that included terms from Spanish law that American colonial officials sought to include. The
invocation of a Spanish legal tradition in the Philippines simply obscures the American origins of the Philippine legal
tradition.
For example, the Penal Code, adopted in the last decade of Spanish rule, had little connection with the daily lives of
ordinary Filipinos. It was not until American legal institutions and procedural rights became applicable to all Filipinos
during the American period that the “Spanish” penal code became an intelligible political institution that impacted the
daily lives of Filipinos – as interpreted through the American legal tradition.
The Spanish colonial period can be actually best understood as the absence of law. Law was not a core institution to
establish or exert colonial control in the Spanish period. Rizal's work demonstrates that. There are many explanations
for the lack of law, one being that Spanish law itself was not unified during the colonial period and could not impose
itself upon the Philippines as a coherent whole. The other was that the economic orientation of colonial Spain in the
Philippines did not require control by the use of the “law.”
This paper will examine the development of appellate procedure in the Philippines and Hawaii during their respective
“territorial” American colonial periods and afterwards claim that both legal systems are American legal systems.
Attention will also be given to the repudiation of the “political question” doctrine in the 1987 Constitution as an aspect
of appellate procedure.
Session 3A
EDUCATION AS NATION-BUILDING
Educating the Educators: Challenges in the Contextualization, Localization and Indigenization
of the K-12 Curriculum
Ricamela S. Palis
Colegio de San Juan de Letrán Calamba
Republic Act 10533, popularly known as the K-12 Law, institutes an enhanced basic education curriculum by
increasing the number of years of basic education. With quality education and global competitiveness as its product,
the curriculum is described as learner-centered, inclusive, relevant, responsive, research-based, culture-sensitive,
contextualized, and uses pedagogical approaches that are constructivist, inquiry-based, reflective, collaborative, and
integrative.
This paper argues that the biggest challenge for the culture-based education promised by K-12 is the re-training and
re-orientation of teachers. Apart from dealing with dwindling resources and conflicting values within the curriculum
and its delivery system, teachers embody the fundamental problems of a colonially-implanted educational system that
privileges “universal” abstract knowledge and marginalizes local and indigenous knowledge.
Education for Citizenship: The Philippine Center for Civic Education and Democracy’s Advocacy of
‘Project Citizen’
Philip Michael I. Paje and Fe Gladys B. Golo
University of Asia and the Pacific
How can one teach ‘democracy’ to high school students beyond the cliché of a definition that it is a government of
the people, by the people, and for the people? How can this concept be made more concrete and more grounded? What
impressions can a concrete lesson on democracy in turn leave on these students? A non-government organization
based in Pasig City called the Philippine Center for Civic Education and Democracy (PCCED) attempts to actualize
these questions through its nation-wide advocacy called Project Citizen (PC) that it adopted from the Center for Civic
Education in the USA. Project Citizen enables public high school students to understand democracy as a process by
making them experience first-hand how to research, formulate, and design public policies that address a public issue
that directly affects their lives. These public issues can range from the need for proper waste disposal and better
community sanitation, a ban on chemicals readily sold in stores, to the relocation of informal settlers in public
cemeteries, and the conservation of endangered wildlife. The PCCED helps these students to come up with innovative,
relevant, and doable solutions. As a contribution to the 2016 ICOPHIL, this paper aims to discuss this advocacy of
the PCCED within the larger context of education for citizenship. This paper will also highlight Project Citizen’s
significance in enabling students to hone their ‘sociological imagination’ which relates to public issues and to discern
that they can and must actually and readily share the democratic space in the Philippines.
Historical Consciousness, the Classroom, and Nationalism: Exploring the Role of Historical Consciousness
in Nation-Building
Francisco Jayme and Paolo A. Guiang
Historical consciousness plays a vital role in nurturing the nationalistic attitudes of the Filipino youth. The school,
which harbors historical consciousness, shapes the youth into productive and patriotic agents engaged in nationbuilding. Hence, this study aims to show that historical consciousness is an essential and indispensable component in
nation-building. The paper will be divided into three discussions. First, it will define the concept and elaborate on the
purpose of historical consciousness. This philosophical inquiry into history and consciousness will be largely taken
from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Reason in History. Second, this paper will discuss the role of the classroom
in shaping historical consciousness. It will explain how the students comprehend the past within the realm of the
classroom. On the other hand, it will also mention some of the challenges associated with historical consciousness in
the process of learning. Several issues relating to the relationship of history and education are discussed in Eric
Hobsbwam’s On History. Lastly, this paper will localize the context of Philippine education by elaborating on the
vital role of historical consciousness in shaping proactive citizens of the society. It will also tackle the relevance of
historical consciousness to nationalism and how it could produce a true “Filipino education” necessary for nationbuilding. This discussion will largely be taken from Renato Constantino’s Miseducation of the Filipinos and Paulo
Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Reconstructing Meanings from Below: An Educational Framework for Resistance to Discrimination Against
Mangyans
Elijah Jesse M. Pine, University of the Philippines Los Baños
Romel A. Daya, De La Salle University/University of the Philippines Los Baños
Social and cultural discrimination against the Mangyans has continued today in what is supposedly their ancestral
island of Mindoro. Narratives of how they are “treated differently” by many “lowlanders” (i.e., non-Mangyans now
inhabiting and dominating Mindoro) persist until today. This paper presents an educational framework for resisting
discrimination against Mangyans and reconstructing meanings attached to them by “lowlanders.” The framework is
largely based on a qualitative study about how Mangyan students of the Tugdaan Mangyan Center for Learning and
Development in Naujan, Oriental Mindoro understand the “differential treatment” they experience from nonMangyans. Historical accounts on the cultural, politica,l and economic plight of Mangyans are also factored in.
Specifically, the paper probes into the sources, spaces, and forms of “differential treatment” perpetrated against them;
surfaces the manner by which they respond to the treatment; and proposes a framework of resistance against the
treatment in the context of formal education. This paper then poses a challenge to educators who are proactively
engaged in advocacy projects for the empowerment of vulnerable groups and policy makers who wish to
institutionalize emancipating anti-discrimination laws. In order to conceptualize and implement interventions for
social change, there needs to be a clear analysis of how the problem of discrimination translates to actual scenarios on
the ground, especially with respect to how the affected sector sees it.
Session 3B
THE SOCIOLOGY OF DISASTERS
Limitations to the Emergence of Social Capital: The Case of the Haiyan Bunkhouse Evacuees
Donabel S. Tumandao
University of the Philippines Tacloban College
In 2013 the Philippines recorded the largest displacement in the world due to the onslaught of typhoon Haiyan, the
strongest typhoon that hit the country (IDMC 2014). In Tacloban City, the ground zero of typhoon Haiyan, thousands
of families were displaced and most of them are still staying in bunkhouses. This paper makes a modest contribution
to social capital disaster-related studies. It particularly focuses on a displacement context where typhoon survivors are
staying in the bunkhouses not only with fellow residents from their own barangays but also with other bunkhouse
evacuees who came from other barangays of the city. Using the case study method, this paper looks into the limitations
to the emergence of social capital of the bunkhouse evacuees as well as the conditions and factors that made these
limitations arise. The results of the study reveal that the incidence of criminal activities in the bunkhouses and the
occurrence of conflicts and misunderstandings among bunkhouse evacuees have negatively affected their
relationships, hampering their interactions which in turn spawns low levels of trust and eventually leads to weaker
cooperative relations in achieving collective action. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the post-disaster condition
of the bunkhouse evacuees, being economically deprived typhoon victims, made these limitations arise. Another factor
is the nature of unit and building assignment where many bunkhouse evacuees stay in buildings with typhoon survivors
who are not from their own barangays.
Slogans, Rumours and the Transformation of Local Identities in Post-Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda,
Samar and Leyte, Philippines
George Emmanuel Borrinaga
University of Hull, United Kingdom
This paper forms part of a larger PhD research project which examines the link between identity discourses and social
resilience in the face of crises in the Eastern Visayas region. It aims to analyse and provide the historical and social
context to phenomena which emerged in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, said to be the strongest typhoon
to make landfall in recorded history, which most affected Leyte and Samar in the central Philippines regions. In
particular, it will examine slogans of identity and place (e.g., “Tindog Tacloban” [Rise Tacloban], “Waray Ako” [I am
a Waray], etc.) in social networking sites and billboards put up in disaster-hit communities, and largely false rumours
about the looting of food or relief goods from afflicted communities by excluded/marginal social groups (prisoners,
NPA rebels, Badjaos) in the aftermath of the typhoon. These slogans and rumours will be analysed with regard to how
they figured in narratives of inclusion/exclusion that are key to identity discourses that, in turn, are arguably significant
in generating community resilience in response to crises.
The paper will then suggest that, in an environmentally hazard-prone country with a complex political history, events
such as Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda can be seen as only one of many other types of environmental and human-induced
crises that have continually transformed local people’s self-definition across the centuries, changing self-conceptions
that may be an important factor in the self-organized recovery observed by humanitarian agencies who came to aid
communities usually portrayed as “vulnerable” in international disaster risk reduction frameworks.
Pakikipagpulso (Pulse-Taking Together) as Ethnography: Feminist and Decolonizing Ethnographic Research
in the Wake of Super Typhoon Yolanda
Chaya Go
University of British Columbia, Canada
I offer ethnography as an embodied engagement with everyday survival – in the wake of the strongest storm in
recorded history, or the slow violence of poverty. Having served as an emergency relief worker in the aftermath of
Super Typhoon Yolanda (internationally named Haiyan), and now an anthropologist examining Waray women
survivors’ gendered vulnerabilities in Leyte Island, I ask: How does a feminist scholar activist ‘do’ research in a
community in which she has kin to, while being a distant witness of their everyday struggles? How does a Manileña
write of Waray women survivors’ stories and represent them justly in a publication for Western academic readership?
How does a transnational Filipina build solidarities across geographical borders and hierarchies of knowledge and
privilege? Inspired by the politics of postcolonial feminism and indigenous research methods, I write as a
Tagalog/English-speaking participant observer from Manila/Vancouver assisted by my Binasaya-speaking maternal
relatives in Leyte, complementing feminist anthropological methods with that of Sikolohiyang Pilipino or Indigenous
Philippine Psychology. While methods of pakikipagkuwentuhan (story-telling and conversing), pakikiramdam
(sensing-feeling what is happening), and pakikisama (interaction that build solidarity) do not entirely erase disparities
and power differentials between researcher and participants, this paper argues that they ensure relationships founded
on reciprocity, responsibility, and trust. In continuing the urgent work of activist research practice with communities
in the Philippines struggling through the climate crisis, I theorise ethnography as a practice of pakikipulso—a way of
taking my people’s pulse with them.
Urban Transformation in Disaster Management: A Case of Segregation Extension and Social Strata
Reorganization in Metro Manila
Zenta Nishio
Kyoto University, Japan
Contemporary studies on developing countries typically utilize perspectives of neoliberalism and globalization, which
emphasize partnerships between the public and private sectors of society. Such partnerships conduct infrastructure
development in lieu of the government, and contribute to the gentrification of slum areas. However, these studies
underestimate or neglect the relationship between disaster management and urban transformation. This paper is a case
study on Typhoon Ondoy, which greatly affected Metro Manila in 2009, and emphasizes the importance of disaster
management in the discourse of urban transformation due to its effects on urban planning, social segregation and
stratification.
This study argues that disasters temporarily dissolve pre-existing socially stratified relationships, fostering instead a
situation of communitas. Furthermore, disaster management can divide the elite, middle class, and urban poor through
the exclusion of slum communities from dangerous urban areas. Finally, the segregation of urban poor in relocation
sites in the suburbs reorganizes the social strata of communities by changing their social status from informal settlers
to formal settlers.
Session 3C
ASWANGS AND BEAUTY QUEENS: EXPLORATIONS IN POPULAR CULTURE
Mapping of a Cultural Icon: The Aswang Phenomenon and the Representations of Aswang in
Philippine Provinces
Fernand Francis Hermoso, Engelbert C. Prim, and Dominique Sasha Amorsolo
The human mind delights in the concept of the supernatural. Be it spirits, ghouls, even those whose origins can be
traced to local folklore arouse the human mind and curiosity about “otherworldly beings”. Approaching this statement
from a phenomenological perspective begets a question on why the Filipino aswang myth has continued to be
prevalent even in modern times. Why is it that a simple concept of the “local bogeyman” used to keep children in line
is still prevalent throughout the archipelago and is still well represented in present-day urban and folk cultures despite
lack of proof? Is there an underlying cultural element to this mythology that lends it credence despite its lack of proof
and grants it resilience that allows it to survive despite the advent of modernity and pop culture? Is the fear we feel of
this creature embedded in our society or does it have a phenomenological or even biogeographical origin? This paper
looks at how the myth is geographically distributed throughout the archipelago by mapping representations of the
aswang across the islands and compares these instances based on their similarities and differences across the regions
with the intention of establishing a possible “origin myth” from which the mythology took root and how it differs
from the local myths of the surrounding countries in Southeast Asia. Identifying the commonalities of the
archipelago’s myths about the aswang allows us an insight into the diffusion of folk culture through time and illustrates
how both folk and contemporary cultures diffuse themselves across culture. Lastly, this paper aims to establish the
aswang phenomenon as a folk icon of the Philippine islands.
Philippine Myth and the Supernatural in the Graphic Novel
Ma. Victoria Cayton
Speculative Fiction is a contemporary genre and has consistently grown in both attention and contribution in the past
few years. Combining local color and traditional beliefs identifiable as part of Philippine culture under the umbrella
category of Speculative Fiction has allowed a unique representation of Philippine realism and imaginative narrative
styles. While short stories have received acclaim and more writers have been continually contributing to this field,
there have equally been outputs under the graphic novel that merit attention.
This study aims to discuss some selections of the graphic novel category by Filipino comic artists such as Arnold
Arre’s The Mythology Class (1999) and Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo’s Trese (2005) series that would be
considered as Speculative Fiction. Focusing on works that contend with themes drawn from the supernatural and
Philippine mythology, this study hopes to present the characteristic quality of Philippine folk belief and superstition.
It aims to focus on contributions by Filipino authors and artists, and to study how aesthetic forms in the graphic novel
and the narrative are combined to present their own views of Philippine religious practices and belief.
Beauty as Discourse: Analyzing the Filipino Psyche in Beauty Pageants
John Jack G. Wigley
University of Santo Tomas
The aesthetic sense is inevitably mediated by one's so-called "world-view." One constructs his or her own social
realities because s/he is a consequent product of such realities. An individual's projection of finding meaning to a lot
of concepts is inflected and reflected by his/her own truths, biases, and prejudices. Thus, expressions on or about
beauty, like "inner beauty," "black beauty," or "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," prove not only to be trite and
contrived utterances meant to signify a particular definition or signification of what we know as the aesthetic, but also
mirrors and refracts certain value judgments and preferences.
The Philippines is purported to be known as "the powerhouse beauty country in Asia" and "home of the most pageantcrazy citizens." And Filipinos have a natural penchant for involvement, either as ardent organizers or excited viewers
in beauty contests. Beauty queens in the Philippines become overnight sensations, and their pageant experiences serve
them well as they foray into other more lucrative fields, such as business and politics.
This paper seeks to investigate and interrogate certain categorical assumptions of the beauty aesthetic, as evidenced
in beauty pageants, in relation to the Filipino's view of spirituality, spectacle and salvation.
Session 3D
LOCATING/LOCALIZING RELIGIOSITY
Greeting Bodies and the Performance of Catholic Religiosity in the Philippines
Bryan Levina Viray
Sayaw ng Pagbati is a celebratory dance where dancers wave flags in celebration of the Virgin Mary. This dance has
the purpose of transforming the Virgin Mary's sorrow into an exultant emotional celebration. While each parish church
in the Philippines celebrates its own version of Salubong and performs Sayaw ng Pagbati, they share the same Catholic
religious narrative about the reunion of Mother Mary and the Resurrected Christ, her Son. This common religious
narrative may affect how Catholic devotees behave during the ritual and how the dancers enact the bati across the
archipelago. This paper analyzes selected video recordings of two ritual realizations of bati from Boac, Marinduque
and Angono, Rizal. It argues that these performances of Catholic religiosity highlight human bodies on which, in a
Foucauldian sense, historical and socio-cultural events are inscribed and from which traces of the Catholic religious
past and present may be elicited. The publication of a 19th century piece of writing, Urbana at Felisa (1864) and the
Marian veneration movement in the Philippines are considered as key historical and socio-cultural events. This
analysis also implicates my active body and sensorial memories of my participation in 1996-1999 as an angel for
Salubong and in 2011 as a choreographer for Sayaw ng Pagbati in Boac. I argue that greeting bodies as social bodies
in Salubong are totally inscribed by history through the quality of their performative action such as the bati. Bati, as
part of the Salubong ritual, reinforces or intensifies a continuing process of Catholic history in post-colonial
Philippines.
Commented [PD1]: delete
1991: The Catholic Church’s Year of Renewal
Satoshi Miyawaki
Osaka University, Japan
This paper can be taken as the initial part of the author's research project on the contemporary history of the Catholic
Church in the Philippines. The focus of this paper is the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines, which has
articulated the basic direction of ecclesial renewal and socio-political involvement of the post-Vatican II Philippine
Church in the post-authoritarian era. The paper rereads the conciliar documents and related publications and sets it in
the context of political, economic, and social situations so as to reach a more multidimensional understanding of the
age and the project of ecclesial renewal. This also sets the local church in the broader ecclesial contexts, including
the Federation of Asian Bishops Conference and the Vatican. The aim of this project, as well as the paper itself, is
the detailed and in-depth re-examination of the place and direction of the whole Catholic Church in multiple contexts.
The Oral History of Gading in Presentacion, Camarines Sur, Philippines: Tracing the Hegemony of Anitos
in a Christian Community
Jesus Cyril M. Conde
Ateneo de Naga University
The paper explores the oral history of gading in Presentacion, Camarines Sur, in the Bikol. It traces the history of
power relation between Christianity and the belief in anitos in Philippine culture and discusses the significance of
gading in this history. A gading is a corpse which has not decayed despite being buried underground for years without
embalming. Believed to be the sources of various supernatural powers, gadings have become objects of veneration by
a big group of people in the research site.
Relying on one month of immersion in the research site and the review of related historical documents, the paper
argues that the fifty years (1960s to 2013) of oral history of gading in the town of Presentacion, Camarines Sur, is a
manifestation of anito belief overshadowing Christianity. It shows a cultural hybrid that empowers indigenous
elements over Christianity and triggers questions about perceived Christian domination in the Bikol Region of the
Philippines.
Kalinga Spirituality: An Attestation of the Kalinga Notion of Land Vis-A-Vis Pope Francis’ Laudato Si
Roger C. Sa-ao
St. Louis University, Baguio City
Spirituality is understood to involve an engagement with the meaning and purpose of human life. The spirituality of
the Kalinga people of Northern Luzon can be defined by looking at their notion of land and the manner by which they
relate to it because for them “Land is life!” Many of the essential constitutive elements of the Kalinga understanding
of land are emphasized in Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical “Laudato Si” such as “the earth as our common
home” and “the need to create a culture of solidarity, encounter and relationship”. For the Kalinga people, land is not
merely an object but the substructure on which two dimensions of relationships, horizontal and vertical, are elaborated.
Such an understanding forms the basis of human existence as co-existence. This view tries to avoid the exclusive
tendencies of religiously or secularly outlined notions of spirituality and at the same time attempts to transcend the
self as the focus of an existentially defined spirituality for a perspective that locates a person as a member of a
community and recognizes the importance of relationships in the search for the meaning and purpose of human
existence.
Session 3E
CONSTRUCTING THE “INDIGENOUS”
Katitinabanga: A Customary Reciprocity System among Meranao in Two Municipalities of Lanao del Norte
Applied in Times of Natural Disaster and Rido, Feuding, or Clan Conflicts
Norjannah A. Manalocon and Myrma Jean A. Mendoza
Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology
This study focuses on the katitinabanga (reciprocity system) of the Meranao, one of the 13 Muslim groups in the
Philippines. The researchers studied how katitinabanga operates in times of natural disasters and rido, feuding, or clan
conflicts in Pantao Ragat and Balo-i, Lanao Del Norte. These Meranao-populated communities steeped in Meranao
culture are also experiencing natural disasters because of their geographical location and identified as communities
where feuding between families and clans is prevalent. Damages to the environment and properties were noticeable
in the recent typhoons “Sendong” and “Pablo.” Economic activities of the Meranao were affected by conflict between
families. Studying katitinabanga in times of natural disaster and rido feuding, or clan conflicts is a research gap in the
local literature on Meranao mutual aid system. The purpose of this study is to describe the nature of katitinabanga, to
gather notions and salient dimensions of the katitinabanga, and to find out what social capital influences the
observance of katitinabanga. This study is grounded in the Social Capital Theory and Social Exchange Theory. Data
in this paper are generated through key informant interview method among selected 20 Meranao whose ages range
from 40 to 80 years old.
The results of the informants’ interview show that in terms of social capital, age, gender, marital status, and estimated
monthly family income influence katitinabanga. Findings also show that the notions and salient dimensions of the
Meranao katitinabanga practice give a moral dimension, a part of Meranao maratabat, a way to strengthen kinship
ties and give an assurance and insurance to the informants. Moreover, katitinabanga, as an age-old customary practice,
is perpetuated as it is intertwined with social institutions in the Meranao society.
The Kalinga Bodong: Forging Relationships, Resolving Conflicts, and Fostering Peaceful Co-existence
Fr. Michael G. Layugan, SVD
Divine Word Seminary, Tagaytay
Although studies have been conducted on Kalinga Society in general, there is still a paucity of written literature on
the Kalingas that provides the details of certain aspects of Kalinga life and culture. This paper is an attempt to shed
light on the concept and operationalization of the Kalinga Bodong (peace-pact) in relation to establishing alliances
between sin-ilians (tribes), resolving conflicts that arise between two binudngans (the other party in a peace-pact) in
order to restore severed relationships between them and to foster peaceful co-existence.
Kalingas have been known for waging kayaw (wars) with each other even to this day. Known as kinabagaang, these
tribal wars are ascribed to land disputes, retaliatory attacks to avenge a killing, an injury or other wrongs inflicted by
a person on a member of another sin-ilian (tribe). When there are tribal feuds, anybody of the tribe can become the
victim of blood retribution even if that person is not related by blood to the offender. The wrongdoing is a collective
guilt and every member can be an unsuspecting target. Justice for the Kalingas is retribution.
The Kalinga Bodong does not only concern itself with the adjudication and arbitration of inter-tribal disputes but it
also fosters interregional peaceful co-existence. Through the Bodong, tribes convene to settle disputes and to restore
friendly relations. Hence, an agreeable interdependence exists between and among members within the tribe and
cordial relations with their surrounding neighbors prevail. Once established, the Bodong including all its pagta
(provisions) has to be respected and observed. Otherwise, if disputes between two tribes are not settled amicably and
promptly, the Bodong may result in a gopas (termination of the peace-pact); hence, tribal war is inevitable.
A Study on the Perception of Ibalois as an Indigenous Group in the Contemporary Society and
its Effects to their Culture
Clarissa Mateo
The Ibalois are one of the indigenous peoples of the Cordilleras located in the northern part of the Philippines. They
are described as demure and unique in their own way. Moreover, other Igorot subgroups perceive them distinctly.
This research will focus on the self-perception of Ibalois today and its impact on them as an indigenous group. This
research focuses on the relevance of indigenous peoples to contemporary Filipino society, particularly in mass culture.
The Ibaloi or Nabaloi is a subgroup of the Igorot, the indigenous peoples of the Cordillera region in the island of
Luzon. Other Igorot peoples include the Balangao, Bontoc, Ifugao, Isneg, Kalinga, and Kankana-ey.
Indigenous peoples are usually treated in Philippine society as museum pieces, displayed for tourism purposes. The
Ibalois are among these Indigenous peoples who are given less importance, neglected, and considered second-class
citizens. This research focuses on how the lives and culture of the Ibaloi are depicted. It aims to deepen the reader’s
understanding of their history as a function group and to explicate their current situation as indigenous peoples whose
security is affected by prevailing development policies.
Bansay: In Search of the Filipino Virtue
Victor Dennis Tino Nierva
Independent Scholar Bicol Region
This paper exploratively searches for the Filipino word for virtue – both in word formation and in the appropriation
of meanings a word receives when used in literatures. I assert that the Filipino birtud is wanting and bereft of
indigeneity and proposes that the Bikol-Visayan word bansay possesses the sublime character needed for a Filipino
term for virtue. This proposal is developed by presenting recent studies by Bikolano scholars on the words orag, a
popular Bikol word with multiple meanings, and gayon, the Bikol word for 'beauty', and from these thoughts,
supported by how the word bansay was used and given meanings in printed literature of the nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Bikol, they arrive at a proposal for a gender-free, timeless, context-enriching, encompassing Filipino term for
what we know as virtue.
Session 3F
HISTORICAL INTERVENTIONS IN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES
Indigenous Participatory Policy Making and Learning Spaces: Enabling and Sustaining Indigenous
Democratisation through the Development of Democratic Learning Spaces in Indigenous Communities
Glenn M.S. Varona
Australian Institute of Business, Adelaide
Indigenous cultural communities in the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere in the world have long
been excluded from or unable to participate fully and meaningfully in the policy decision-making that affects them
and their future. This is despite the wealth of cultural and other knowledge that they could share with mainstream
society that may actually hold the key towards better understanding of humanity’s shared living space.
This paper argues and proposes a research agenda that combines the concept of developing democratic learning spaces
that could be developed with indigenous communities in the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand that could
establish, strengthen, and sustain the process of democratisation through education. A democratic learning space is
defined in this study as “a space in real and/or virtual time where learning can take place under democratic principles
and with best practices.” In such spaces, learning and capacity-building towards democratic governance may be
developed and sustained. This could, in turn, enable indigenous cultural communities to obtain a more effective
capacity towards participatory democratic policymaking that could lead to better governance outcomes for them and
their future generations.
Democratic learning spaces are not only constructs that could enable practical learning and education, but also
potential social institutions that could lead to the practice of actual participatory democracy in an indigenous context.
While the focus of this study will be the three major ICCs in the provinces of Sarangani and South Cotabato, namely,
the B’laans, T’bolis, and Kaulos, lessons and experiences from the Kaurnas of Australia and Maoris of New Zealand
will be used here and integrated with lessons and experiences from Philippine indigenous perspectives to enrich the
thesis and its possible outcomes.
Mrs. Kelly and the Education of the Ibalois at the Bua School in Benguet, Northern Philippines, 1901-1940
Charita Arcangel de los Reyes
University of the Philippines
This is a historical study that traces the origins of formal education among the Ibalois, an indigenous group in Benguet,
Philippines, at the advent of American colonization from 1901 to the 1940s. Dubbed as Igorots (people from the
mountains) they underwent "social engineering" due to the Western type of curriculum that was added to their nonformal, tradition-based learning. The colonial school’s success may not have been expected in the past, but this became
instrumental to their economic uplift and self-sufficiency, the promotion of the Igorot women’s welfare, the ability to
counter colonial impositions and attaining leverage from undue competition with their political, economic and social
rivals, the Ilocanos. Leadership training among the Ibalois was seen as a powerful tool for assimilation to the colonial
rule. Yet the much denigrated “social engineering” has catapulted many Ibalois to political office, civil service, public
and private concerns, especially during the colonial times.
Development Interventions in Surigao del Sur Manobo’s Social Milieu: A Discourse
Ramel D. Tomaquin and Resty Tomaquin Malong
Surigao del Sur State University
Surigao del Sur, is traditional homeland of the Manobos of the Caraga region. The Manobos had inhabited the region
even before Spanish colonization. Scholars like Alameda and Garvan maintained that they were original
inhabitants/residents of the area. The Spaniards and later the Americans pushed them back to the mountainous areas
of this part of Mindanao. When the Philippines was granted independence in 1946 numerous lumber companies in
Manila applied for rights to exploit the forest where the Manobos dwell. This ushered change in the Manobo social
milieu. The lumber companies exploited the forest resources, which was one of the reasons for the displacement of
the Manobos from their ancestral domain, while the forest resources dwindled due to wanton use, leading to their
depletion. As a result, the Surigao Manobos languished in poverty and gradually lost their ancestral lands. The
Philippine government established PANAMIN, Office of the Cultural Minorities, currently the NCIP for the
integration of the Manobos into the Philippine body politic. The Passage of the IPRA Law of 1997 granted royalties
to the Manobos for the exploitation of the natural resources within the ancestral domain; however, the Manobos were
also perceived to have an excessive ancestral domain claim which resulted in debates over the validity of the claim of
the dominant Surigaonon/Visayan population. Conflict among the groups of the Manobos, to some extent, contributed
to the weakness of their large ancestral domain claim. On the other hand, the renaissance of the great Manobo culture
illustrated the communal desire of the group to preserve its lore for posterity as part of the national heritage. Numerous
military operations had contributed to the displacement of the Manobos but they also revealed the interest of the
military sector in the mining resources in the area on the pretext of protecting the forest. The paper aims to present the
issues of the integration of the Surigao del Sur Manobos and the movement to protect their ancestral domain.
Ethnographic and social history methods were used, aided by focus group discussions. In light of this, development
implications will be presented.
Titling of Ancestral Domain and Formulation of Ancestral Domain Sustainable Development and Protection
Plans at the Micro-level: The Case of Happy Hallow Ancestral Domain, Baguio City
Giovanni Bete Reyes
This study is about the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) of Happy Hallow, Baguio City, and its Ancestral
Domain Sustainable Development and Protection Plan (ADSDPP).
It illustrates the weakness of the state-issued CADT, and looks at how an ADSDPP could be appropriate and
sustainable as a protection plan when a CADT itself is not credible on which an ADSDPP is anchored.
Based on semi-structured interviews, FGDs and official documents obtained from Malacañang, Office of Executive
Secretary, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the
City Government of Baguio, this study illustrates how the state distorted the indigenous notion of land ownership and
how this was extended in the processing of the CADT and formulation of ADSDPP to Happy Hallow, Baguio City.
Applying James Scott’s notion of “ungoverned margins,” where the margins enjoy autonomy and have the option to
engage the state, while steering clear of being politically captured, this study demonstrates that the community
members of Happy Hallow are capable of actively engaging the state when the latter invites them to craft policy on
the recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights to their domains.
Session 4A
THE FILIPINO INTELLLECTUAL CLASS AND ITS UNIVERSITY
This panel is an intellectual and social history of the University of the Philippines. It examines the various
contradictory impulses that have defined the university: colonial yet anti-imperial, civilized yet violent, public yet
increasingly privatized, etc. These tensions are reflective of the larger tensions of the Philippine intelligentsia. Broadly
chronological, the panel begins with UP’s foundation and ends with a discussion of its present dilemmas.
Three Versions of a National University
Resil B. Mojares
University of San Carlos Cebu City
The revolution and establishment of a republic (1896/1898) opened the door to efforts by Filipinos to take control of
the country's education sector, and establish an independent, "national" university. The paper investigates three cases
in the move to create such a university: the short-lived Universidad Literaria de Filipinas (1898-99), Isabelo de los
Reyes' proposed Aurora Nueva (1900), and the US-sponsored University of the Philippines (1908). In comparing
these cases, the paper reflects on the limits and possibilities of a national university.
Fraternity Violence and the University of the Philippines
Patricio N. Abinales
University of Hawai’i at Mano’a
The University of the Philippines has always had a contradictory statement. Created by American colonizers to breed
a new generation of leaders in the putative nation, the former’s legatees turned into fervent anti-imperialists. Designed
to provide the country with a loyal professional base, a good portion of its graduates turns its back on the nation and
move abroad. Inculcating in its students a sense of service to "the people," it produces the country's leading exploiters
and oppressors as well as top communist and separatist cadres. Finally, while it is an institution committed to
secularism, democracy, and civility, it has also become an arena of frequent violence by autocratic, secretive, and
barbaric fraternities. This paper explores this third paradox by looking at the nature of fraternity violence, the resilience
of the brotherhood system, and how it fits into the mission of the country's top institution of higher learning.
Salvador Lopez, The University of the Philippines, and The Philippine “Age of Extremes”
Lisandro E. Claudio
Ateneo de Manila University and Kyoto University
The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm referred to the twentieth century as an “Age of Extremes,” which pit fascism
on the Right with Communism on the Left. The University of the Philippines experienced this world drama in
miniature during the charged years leading to the declaration of martial law. At UP, an incipient Maoist movement
had begun to articulate a Communist alternative to an incipient fascist dictatorship. Caught between these two currents
was the university’s president, the literary critic and diplomat Salvador P. Lopez. Lopez was a mid-century Filipino
liberal, and his ideas appeared passé in those politically charged years. However, I contend that Lopez’s liberalism
served as a modus vivendi, allowing him to criticize radicalism, while opening possibilities for its articulation. This
contradiction at the heart of liberalism – critical yet facilitative, moderate yet forward looking – is also the
contradiction of the liberal university.
The Neoliberal Debacle: The Marketization of University of the Philippines (UP) Education
Ramon Guillermo
The extensive privatization by the Philippine State of key social services has been ongoing for more than a decade.
Public State Colleges and Universities (SCUs), already starved of funds, have been forced to seek ways to generate
revenue through increased tuition fees, commercial ventures, public-private partnerships, and other schemes. The
marketization (or commodification) of education at the University of the Philippines (UP) is a particularly prominent
case wherein public and academic values have come into direct collision with imposed corporatization and dominant
managerial ideologies. This paper is an attempt to give an account of the policies and programs, internal and external
to UP, which have led to this state of affairs.
Session 4B
COLONIAL SPACES IN TRANSITION
Mapping Ilustrados: The First Philippine Secondary Schools, 1865 – 1898
María Eloísa G. Parco De Castro
The Ilustrados, generally taken to mean the Filipino educated class in late nineteenth century Philippines, were
produced by the educational system put in place by the Spanish colonial government. The secondary schools played
a large part in the education of ilustrados as many of them did not pursue a university degree or go abroad to pursue
higher education. Limited information is available about the secondary schools of the Spanish colonial period apart
from the well-known ones such as the Ateneo Municipal and the Colegio de San Juan de Letrán, both located in
Intramuros, Manila. The majority of the secondary schools were second-class private schools largely owned and
operated by the teachers themselves. This paper will look into the expansion of secondary education from Manila to
five other provinces – Cavite, Batangas, Laguna, Bulacan, and Pampanga, using data from the Libros de Matrículas
or the Official Enrolment Lists in the Archives of the University of Santo Tomas, to determine how the actual growth
of secondary schools took place. In the process, the development of secondary education will be mapped out to visually
demonstrate how the process began and expanded with the end view of understanding the context which produced the
secondary schools and the ilustrados, who would go on to pursue reform, revolution, and independence for the
Philippines.
Junctures: Internal mobility, Regional Integration, and Information Exchange around
Mid-colonial Southern Tagalog Region
Nicholas Sy
In 1685, over a hundred years into the evangelization of the Philippines, a secular priest trekked to a pueblo at the
edge of Batangas province in Luzon. He was there to investigate allegations of idolatry. A number of residents were
interviewed about their beliefs. When asked which other communities held these beliefs, his respondents listed eleven
pueblos across what are today four provinces. What historical realties allowed for the continuing knowledge of
prohibited religious beliefs held by indigenous communities located over 40 kilometers away?
The present work answers this question by examining territorial exogamy during the mid-colonial period. Data from
the closest surviving parish registers from two pueblos mentioned during the above investigations (Indang, Cavite,
and San Pablo, Laguna) are aggregated to provide measures for both the magnitude and the direction of their areas’
internal mobility. Akin Mabogunje's (1970) Systems Approach to migration is used to frame the social and
geographical realities most relevant to the trends emergent in these statistics.
Overall this study finds that the pueblo of San Pablo, as compared with Indang, had a much greater percentage of
marriages involving at least one partner from a distant/non-adjacent pueblo. This finding suggests that among the
various historical linkages between the communities of mid-colonial Southern Tagalog region (such as government
policies on labor and taxation, and social realities such as banditry and smuggling) it was geographic realities that
most influenced a pueblo’s exposure to interprovincial exchanges of indigenous knowledge, knowledge that integrated
its bearers into a regional community.
Spanish Manila: Cosmopolitan Port City in Transition, 1780-1820
Nariko Sugaya
Ehime University, Japan
Spanish Philippines, particularly its capital, Spanish Manila, was in socio-economic transition during the period 17801820. This transition was basically brought about by the changing pattern of foreign trade. While the traditional
pattern of foreign trade, such as the Manila Galleon and its supporting line of Chinese carrying trade from Fujian,
continued to function in the colonial economy, new patterns under the Spanish policy of trade liberation and
diversification gained force, to the extent that Manila virtually opened its port to foreign trade. As a result, Spanish
colonial Manila became increasingly cosmopolitan during 1780-1820 or the last days of the Manila Galleon system.
The colonial people in Spanish Manila, such as Spaniards, Chinese, Europeans, Americans, as well as indios, struggled
to survive or adjusted themselves to the changing socio-economic conditions of the period. On some occasions they
cooperated, on others they competed with each other as the circumstances required. This paper aims to show the
changing patterns of Manila’s foreign trade during the period by analyzing Manila Customs House records, and to
depict colonial lives by looking into the “Protocolos de Manila” or notarial deeds preserved in the National Archives
of the Philippines.
Manila Hemp in World, Regional, National and Local Histories
Shinzo Hayase
Waseda University
The leaf fiber of the abaca plant, the Manila hemp of commerce, became the most important cordage fiber in the world
market by the mid-nineteenth century. The Philippines came to enjoy a natural monopoly of abaca production until
improvements were made in artificial fibers in the second half of the twentieth century. In this paper I will examine
the Manila hemp industry from the point of view of the following four perspectives: global (world), regional (wider
area), national (nation) and local (rural). I will discuss in particular why the Japanese came to Davao to work at abaca
plantations from the perspective of Japanese local history.
Session 4C
THE PEACE PROCESS: VARIOUS VIEWPOINTS
Correlates of the Bangsamoro Basic Law Perception after the Mamasapano Incident: The Case of Iligan City
Mary Beth Ann. O. Odo, Sulpecia L. Ponce, Sherifa Rossmia O. Kadil, and Lucille A. Bayron
The Mamasapano tragedy, which resulted in the death of 44 SAF police personnel, dealt a heavy blow to the peace
effort in Mindanao as it resulted in the suspension of the deliberations on the provisions of the Bangsamoro Basic Law
(BBL) between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). This study aims to examine the
correlates of BBL perception among 30 Muslim and 30 non-Muslim survey samples in Iligan City. It further seeks to
determine their understanding of BBL and Mindanao’s prospects of peace.
Findings indicate that the respondents’ views of peace are varied ranging from the absence of conflict, absence of fear
and anxiety to the presence of unity and open-mindedness among people. For the non-Muslims, BBL may just lead
to confusion and indifference and intensify the boundaries between ethnic groups. On the other hand, the Muslims
find BBL to be the solution to peace and security issues in Mindanao, a position they held even after the Mamasapano
incident. A significant correlation has been established between education, monthly income, place of origin and
duration of stay in their locality with the perception of the BBL. On the other hand, it is worthwhile to note that age,
gender, civil status, and occupation bear no significant correlation with their BBL perception. Nevertheless, both
groups strongly believe that Mindanao will achieve peace if the people are determined to make it happen. Galtung’s
view on positive peace through collaborative enterprises of conflicting parties can become a promising framework to
end the Mindanao conflict.
Citizens’ Perception on the Bangsamoro Framework Agreement and Bangsamoro Basic Law
Edwin C. Du
Capitol University, Cagayan de Oro City
This paper seeks to address the protracted conflict in Mindanao which has led to the peace process. The question
foremost in this study is to ask ordinary citizens what is their perception regarding the various aspects of the peace
agreement as well as the Bangsamoro Basic Law. Basically descriptive in nature the study utilized the survey method
of gathering data which was completed in October 2015 with 400 respondents from various areas in Region X
particularly, Cagayan de Oro City, Iligan City, Ozamis City, Misamis Oriental, and Bukidnon, composed of youths
18 years old and above from secondary and tertiary schools, teachers and professors from various schools and colleges,
government workers, and individuals from the business or private sector.
The results of the citizens’ perception showed that the respondents disagreed in all four areas, namely, the Bangsamoro
Framework Agreement, National Sovereignty, Power and Wealth Sharing, and the Bangsamoro Basic law. With
regards to the hypothesis of the study findings showed that there is a significant difference in the citizens’ perception
when grouped according to gender, religion, province, educational background, and industry.
The perception of the citizens surveyed demonstrated that the Bangsamoro Framework Agreement will not bring
lasting peace to Mindanao. It is also widely believed that the Bangsamoro will not separate from the national
sovereignty of the Philippines. Most importantly the respondents also disagreed that the Bangsamoro entity will follow
the peace agreement and voluntarily surrender armed groups. There is, therefore, a wealth of implications gathered by
this study relevant to good governance, re-educating citizens’ mindset on ethnicities and peace-building, and reexamining the legal framework of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law.
The Dynamics of Moro Separatism: Heroes and Villains of the Peace Process in Mindanao
Henry K. Solomon
Western Mindanao State University, Zamboanga City
The Philippine government anchored its policy on national integration on dealing with the decades-old Moro separatist
issue in the Southern Philippines. But the national integration framework continues to be threatened by rebellion and
armed separatist movements in the South. The outcome of the Peace process in Mindanao has remained indeterminate
and elusive and dependent on various political compromises. It has an exclusive, integrative and divisive effects. The
issue on how to address these major obstacles continues to persist. The Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) continues to
face various challenges, either in support of or not, from the legislators and the people of Mindanao. More so, it is
subject to different political and personal interests and the agenda involved. This paper raises the following issues: (1)
What is the status and the future of the Moro separatist movement in the Mindanao as shaped by the current political
developments in the national and regional scenes? (2) Under what conditions will the peace process in Mindanao
progress? (3) What is expected to take place for the realization and sustainability of stable peace and development in
Mindanao to happen? (4) What significant contributions can the peace agreement provide to address some concerned
issues? and (5) What is the future of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law? Thus, this paper will basically provide a
comprehensive assessment and an in-depth analysis of those issues.
Session 4C
THE PEACE PROCESS: VARIOUS VIEWPOINTS
Correlates of the Bangsamoro Basic Law Perception after the Mamasapano Incident: The Case of Iligan City
Mary Beth Ann. O. Odo, Sulpecia L. Ponce, Sherifa Rossmia O. Kadil, and Lucille A. Bayron
The Mamasapano tragedy, which resulted in the death of 44 SAF police personnel, dealt a heavy blow to the peace
effort in Mindanao as it resulted in the suspension of the deliberations on the provisions of the Bangsamoro Basic Law
(BBL) between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). This study aims to examine the
correlates of BBL perception among 30 Muslim and 30 non-Muslim survey samples in Iligan City. It further seeks to
determine their understanding of BBL and Mindanao’s prospects of peace.
Findings indicate that the respondents’ views of peace are varied ranging from the absence of conflict, absence of fear
and anxiety to the presence of unity and open-mindedness among people. For the non-Muslims, BBL may just lead
to confusion and indifference and intensify the boundaries between ethnic groups. On the other hand, the Muslims
find BBL to be the solution to peace and security issues in Mindanao, a position they held even after the Mamasapano
incident. A significant correlation has been established between education, monthly income, place of origin and
duration of stay in their locality with the perception of the BBL. On the other hand, it is worthwhile to note that age,
gender, civil status, and occupation bear no significant correlation with their BBL perception. Nevertheless, both
groups strongly believe that Mindanao will achieve peace if the people are determined to make it happen. Galtung’s
view on positive peace through collaborative enterprises of conflicting parties can become a promising framework to
end the Mindanao conflict.
Citizens’ Perception on the Bangsamoro Framework Agreement and Bangsamoro Basic Law
Edwin C. Du
Capitol University, Cagayan de Oro City
This paper seeks to address the protracted conflict in Mindanao which has led to the peace process. The question
foremost in this study is to ask ordinary citizens what is their perception regarding the various aspects of the peace
agreement as well as the Bangsamoro Basic Law. Basically descriptive in nature the study utilized the survey method
of gathering data which was completed in October 2015 with 400 respondents from various areas in Region X
particularly, Cagayan de Oro City, Iligan City, Ozamis City, Misamis Oriental, and Bukidnon, composed of youths
18 years old and above from secondary and tertiary schools, teachers and professors from various schools and colleges,
government workers, and individuals from the business or private sector.
The results of the citizens’ perception showed that the respondents disagreed in all four areas, namely, the Bangsamoro
Framework Agreement, National Sovereignty, Power and Wealth Sharing, and the Bangsamoro Basic law. With
regards to the hypothesis of the study findings showed that there is a significant difference in the citizens’ perception
when grouped according to gender, religion, province, educational background, and industry.
Commented [DP2]: delete
The perception of the citizens surveyed demonstrated that the Bangsamoro Framework Agreement will not bring
lasting peace to Mindanao. It is also widely believed that the Bangsamoro will not separate from the national
sovereignty of the Philippines. Most importantly the respondents also disagreed that the Bangsamoro entity will follow
the peace agreement and voluntarily surrender armed groups. There is, therefore, a wealth of implications gathered by
this study relevant to good governance, re-educating citizens’ mindset on ethnicities and peace-building, and reexamining the legal framework of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law.
The Dynamics of Moro Separatism: Heroes and Villains of the Peace Process in Mindanao
Henry K. Solomon
The Philippine government anchored its policy on national integration on dealing with the decades-old Moro separatist
issue in the Southern Philippines. But the national integration framework continues to be threatened by rebellion and
armed separatist movements in the South. The outcome of the Peace process in Mindanao has remained indeterminate
and elusive, and dependent on various political compromises. It has an exclusive, integrative and divisive effects. The
issue on how to address these major obstacles continues to persist. The Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) continues to
face various challenges, either in support of or not, from the legislators and the people of Mindanao. More so, it is
subject to different political and personal interests and the agenda involved. This paper raises the following issues: (1)
What is the status and the future of the Moro separatist movement in the Mindanao as shaped by the current political
developments in the national and regional scenes? (2) Under what conditions will the peace process in Mindanao
progress? (3) What is expected to take place for the realization and sustainability of stable peace and development in
Mindanao to happen? (4) What significant contributions can the peace agreement provide to address some concerned
issues? and (5) What is the future of the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law? Thus, this paper will basically provide a
comprehensive assessment and an in-depth analysis of those issues.
Session 4D
PARTICIPATION AND POLITICAL REFORM
Progressive Politics in Siquijor: Bottom-Up Budgeting and People Power Volunteers for Reform
Tamiki Hara
Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo
Many studies on Philippine politics have regarded the EDSA Revolution in 1986 as the restoration of oligarchical
domination and stressed the changelessness in the political structure after the collapse of the Marcos regime. However,
this view sometimes overlooks the transformation of elite domination that has become especially apparent at the local
level. Neoliberal reforms and decentralization created new opportunities and spheres both for elites and progressive
forces. Both reforms paved the way for elites to be more development-oriented and hostile to traditional elites. The
latter gave NGOs the chance to participate in the administrative process of local development. They have begun to
regard the engagement in governance as an important field to change the society and seek to cooperate with emergent
elites on some issues. These factors are gradually transforming the dominant structure of Philippine politics at the
local level. In other words, we need to enrich and expand Nathan Gilbert Quimpo’s concept of “contested democracy.”
From this viewpoint, I examine the case of Siquijor in the 2000s and show how new development-oriented elites and
progressive NGOs have collaborated with each other and impacted on the configuration of local politics under
neoliberal reforms and decentralization. This will lead to the appropriate recognition of positive changes and the
present profile of class conflict in Philippine politics today.
Seeking Good Governance: Political Reforms and Studies in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia
Shingo Mikamo
Shinshu University, Nagano
Making government effective and accountable always matters in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. This paper
briefly analyzes and articulates the current efforts at political reform in these countries. What are the essentials of
political reform? How can we evaluate the progress of political reforms? These questions are examined in the contexts
of each country. The Philippines has been improving the legitimacy of its democracy in comparison with Thailand
and Indonesia. However, needless to say, political reforms are still critical to reduce corruption and to deepen
democracy in the country. There is no easy answer to assess the best performing country with respect to political
reform efforts. The examination of the issues of good governance in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia raises
methodological questions in political studies. This paper also attempts to clarify the advantages (and disadvantages)
of Philippine (and Southeast Asian) studies in the political studies.
Stuck in the Intermediate State: Alternations of Clientelism, Predation and Reform
Nathan Gilbert Quimpo
University of Tsukuba, Japan
In a country steeped in political patronage and clientelism such as the Philippines, corruption scandals are a common
occurrence. Over the past half-century, however, corruption has at times reached humongous proportions, with two
of the country’s last six presidents (Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada) landing in Transparency International’s
ten most corrupt leaders, and with Estrada’s successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, rated in a 2007 Pulse Asia survey
as being even more corrupt than the two. Two years ago, the Philippines was rocked by the P10 billion Priority
Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel scam, possibly the country’s biggest corruption scandal ever.
Political patronage, clientelism, and outright corruption have contributed immensely to the low quality of the country’s
democracy and to long periods of slow economic growth. Despite all these, the Philippines has not degenerated to the
level of the predatory state, which Evans (1995: 45) defines as one that “preys on its citizenry, terrorizing them,
despoiling their common patrimony, and providing little in the way of services in return.” By Evans’ definition, the
Philippines would be an “intermediate state” – one somewhere between the developmental state and the predatory
state. But how does an intermediate state become developmental or predatory or remain stuck at intermediate? This
seems largely under-theorized or even un-theorized. The Philippine case, with its alternations of clientelism, predation,
and reform, provides some insights.
Session 4E
REFORMING ECONOMICS AND THE ECONOMICS OF REFORM
Provisions of Services for Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program in Davao del Norte
Christine Joy L. Quismundo
Silliman University
The Philippine Government created a way to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal as a global
effort to eradicate extreme poverty by 2015. It became the reason for the country to formulate the Conditional Cash
Transfer Program, now popularly known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps). The research study
entitled “Provision of Services for Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program: Perceived Local Government Units
(LGUs) Capability and Extent of Compliance in Davao del Norte, aimed to determine the capability of the selected
Davao del Norte LGUs to provide 4Ps services according to the respondents’ socio-demographic profile, perceived
LGU’s capability, challenges encountered, extent of compliance and the significant difference in terms of municipalclass implementation. This is a descriptive study which employed the qualitative and quantitative research method.
Multi-stage sampling was used and the sample municipalities to represent the province were identified purposively
based on class. The study showed that 4Ps was a true investment in human capital by helping poor Filipino families
become resilient and survive and thrive in this highly competitive world.
Participatory Economic Development in the Philippines: A Pathway to Identity and Freedom
Teresa Downing-Matibag
Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA
The Philippines is a primary source for international labor and sex trafficking, facilitated by criminal syndicates and
unscrupulous recruiters, as well as a hotspot for the commercial sexual exploitation of women and youth. While
numerous initiatives to combat (demand for) sex tourism, rescue victims of labor and sex trafficking abroad, and
prevent primary victimization have emerged among Filipino-led NGOs through the efforts of international service
organizations, these crimes have continued unabated. Furthermore, the recent efforts of the Aquino (III) administration
to implement the “rule of law” have left domestic trafficking relatively unscathed and Overseas Workers highly
vulnerable to exploitation.
Drawing on international case studies of justice-centered development, this paper proposes that the “democratized
economic development” of three key industries will help to eradicate modern day slavery beyond what the civic and
non-profit sectors have accomplished. These are (1) a manufacturing sector which pays a living wage and produces
high-end finished products; (2) an information technology sector which draws on the ingenuity of STEM-educated
professionals; and 3) a sustainable agriculture sector based on the nation’s vast natural resources and climate. With
astounding growth in GDP, the time is ripe for the Philippines to achieve economic self-determination and emerge as
a fifth “Asian Tiger,” by achieving significant levels of shared economic prosperity – including women’s
empowerment – as a pathway to freedom for its citizens.
Accomplishing this goal will require partnership and investment among the Filipino middle class and its diaspora; a
reclamation of the rights of diverse localities in decision-making; and the development of inclusive, social-capital
sustaining networks.
The New Awkward Class: CARP Beneficiaries and the Dynamics of Exclusion in Negros Occidental
Rosanne Rutten
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
In Negros Occidental – once a major sugarcane plantation region and a major support base of the communist guerrilla
movement CPP-NPA – the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of land redistribution among
plantation workers is followed by a trend of land reconcentration. Former plantation workers are leasing out or
mortgaging their newly acquired land, or selling their land rights in the informal land market. Many are currently
wage-workers for lessees, tied up in volatile, short-term land-lease arrangements that are commonly renewed because
of indebtedness.
Control of land is shifting back from poor rural households to entrepreneurs, defeating the aim of CARP to turn the
landless into independent productive smallholders, and relegating CARP beneficiaries to the awkward position of
‘landed proletarians.’ These CARP beneficiaries form an awkward class in a political sense: not transforming into
independent smallholders, they are an embarrassment to the state and to pro-CARP social movements and NGOs, and
they form a welcome piece of evidence for anti-CARP lobbyists.
But what are the actual conditions and perspectives of these CARP beneficiaries? How are they excluded from actual
control over their land, what power can they muster to defend their interests, and which subsistence strategies do they
follow? Moreover, which alternative models of land control would enable them to successfully turn into small
independent farmers? I will discuss these issues based on long-term fieldwork in a lowland hacienda community and
upland frontier village in central and southern Negros Occidental.
Empowerment and Exploitation in Redistributed Banana Plantations
Robin Thiers
Ghent University, Belgium
Since the late 1990s, the Philippine Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) has been implemented in a
number of export banana plantations in the Davao Del Norte region, herewith establishing cooperatives of agrarian
reform beneficiaries (ARB) (Borras & Franco 2005). Meanwhile, new export markets brought along new networks of
buyers who have challenged the existing monopsony in the banana export market.
In this renewed setting, new marketing arrangements between agribusiness companies and small- to medium-scale
banana producers have become increasingly popular. My paper discusses the ambiguity of the newly emerged relations
of production and exchange in two ARB cooperatives in the municipalities of Santo Tomas and Kapalong, Davao Del
Norte. Both cooperatives use an individual farming and collective marketing system, with one cooperative having an
exclusive marketing contract with a large transnational company, while the other sells to different buyers at weekly
negotiated prices.
On the basis of ethnographic data collected during four months of field research, I demonstrate that increased
autonomy in production and marketing is accompanied with the downshifting of risks through the chain and (in one
case) the emergence of new (informal) wage labour relations. Through the application of a Marxist political economy
framework, I argue that both empowerment and exploitation in the redistribution plantations should be understood in
a context of rising flexible accumulation in the sector (Watts 1994; Harriss-White 2010) and are continuously coconstructed and challenged by ARBs and their workforce through their everyday politics of consent and contestation
(Clapp 1988; Kerkvliet 1990).
Session 4F
INSTRUMENTALITIES OF COLONIAL POWER
Prohibition, Rather than Tolerance: Opium in the Philippines Revisited, 1800-1850
Ander Permanyer-Ugartemendia
Universitat Pompeu Fabra – GRIMSE
Barcelona, Spain
This presentation is aimed at revisiting the role of opium in the Philippines during the first half of the nineteenth
century by analysing Spanish authorities’ discussions on the issue before the establishment of the estanco de anfión
in 1844. It will assert that prohibition, rather than leniency, was its most outstanding feature. The anfión system
descriptions tend to focus on the allegedly unprecedented character of the state monopoly, while taking for granted
motivations for former prohibitions. However, there were such precedents in other similar systems established by
other European colonial powers in Southeast Asia and known to Spanish authorities. Rather, prohibition should be
considered the most remarkable element of the Spanish attitudes towards opium, and needs to be more thoroughly
evaluated. Together with Qing China, the Spanish colonial government was the only power to forbid opium trade and
consumption in the region at least since 1814, and prohibition was maintained for all communities other than the
Chinese after 1844. Reasons for this prohibition will be reassessed here. This will be made under the light of recent
reevaluations of the role of opium in Asia. Spanish anxieties towards the Chinese in the Philippines, public order
concerns, and Catholic appeals to moral purity will be also taken into the account. Economic interests will be evaluated
as well, namely, projects related to the opium trade and economic development of the archipelago.
The Patients at the Culion Leper Colony, 1905-1930s
Febe Pamonag
Western Illinois University, Illinois, USA
Public health was vital to the success of the American pacification campaign and the civilizing process in the
Philippines during the early twentieth century. In 1905, American colonial authorities established a leper colony in
Culion, an isolated island in Palawan. Victor Heiser, Director of Health in the Philippines from 1905 to 1915, declared
that to ensure public health, it was necessary to isolate lepers; this meant, in many instances, forcibly removing them
from their homes and relocating them to Culion. But how did individuals who were suspected of having leprosy
respond to Heiser during his “leper collecting trips” throughout the country? What was life like for those who were
brought to Culion, and how did they engage with government authorities over such issues as the segregation of patients
by gender and the ban on cohabitation and marriage? This paper seeks to advance our understanding of Filipino leprosy
patients’ engagement with American colonial authorities, an understudied theme in the literature on empire and public
health policy, and U.S. colonialism in the Philippines. Most scholarship on Culion emphasizes Culion’s role as a
laboratory for civic experimentation and how it was embroiled in major political issues of the day. Here, the patients
appear as objects of colonial policies and of both anti- and pro-independence rhetoric by American and Filipino
government officials. In this paper, I consider the views and practices of leprosy patients to show how they challenged
their forced removal from their homes and the gender segregation within the leper colony.
Prisons in the Colonial Periphery: Provincial Prisons in American Philippines
Aaron Abel Mallari
Focusing on the prison system, this paper aims to look at the management of three penal institutions in the Philippines
during the American colonial period (1901-1935). Taking the Iwahig Penal Farm in Palawan, the Bontoc Prison in the
Mountain Province, and the San Ramon Penal Farm in Zamboanga as case studies, the research endeavors to locate
prison and penology in the American strategies of governance in the Philippines and brings to light the various ways
in which penal institutions figured in the wider imperial project beyond their obvious function in the system of social
control. Since we can say that prisons are sites where the state’s power is seen at its visceral, this paper adheres to the
notion that prisons are effective lenses in understanding further the society (in this case, colonial society) where they
function(ed).
With data culled primarily from archival sources particularly colonial government reports and publications, this paper
will reflect on American penology in the Philippines within the colonial context in three parts. The first will show
how the prisons became colonial projects and laboratories that made room for experimentation in penal management
and was a haven for scientific inquiry. Secondly, It will look at the histories of these penal institutions located in the
periphery of the colony and reflect on how the prison system also became a facilitator of the movement of people. The
third part will analyze how prisons were packaged as attractions and proofs of the triumphs of the colonial government.
Reflecting on Foucault’s idea of how the rise of modern penal regimes intended not necessarily to lessen punishment,
but rather to “punish better,” and stretching it to the context of colonialism, it will be argued that the management of
the prisons afforded the Americans another important opportunity to bolster the legitimacy of “Benevolent
Assimilation.” Furthermore, utilizing the idea of David Garland and his sociology of punishment which characterizes
penal institutions as “social artifacts,” this research will consequently present not only how the colonial conditions
shaped the policies in prison management but also, as seen in the utilization of the prison beyond incarceration, how
prisons embodied and shaped the colonial condition.
Wings of Supremacy: The Dawn of Aviation in the Philippines 1909-1919
Patrick John F. Mansujeto
Philippine College of Aeronautics, Pasay City
The airplane is truly a testament of American technological achievement. The first successful flight by the Wright
Brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903 was considered a milestone in American History. This
development in aviation technology occurred when the Americans were consolidating their imperial power in the
Philippines. By 1909, American aviation troupes started to arrive in the country to entertain, excite, and amaze the
people of Manila. The paper is about the introduction of man-powered flights in the Philippines from 1909 to 1919.
The year 1909 was recorded as the year when the first manned flight rook place in the Philippines while 1920 was the
first successful flight of a Filipino pilot. In addition, the study will try to establish the argument that these aviation
shows were in one way or another, a tool in forwarding American imperial supremacy in the Philippines. The paper
will make use of available primary and secondary sources such as documents, newspaper reports, photographs, etc. in
narrating the different events regarding the beginnings of aviation in the Philippines. Though the theme of American
imperial supremacy in the Philippines has been established by a lot of studies, this paper differs due to the fact that it
will be the first to apply it to the history of flight in the country. By applying this discourse to this new frontier of
historical research, it will push the boundaries of American imperial supremacy not just in its usual geographic
confinement to land and sea but also in the air above.
Session 5A
SOCIAL SPACES, MARKETS, AND LOCALITIES
Marketplaces to Urban Business Districts: A Study of Selected Commercial Centers in the Philippines
Ma. Crisanta ‘Marot’ Nelmida-Flores
The study looks into physical and social market spaces in selected urban centers in the country, namely in (1) Binondo
(particularly, Divisoria); (2) Dagupan Downtown; (3.) Cebu Business Park; (4) Iloilo Downtown; and (5) Davao
Chinatown.
With the rise of modern consumer enterprises (hypermarkets, food and supermarket chains, 24-hour convenience
stores, shopping centers, and mega malls) and IT business parks which measure up to what Eric Shneider calls an
“alpha city” or global city (“Measuring Globalization”: Urban Studies, 14th edition, pp. 29-30), the existence of the
traditional marketplace in the Philippines which is the palengke or the public market is being threatened out of
existence. More and more public markets in Metro Manila and in regional urban centers are being supplanted by more
developed shopping centers, supermarkets and malls. Vendors and some of their suki are weary of the changing urban
landscape and market relations.
The President of the National Federation of Market Vendors articulates the view of the vendors about the palengke as
“an integral part of Philippine culture, instilling a sense of community that is not evident in the more-commercialized
shopping malls.” (“Death of the Palengke,” Alecks Pabico, PCIJ 2002). The study will focus on the consequences
and impact of the transformation of the marketplace (the palengke) into urban business and IT districts. It will discuss
urbanization and the urban-led development plans of these spaces and how these affect traditional market systems and
relations as well as urban life.
Reimagining the Self in the Shadow of Empire: The Influence of the Local Surf Economy on Neo-colonial
Imaginings of Self and Other, Siargao Island, Philippines
Karen Hansen
Australian National University
Canberra, Australia
As Siargao Island becomes an increasingly popular destination for surf tourists as well as Western lifestyle migrants
who consider the island an ideal place to live in, significant structural changes are taking place at the local level. The
structure of the local economy is changing as employment opportunities expand; the social fabric of society is
irretrievably altering as local Filipinos engage closely with Western tourists and migrants through friendships and
romantic relationships. Additionally, on Siargao Island a surf economy has developed where individuals are able to
procure economic and social capital through involvement in the surf industry as skilled surfers or surf teachers.
This paper, which is part of a broader research project that considers local Filipino experiences of the global
phenomenon of lifestyle migration, aims to consider the impact that involvement in the local surf economy (which is
stimulated by processes of lifestyle migration) has on the local Filipino sense of self. Philippine self-identity will be
understood with reference to the Philippine discourse of ‘colonial mentality’. Thus, this paper considers how becoming
involved in and actively reproducing the local surf economy, as well as how interacting with Westerners through the
medium of surfing (as either surf teachers or through friendships formed through the common interest of surfing),
may potentially alter Filipinos’ neo-colonial imaginings of self and other.
The Anthropology of Learning Shoes from the Middle Man
Leynard L. Gripal
In this study, a case was used to analyse knowledge transfer of shoemaking in Marikina City. The inquiry method was
used to gather information from exporters, subcontractors, and manufacturers. The subcontractors or the middle men
were found to absorb mainly the knowledge of the art of shoemaking. This is due to the role of subcontractors in the
value chain of shoe production. Power struggle in the value chain thus hindered the functional upgrading and
partnership among actors in the cluster.
Session 5B
MEDIA AND IDENTITY
Ang Dokumentaryong “Lukayo: Hindi Ito Bastos” At ang Fakelore sa Telebisyon
[The Documentary “Lukayo: Hindi Ito Bastos: and “Fakelore in Television]
Kevin Paul “Ose” Martija
Philippine Normal University /Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila
Hindi na bago ang usapin ng orkestrasyon ng mga sinasabing “katutubong kaugalian” ng mga Pilipino. Mahaba ang
kasaysayan ng mga pekeng kwento o sa pagbanggit nga ni Arnold Azurin, fakelore. Ang fakelore ay tumutukoy sa
mga pekeng saliksik, pang-akademikong papel man o nailabas sa telebisyon na ginamit upang ilarawan ang
katutubong pamumuhay ng mga Pilipino.
Sasaliksikin ng papel na ito ang orkestradong dokumentaryong ipinilabas noong 2006 sa I-Witness na pinamagatang
“Lukayo: Hindi Ito Bastos”. Ang nasabing dokumentaryo ay nakasentro sa tradisyong kung tawagin ay “Lukayo” ng
mga residente ng Kalayaan, Laguna. Ang dokumentaryo’y isang halimbawa kung paano itinatanghal ng media ang
isang katutubong kaugalian na labas/layo sa tunay nitong kahulugan. Sasaliksikin sa papel na ito kung paano inorkestra
ng mga elemento ng nabanggit na programa sa telebisyon ang nasabing “kaugalian”. Sa pagsasaliksik na gagawin
tiyak na gagamitin ang mga teorya ni Pierre Bourdieu sa kanyang On Television upang suriin ang mga bagay na hindi
ipinakita ng ipinakitang dokumentaryo at ang diskursong nakapaloob dito.
Public and Civic Journalism as Antecedents of Participatory Cultures in Philippine Media
Maria Diosa Labiste
With the fall of authoritarian rule in 1986, the democratization process that followed envisaged a transformation of
dominant media from an instrument of the Marcos regime into a democratic institution. While alternative media played
a role in the regime change, it does not mean that they successfully led others to take on a democratic role afterwards.
In fact, mainstream media easily slipped into competitiveness and sensationalism due to the imperatives of the market.
Among the movements that emerged from that period is public journalism, which tried to open the media to citizen
participation and make them serve as a forum for various voices, both consensual and oppositional, in order to mobilize
public support for its cause. Public journalism, also known as civic journalism, is a contested concept but generally
understood as journalistic practice that is attentive to diverse and emergent interests of the community. Public
journalism experiments thrived in the community press, or media organizations outside Metro Manila, was concerned
with the environment, gender, basic social services, child rights, peace and conflict, good governance and the like,
issues that have far reaching consequences for the democratization process as a whole.
This paper intends to shed light on the practice of public/civic journalism, its formation, dynamics, values and
possibilities for social change. Using theories on media and politics (Antonio Gramsci, Jurgen Habermas, Manuel
Castells, etc.), it attempts to construct a critical interpretation of public or civic journalism as a dynamic between
democratic change and the media in the Philippines.
Hoops and Dreams: Analysis of Kuwentong Gilas Narratives and National Identity in the Philippines
Mario Rico Florendo
University of Tokyo
After 40 years, the Gilas Pilipinas, the Philippines’ national basketball team, qualified for the FIBA Basketball World
Cup in 2014. The victory was celebrated by the nation and spurred massive media content including the sportsdocumentary Kuwentong Gilas (The Gilas Story). This paper examines the relationship of sports and the formation of
national identity in the context of television in the Philippines through a mixed methods approach including textual
analysis of the texts, interview with the producers and players, and a survey questionnaire to the audiences.
Particularly, the study will investigate the symbols and representations present in the episodes categorized into three
narratives: Bagong Bayani: From Basketball Superstars to Modern-day Heroes; Player Portraits: From the Home to
the Nation; and Global Pinoys: Tales of Being a Filipino in a Globalized World. The results show that Kuwentong
Gilas, at the present digital age, offers a different avenue of identification. The episodes prove that the stories have
become a new breed of alternative narrative that is not based on politics or history but on cultural institutions like
sports and media.
Session 5C
POINTED CONVERSATIONS: TRANSFIGURING MIGRATION
“But You’re Not Really Filipino:” A Short Memoir
Laurel Fantauzzo
Yale-NYS College, Singapore
This paper presents a creative nonfiction perspective on mixed race identity in the Philippines and the diaspora. In this
short memoir piece, largely composed of comedic dialogue, the author tracks the small, daily gestures of classification
and dismissal she experiences when encountering new acquaintances of both America and the Philippines for the first
time. These interactions – some funny, some irritating, some quietly devastating – force the writer into an exploration
of the larger international, interpersonal, and historical conflicts of living in an ethnically ambiguous body. Navigating
the myth of racial purity is a kind of lifelong labor assigned to mixed-race individuals, a labor that occurs in even the
briefest new intimacies. This paper also explores the life-changing sense of relief and discovery that comes with
finding mixed race friends; allies who understand, with little explanation, the instincts you acquire when you feel
perpetually misnamed and misplaced.
The Filipino Diasporic Reality in Genevie L. Asenjo’s Three Short Stories
Arnel F. Murga
University of the Philippines Miag-ao
Genevieve L. Asenjo, during her writing residency in South Korea, wrote short stories depicting the lives of migrant
Filipinos in her host country. The short stories are “Looking for Gingko,” “Norebang,” and “Greetings from Sacred
Mountain.” “Looking for Gingko” tells the story of a Filipina during her writing fellowship in South Korea.
“Norebang” is the tale of Overseas Filipina Workers who are married to Koreans, expressing their sentiments through
karaoke. “Greetings from Sacred Mountain” is a “story set in Seoul and Iloilo-Guimaras on the plight of migrant
workers and human rights issues and a love story between a Filipino and Palestinian over a cup of jasmine tea” (Asenjo
2015). Considering that these literary texts are perfectly described as postcolonial, I would like to look into the Filipino
diasporic realities manifested in the three short stories using Homi Bhabha’s concepts that are fundamental to
postcolonial theory: hybridity and mimicry. Homi Bhabha’s concepts are used as lenses to explore the experience of
human and cultural displacement or diaspora. The term, diaspora, is now applied to the geographical dispersions of
Asians such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Filipinos (Maidment and Mackerras 72). Christine Pedery states that
“the surging phenomenon of Filipinos working abroad is a diasporic reality which continues to manifest in the
Philippines” (12).
To the Ends of the Earth: Philippine Labor Out-Migration as Musical and Melodrama
Oscar Tantoco Serquiña, Jr.
Ricardo Lee’s DH: Domestic Helper and Liza Magtoto’s Care Divas are plays about Filipino migrant workers,
particularly domestics and caregivers, which the Philippine Educational Theatre Association (PETA) mounted in 1992
and 2010, respectively. The former also had its international tour across Asia, Europe, and North America in 1993,
while the latter had its repeat stage productions in 2011 and 2012. Staged almost two decades apart, these plays
converge in the ways by which they address the central problematic of labor out-migration as an uprooting that
challenges origins and essences, haunts habits of those who leave and are left behind, and produces communions of
individuals that resist the threat of erasure under violent practices of everyday life abroad.
The Ilokano Diaspora, Family, and Gender in the Works of Francisco T. Ponce
Ronie G. Guillermo
Iluko literature continues to struggle for a share of the mainstream reading public as it upholds the promotion of
regional literature. Francisco T. Ponce, a canonical Iluko writer has written a series of short stories that showcase the
cultural identity, uniqueness, and ethnicity of the Ilokanos. Using deconstruction and close-reading technique, this
study explores the rich content of his four chosen short stories by tracing their themes as they relate to diaspora, family,
and gender.
The result of the study shows that Ponce’s writings are generated through his diasporic experiences. He returns to his
nostalgic past by reconnecting with his natural tendencies that were totally removed from him when he was uprooted
from his motherland, thereby showcasing diaspora in his lived experiences. In his works, the value of the family is
depicted in the connection of those who work in Hawaii and those who were left in the Philippines which is sustained
by media that enliven the spirit of caring for each family member. He also illustrates the dynamics of gender which is
co-implicated in the lives of the characters to amplify masculinity and femininity.
Ponce’s contribution to Iluko literature has inspired his fellow regional language users to promote regional literature
despite the obstacles they face. Truly, regional literature will continuously grow for as long as there are writers like
Ponce who treasure their roots, value their culture, and nurture their skills.
Session 5D
THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY: ANTICIPATING THE
TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE PHILIPPINES
This panel will explore several developments that can be traced to the early 19th century, in particular the decade from
1810 to 1820. Two of the papers will link these developments to reactions of different sectors of Philippine society to the
transformative possibilities that presented themselves with the arrival and potential implementation of the Spanish
Constitution of 1812. Ruth de Llobet's recent research has led the way in re-assessing the impact of the brief constitutional
era on Manila and the provinces of Luzon and her paper will analyze a dispute that took place during this period in Laguna,
demonstrating the connections to the charter that were being made across the society. Based on his exhaustive research on
the Catholic Church in the 18th and 19th centuries, Roberto Blanco will focus his paper on the impact of the constitution
on the growing contestations between the secular clergy and the religious orders. The paper of Michael Cullinane analyzes
an uprising in Cebu in 1815, relating this event to provincial, regional, and colony-wide changes that, like the other papers,
suggests that this period foreshadows the economic, political, and social transformations of the Philippines that developed
in the decades that follow.
Re-Thinking the 1812 Constitution's Impact on Laguna Province and the Luzon countryside: The Dispute
between the Principales of Santa Cruz and Majayjay Towns and José Peláez
Ruth de Llobet
GRIMSE, Pompeu Fabra University
Barcelona, Spain
This paper explores the impact and understanding of the 1812 Constitution in the province of Laguna through the analysis
of a dispute between José Peláez, ex-Alcalde Mayor of Laguna (1814), and the principales of the towns of Majayjay and
Santa Cruz. Based on documentary evidence, the paper challenges the widespread notion that the 1812 Constitution had
no impact outside Manila. Although the constitutional period was brief – barely a year in the provinces (1814-15)--the
charter and its overall intent disrupted the colony's sociopolitical status quo by placing indigenous people on an equal legal
footing with creoles and Spaniards, which for this short period provided natives with a degree of political agency. The
constitution's abstract character and the segmented nature of its implementation allowed for a wide interpretation among
the different sectors of the colonial society, with each sector responding according to its interests and to the possibilities
that the charter offered. In addition, the paper moves beyond the binary notions of "class struggle" (between native elites
and cailanes, or commoners) and "colonial struggle" (between natives and non-natives), proposing that the responses to
the charter were more fluid.
The Philippine Church and the Spanish Constitution of 1812
Roberto Blanco Andrés
CSIC – Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Spanish National Research Council, Spain
The implementation of the 1812 Constitution in the Philippines contributed to an important political change in the
relationship between the Catholic Church and the colonial state, as well as precipitating internal divisions between the
regular and secular clergy. While the secular priests perceived the charter to be supportive of their struggle against the
hegemonic control of the parishes by the regular clergy, the friars viewed it as a challenge to a status quo that empowered
them within the archipelago. This paper will explore these issues, emphasizing the efforts of the secular clergy, within a
constitutional framework, to seek political equality with the regulars and to break the friar’s hold on the parishes. This, in
turn, triggered a reaction from the regular clergy to protect their interests and to view the Constitution as a threat. At the
same time, it is necessary to discuss the difficulties facing the Governor General, who as Vice Patrono Real, had to protect
the Church while presiding over the implementation of a charter that intended to redefine the relationship between the
Church and the State.
Kinsa si Juan Diyong: The 1815 Uprising in Cebu
Michael Cullinane
University of Wisconsin-Madison
The 1815 "uprising" in Cebu, led by an enigmatic figure, Juan Diyong, defies a clear analysis. In its aftermath, a number
of sources purport to explain it, while none succeed. This paper will describe the event, but will be more concerned with
constructing its temporal, political, and economic contexts. The disturbance will be viewed as occurring within a
transitional moment, a time when Cebu and the central Visayas and northern Mindanao were beginning to emerge from
over a half century of colonial retreat (retirada). To explain the event within this framework, the paper will attempt to
analyze the changing interconnections among four representative individuals: Juan Diyong (for native residents, mga
lungsuranon, of emerging Christian municipalities), Alcalde Mayor Juan Nepomuceno de Andrade (as agent of the
beleaguered colonial state), Fray Julián Bermejo (as member of the over-extended and dispersed Spanish religious orders),
and Don Blas Crisostomo (as prosperous Chinese Mestizo entrepreneur of Cebu City's Parian). The agendas of each of the
protagonists collide in the 1815 uprising, regroup in its aftermath, and move forward from there within an increasingly
changing colonial milieu.
Session 5E
POINTED CONVERSATIONS: GENDER, POVERTY, POLITICS
Gender Role Differentiation and Access and Control in Community Management Work and Community
Politics: The Case of Upland Farmers in Iligan City
Grace Majorenos-Taruc
Mindanao State University -Marawi
This paper focuses on gender division of labor among women and men farmers in community spheres and their
differential access to and control over resources, benefits, and opportunities. It also highlights the factors affecting
gender division of labor and access to and control, and the implications of such factors to sustainable agriculture in
the community. Key informant interviews and focus group discussions were conducted among farmer beneficiaries
of NGO’s sustainable agriculture program. Some Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools were also utilized.
Findings show that women in Upper Pugaan areas are either part-time or full-time farmers, and are actively involved
in resource management. They are major contributors to the household economy, both through their remunerative
work on farms and through the unpaid work they traditionally render at home and in the community. Moreover, there
is an increasing social mobility and participation of women in community management work. However, community
politics still remains as men’s domain.
Constraints prevailed among women vis-à-vis men concerning access to and control over economic resources,
benefits, and opportunities in the household, farm, and community: structural, geophysical, and socio-cultural.
However, there is an apparent shift toward egalitarianism. These factors can either facilitate or constrain maximum
participation and equal access and control of women and men which have implications regarding sustainable
agriculture program in the community.
How Does Information Poverty Affect Voting Behavior?
Jose Mari Lanuza
Politicians who are tainted with issues of misdeeds in public office, yet continue to win in elections and hold public
office, and dot the Philippine political landscape. Why they remain in office is partly because of lack of correct and
adequate information to the public, especially to the poor electorate. This is termed as information poverty
(Hersberger, 2002). This lack of information could explain why the poor tended to vote for candidates whose actual
performance in office is questionable. This paper offers a framework for understanding how information poverty is
linked to the voting decisions of poor electorate. It also offers an analytic lens to explain why poor voters tend to be
information poor. Essentially this framework shows how information poverty limits the bases of decision-making for
the poor during elections, leaving them to vote instead for questionable politicians that also go against their long-term
class interests.
Urban Poor as “Social Capitalists”? The Dynamics of Social Capital in an Urban Poor Community
in Quezon City
Pamela Combinido
With case study as research design and in-depth interview as primary method of data gathering, the research is
structured to illustrate the workings and different dimensions of social capital in an urban poor community in Quezon
City which experiences high vulnerability to disaster and falls under the process of housing eviction. First, I discuss
the social networks that exist in the community. I highlight a nuance of meaning affecting social networks that form
a compound with the expectation of mutual support from their network. Second, I discuss the functions of social
capital by discussing the networks of provision and networks of trust. I also discuss here the motivations to give
assistance in spite of the experience of scarcity and deprivation. I highlight how empathy plays a large role as their
motivation more than the economic gains in the network, as neighbors bear witness to everyday undertakings and
have more or less the same experiences of economic hardships with them. When people are denied of help, there is a
profound impact on people’s self-confidence and civic and political connectedness, as it was not only a failure of
economic provision but also a failure to empathize and to fulfil the expectation of mutual support. In the final part of
my analysis, I explain the motivations behind people choosing not to mobilize their social networks due to hiya. Thus,
something can be said about the politics of dignity, which becomes formation. Dignity is equated to autonomy, the
ability to take care and provide for one’s self, and only when one cannot take the burden of self-care social networks
mobilized.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Gender in the Philippines Focusing on the
Filipino Women at the Call Center
Yoshie Hori
Keisen University, Tokyo
The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of the BPO sector in the Philippines in light of the New
International Division of Labor theory, with a focus on the female workers’ carrier from the viewpoint of Filipino
migrant studies, the positioning of the household, and the effect on gender norms. The significance of this study will
try to demonstrate the impact of women’s labor not only on global capital flow and economic growth in the Philippines
but also the change of society and gender norms in the households.
The Philippine economy is now growing rapidly. The driving force behind the growth is the BPO industry. BPO
revenues increased by 19% from $15.5B in 2013 to $418.4B in 2014. And this industry created more than 1.03 million
jobs in 2014.
This paper also researched thirty-two workers’ condition through the questionnaires. The working generation is very
wide – from 1920s to late 1930s. This paper introduces 6 case studies of BPO workers to examine the relatedness of
migrant workers. I interviewed twelve women who are working (have worked) at the call center and one woman who
is working at an American Law firm as an accountant. Five people among the eight married women in their thirties
are working at the call center after doing several other jobs such as in manufacturing factories at the EPZ, as domestic
helper, and English tutor abroad. So the call center is the work place for married women in their thirties. In the case
of women in their twenties, they were working at the call center from the beginning of their employment record. It
means that the working opportunity at the call center already opened to them when they graduated from the university.
So their career steps would be different from those of the women in their thirties. I also did preliminary consideration
about gender norms in the Philippines. The increase of women who earn more money than the husband in the family
may change the gender norm of the Philippines in the future.
Session 6A
PERSONAL, SOCIETAL, AND TRANSCULTURAL CROSSINGS IN THE
SPANISH-ERA CONTACT-ZONE
This panel focuses on the encounter with Spain in the northern Philippines and draws on a range of biographical,
ethno-historical and travel documents, and photographs between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The papers
highlight the wide-ranging transformations of identity at the personal and collective levels and in the spatial and
ecological realms. Aiming to describe how the colonial past was lived, the authors build on the dynamics of power
and cultural and social interaction as they were shaped by inequality, exploitation, and invasion, as well as by everyday
negotiations.
We offer a small cross-section of archive-based approaches to contact-zone history in the Philippines: (a) the life story
of a major sixteenth century interpreter for Spanish expeditions; (b) the reading of 1800s German travel memoirs and
photographs to examine Ilocos interactions as part of coastal-highland relations; (c) a new look at history and society
in Villanueva's paintings of the 1807 Basi Revolt; and (d) an ethnohistory of communication in the southern Cordillera
based on its military and environmental history in the 1700s and 1800s. The papers start from the earliest years of the
Spanish codification of "ethnicity" and "tribes" in the northern frontier. They span the wars that resulted in major
population dispersals on the Cordillera and explorations in the 1800s that further refined the early social classifications.
Our efforts build on similar work to understand indigenous identity construction in the Philippines and Southeast Asia,
and they contribute to a review of how national discussions of heritage and cultural identity represent the colonial
past.
The Ambiguous Career of Dionisio Capulong (c. 1560-1620)
John N. Crossley
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Which non-Spaniards, living in the Philippines when the Spanish arrived, do we know anything about? Very few, but
it is possible to begin to put together a life of Dionisio Capulong. This son of Lakandula was baptized in 1570, when
the Spaniards first arrived in Manila, and lived till at least 1620. In between, he both aided and assaulted the Spaniards.
He was 'exiled' for rebellion but nevertheless he later acted as guide to Spanish expeditions into northern Luzon. He
was a rich and powerful man and in his later years was engaged in land sales in Manila. So his life was full of
contradictions. To what extent was he exploited, and to what extent did he exploit the colonizers?
Text and Visual Forms: Re-reading the Basi Revolt Paintings
Romeo Galang Jr.
Far Eastern University
Esteban Pichay Villanueva, of whom very little is known, was born in Vigan. He painted a series of fourteen panels
that are called the Basi Revolt paintings. They depict events that occurred in 1807, from the revolt’s inception in the
northern Ilocos towns to the culminating events in Vigan. This revolt stemmed from the imposition of a monopoly on
basi, a local beverage made by fermenting sugar cane juice that was widely consumed by the Ilocanos.
This paper is a rereading of the paintings. I analyze certain aspects that present a different interpretation of the
paintings. In particular, I discuss race and social structures to identify certain elements that are described in documents
of the early 1800s on Ilocos. The archival reports that narrate an account of the 1807 revolt will be utilized and
compared with the texts in the paintings. This will determine how faithful the panels are in relation to the events of
1807. I also examine other archival documents to reconstruct the milieu of 1807 and the events prior to the revolt to
know more about the history of Ilocos and how this implicates the events. Finally, I comment on how to determine
the authenticity of the art works. Although the data bolsters most previously known facts, I offer a new way of looking
at Villanueva's remarkable creations by critically reviewing the previously-established knowledge about them.
"My Ancestors were Kalanguya but I am Ibaloy": An Ethnohistory of Communication in the Southern
Cordillera
Patricia O. Afable
Asian Cultural History Program, Smithsonian Institution
I bring together ethnographic, ethno-historical, and linguistic research, with an emphasis on geography and
communication, to offer an areal perspective on the emergence of cultural identities in the southern Cordillera. I begin
with Spanish-period settlement and migration histories as they were linked to inter-regional trade, and as they were
altered in the wars on highland peoples in the 1700s. Trip itineraries and the estimates of early population growth
drawn from the Galvey expedition reports in the 1800s frame a picture of dynamic linguistic, cultural, and social
exchanges among different zones of this region. Genealogies collected in the 1960s from various Ibaloy-, Kankanaey, Kalanguya-, and I'uwak-speaking communities set forth a subsistence and agricultural history through stories of ricefield builders and their travels. I suggest that a widely-shared linguistic ideology that valorizes multilingualism and
flexible communicative boundaries supports these patterns of fluid and long-range communication.
Recent archaeological work in Ifugao tells us that the onset of irrigated rice cultivation east of the Polis range is much
more recent than we had thought. This raises questions about how the history of environmental resource use in the
southern Cordillera as a whole relates to collective identity construction and to ethnic differentiation. Here I provide
comparative, although non-archaeological, material that displays this relationship in regions outside of, but adjacent
to, Ifugao (from within Benguet, Mountain Province, and Nueva Vizcaya provinces). This study takes into account
the exceptional ecological adaptations presented by gold and copper mining and by cattle-herding in Benguet and its
environs.
Session 6B
NATIVE TRADERS, WORKING WOMEN, AND LOCAL POLITICIANS AS PARTICIPANTS
IN A COLONIAL SOPCIETY: LAGUNA DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The study and discussion of Philippine colonial history is largely centered on Manila and other power-emanating bases
of the colonial state and generally focuses on the roles of prominent officials of the colony. Communities outside these
centers (except as “mere peripheries” or frontiers) and local actors (except as auxiliaries and “second-tier individuals”)
have been left out of the national historical narratives. Over the past half century, there have been a few efforts to
study local settings in the colony and the roles of local, ordinary people in the provinces. This panel follows what
seems to be a less explored path through the study of local/provincial actors as active participants in a colonial society.
The three (3) papers of the panel explore the economic, social and political state of the nineteenth-century Laguna by
focusing on how native traders, women, and local politicians of the province lived and operated in the narrow frame
of the Spanish colonial state. The paper on the comerciantes analyzes the roles of the local traders and entrepreneurs
in the complex socioeconomic processes in the province in the nineteenth century. The study on mujeres publicas and
maestras of Laguna makes women visible in a male-dominated colonial discourse and examines their place in the
social history of the province. Evaluation of how local politicians of Laguna have acted as agents of governance in
the municipal and provincial levels has been provided by the research on gobernadorcillos, cabezas, and tenientes.
Altogether, these fragments of local history offer a microcosmic image of the socioeconomic and socio-political
dynamics of the colonial state and may serve as axis or entry point into what is essentially a larger social, economic,
or political history of the country.
Comerciantes and the Government Trade Control in the Province
Roderick C. Javar, Jeffrey James C. Ligero, and Herald Ian C. Guiwa
In the Philippine National Archives (PNA) are found nineteenth-century colonial records which provide rich data for
the study of local economic activities in the province of Laguna. Analyzed in the context of the nineteenth-century
economic development, specifically the opening of the Philippines to international commerce, the economic data in
the groups of documents entitled “Precio de Comestibles” (prices of basic commodities), “Fincas Urbanas” (tax
declarations of real properties), “Contribución Industrial” and “Rentas Públicas” (tax declarations and business
permits/licenses) pertaining to Laguna indicate that: (1) the imposition of taxes by the Spanish colonial government
to the produce and/or merchandise of, trade, business or profession by which local traders earned a living remained
an important and effective instrument of exploitation and control that lasted simultaneously with Spain’s rule in the
Philippines;( 2) local entrepreneurs dominated the retail trade in the province, (3) Chinese traders, although very few
in number compared to their Filipino counterparts, had a significant role in the development of business and trade in
the province because they were concentrated in the most economically developed towns, distributing imports,
purchasing local produce for export; (4) the prosperity brought about by the greater economic activity was obtained
by a few local principalías who in turn improved in economic status as evidenced by their real properties; and (5) the
expansion of Philippine trade did not dissolve the traditional agricultural economy of the province as local people
continued producing rice, oil and other commodities of lesser value than sugar, which was the cash crop cultivated in
Laguna. Examining the roles and state of affairs of the local business people broadens our perspective of the intricacies
of the government’s control on trade and business in the colony.
Occupations of Women in a Provincial Setting
Rhina A. Boncocan, Roberto C. Mata, Ma. Reina Boro-Magbanua
Social history is a history of everyday life – home, workplace, and the community. It is also the history of social
problems – poverty, ignorance, disease, crime, etc. This study about the social life of nineteenth century Laguna
focuses on the occupations of local women – particularly the teachers and prostitutes. It used the “Escuelas y
Maestras” and “Prostitucion” document bundles in the Philippine National Archives. The first bundle yielded a lot of
data on the educational system of the province. Included are the various letter requests for the provision of residence
for teachers; establishment of schools (Sta. Maria Magdalena, Sto. Nino in San Pablo, Barrio Aplaya in Sta. Rosa,
primary school in Siniloan, Calamba and San Pablo); provision of assistants to handle large class; payment of salary
of substitute teachers; transfer to Manila; and a promissory note to reimburse expenses for the construction of a room
for helpers in a girl’s school. Cases related to the issue of prostitution are the subject matter of the second document
bundle. In the nineteenth century there was a concern on how to eradicate syphilis in Laguna, a fast spreading venereal
disease believed to have been brought by women engaged in colonial flesh trade. This compelled the government to
have a closer supervision of the conduct of the prostitutes (mujeres publica) in the province. Punishment to those
women apprehended took the form of imprisonment of 10 to 30 days and as severe as deportation to the far-off islands
of Davao, Balacbac and Palawan. Putting women in colonial narratives gives us a fuller view of the dynamics of the
social history of the colonial state.
Gobernadorcillos, Cabezas and Tenientes as Political Actors in Local Politics
Dwight David A. Diestro and April Hope T. Castro
The colonial state apparatus of the nineteenth century was maintained through an elaborate network of offices in the
central, provincial and town levels. The bureaucracy was theoretically a systematic organization in terms of delineated
functions between civil and ecclesiastical officials. To understand Spanish colonialism is to scrutinize the character
of governance and the priorities enunciated by the members of the ruling elite, including the Filipino participants in
the lowest levels. Management of funds, public works, including building and repair of tribunals, formulation of plans,
policy implementation like the listing of the polistas, and rendering of punishments were some of the motifs in the
power configuration in local politics. Examples of the activities of the local notables can be gleaned from the
following: transfer of the town center of Pila, 1802-1803; separation of Magdalena from Majayjay, 1821; complaints
against gambling by the principales of Biñan, 1836; establishment of the town of Sta. Maria, 1836; repair of the
Majayjay church, 1855; rice distribution for the construction of the convent in Binan, 1856; incorporation of San Pablo
and Alaminos to the province of Laguna from Batangas, 1883, petition to declare Biñan and Sta. Rosa as villas with
the title “always faithful and loyal” to Spain, 1898. Situating the native amidst these complexities is relevant in the
analysis regarding the nature of society, as a whole.
Session 6C
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM IN THE 21ST CENTURY: AN INSTRUMENT
FOR ESTABLISHING FILIPINO IDENTITY
The National Museum of the Philippines was established in order to house the nation’s patrimony. Since its foundation
in 1901, it has been at the forefront of telling stories of the Filipinos’ past and his culture, both extinct and extant,
through archaeological and ethnographic materials. The National Museum performs its functions through scientific
researches as well as the exhibition of some of its discoveries. Primary research in the natural and cultural fields has
produced not only results that document the antiquity of Filipino culture but also showcase the Filipino peoples’
distinct character as well as their affinity with other peoples in the region. Galleries exhibiting some of the earliest
stone tools, metal tools and implements in various forms, sizes and functions have helped define what it was to be a
Filipino before the advent of colonization. Ethnographic exhibits of contemporary baskets, textiles, religious images,
and other cultural objects portraying some of the customs and traditions of Filipinos, on the other hand, complement
the archaeological galleries. Students and researchers can access these collections for their own studies. In so doing,
the National Museum becomes not only an agency creating a Filipino identity but also as a channel for meaningmaking by others.
The Archaeology of the Visayan Islands
Sheldon Clyde Jagoon
Archaeology Division, The National Museum of the Philippines
Archaeological remains in central Philippines extend back well before the Western powers came. Evidence of
elaborate funerary practices was excavated so far in the islands of Negros, Cebu, and Bohol. Metal Age burial jars
were excavated in the Municipality of Bacong, Negros Oriental. Extensive archaeological research was also conducted
on the island of Negros, in Tanjay. Settlement sites were identified showing the continuous use of the area. Prehistoric
burials with funerary goods were found in many areas in the island of Cebu, while dug-out wooden coffins with
zoomorphic designs were discovered in cave sites in Bohol.
Settlement sites were excavated in the island of Samar while shell midden sites associated with stone tools were found
in caves in the island of Panay. A recent test excavation in Kalibo, Aklan, revealed a complex technology of stone
tool production and ample earthenware sherds, suggesting a very old and probably continuous habitation of the caves.
In Oton, Iloilo, a gold death mask was recovered years ago, one of few gold artifacts recovered in situ. A similar type
was recovered in Plaza Independencia, Cebu, during the salvage archaeology that was conducted during the
construction of a subway in the heart of the city. Historical Period sites were also identified in the island of Bohol,
like the Ermita Site in Dimiao and other Spanish period fortifications.
This paper aims to explore the different archaeological sites in the Visayas and their relationships to provide a
comprehensive view on the prehistory of the islands.
The Bisaya Ethnographic Collection of the National Museum
Nicolas C. Cuadra
Anthropology Division, The National Museum of the Philippines
The Bisaya ethnographic collection is part of the on-going ethnographic documentation of the Anthropology Division
of the National Museum to build a reference collection of the cultural materials of the peoples of the Philippines.
There are 150 Bisaya ethnographic objects currently kept at the Collections Holdings Rooms of the Anthropology
Division. The ethnographic materials were collected from the early part of the nineteenth century by American
anthropologists Emerson B. Christie and W. A. Reed and in the latter half of the century by Gov. Gen. Cameron
Forbes and the staff of the Anthropology Division, respectively. The provenance of the majority of the collection is
Samar, Leyte and Bohol and, in some cases Panay Island, Cebu, Negros Occidental and Sorsogon. The items range
from mats, hats, baskets, pipes, pottery, fishing materials such as fish traps, net, scoop and bait holder and agricultural
materials.
The NM-Geo in the Central Philippines: Updates on the Research Projects in the Visayas by the Geology
Division of the National Museum of the Philippines
Abigael Castro
Geology Division, The National Museum of the Philippines
The Geology Division of the National Museum continues to uphold its role in Philippine geologic research with current
projects focusing, among others, on the diversity of life millions of years ago. We present here our recent fossil
findings from central Philippines. These recent findings include remarkable mollusk fossils from Leyte, Cebu, and
Bohol. We take a look at how these findings affect the geologic history of the area. We also take this opportunity to
highlight once again outstanding pieces of geologic specimens stored in our collection which were found from the
different rock exposures of the Visayan Islands. Finally, we will briefly discuss future plans that the NM-Geology has
for the advancement of geologic and cultural studies in the Central Philippines.
Session 6D
CHALLENGES AND CONSTRAINTS OF HOME SCHOOLING
Homeschooling in the Philippines is often legitimized on two fronts. One is the constitutional provision that recognizes
the natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth, and the other a set of policies that
encourage non-formal, informal, and indigenous learning systems, as well as self-learning, independent, and out-ofschool study programs particularly those that respond to community needs. These various alternatives to formal
education, coupled with various state-provided equivalency and placement tests, are some reform initiatives that
address non-participation or school dropout rate among the poor. But at the same time, the same provisions are giving
the impetus to the homeschooling movement in the Philippines. Homeschooling allows parents to participate more
meaningfully in the education of their children. These homeschooling parents would often express their dissatisfaction
with the capacity of regular schools to educate their children to be the kind of learner and citizen that they hope them
to be and so they take the responsibility of being the direct source of education. The panel examines the homeschooling
practices in the Philippines from differing perspectives – curriculum design, social justice and rights based education,
and from a critical social theory of education.
Homeschooling Curriculum of the Master’s Academy Homeschool
Isabel Sanchez-Sibayan
Department of Education (Dep-Ed Philippines)
This paper traces the historical development of the elementary homeschooling curriculum of The Master’s Academy.
Using document analyses, administration of surveys, and conduct of interviews, this research sought to answer the
following questions:
•
How was the elementary curriculum of TMA Homeschool conceptualized?
•
How is the present elementary curriculum of TMA Homeschool being developed?
•
What changes has the elementary curriculum of TMA Homeschool undergone since its founding
in 1999?
The study showed that there are a variety of factors that shaped the elementary homeschooling curriculum of TMA
Homeschool. These factors emanate (1) from outside of the organization; (2) from within the organization itself; and
(3) they can be systemic or organizational in nature. The elements outside of the school were: the 1987 Constitution,
Republic Act 9155, the 1988 Family Code and DepEd Memorandum No. 216 s1997; the unique features and
adaptability of the curriculum package being marketed abroad and being used here in the Philippines by
homeschoolers from both TMA Homeschool and other homeschool providers; and the feedback of the homeschooling
parents. There were also factors within the organization itself that had a significant bearing on how the curriculum
came into existence. These include the background of the parent-teachers, their educational beliefs, as well asof those
who are in the leadership of the school. Lastly, organizational changes covered the roles of the employees of the
organization in response to the new set-up of the school, the introduction of the various sports and arts programs, and
support groups or co-ops.
Beyond Individual Rights and Parental Duty: Situating Homeschooling in the Historical and
Sociocultural Context of the Philippines
Maria Mercedes Arzadon
Anette Lareau (2003) presented the cultural logic of parenting among middle-class families as “concerted cultivation”
informed by a “professional” view of parenting. This parenting logic sheds light on the growing number of
homeschooling practices among middle-class parents. This paper is an exploratory qualitative study that provides an
overview of the homeschooling practices in the Philippines which include programs run by private homeschooling
providers and the independent initiatives of a few homeschooling families. It attempts to situate homeschooling in the
sociocultural and historical context of education in the Philippines. It critiques the neoliberal agenda of the educational
system to produce “globally competitive” persons which heightens the anxiety level of parents and robs children of
the pleasurable experience of learning. The study utilizes formal and informal interviews with homeschooling families,
private homeschooling providers, and policymakers. Narratives that come from the exchanges in local homeschooling
groups in social media are also analyzed.
Overall, the paper presents the profile of homeschooling families, their reasons for homeschooling, the various support
systems that are available like the services of private homeschool providers and online communities that are
particularly helpful to the growing number of parents who, for various reasons like rising tuition fees and their
philosophy of learning, choose to be independent homeschoolers. This paper explores the possibility of positioning
homeschooling in the Philippines beyond the discourse of individualistic parental rights in a discourse of solidarity
and advocacy for accessible and quality educational alternatives for the millions of poor, unschooled, and working
children. It also calls for a homeschooling curriculum that goes beyond its middle/upper class orientation towards one
that is enriched by the Pedagogy of Love of Paulo Freire.
At Home with School: The Emotional Labor of Mothers Who Homeschool Their Children
Gina F. Bonior
Silliman University
This study explores the experiences of three mothers who are engaged in homeschooling. In particular, it aims to seek
answers to the following research questions: (1) How do homeschooling mothers feel about their lives, their roles, and
the choices they make in relation to homeschooling? (2) What are the challenges faced by homeschooling mothers in
their homeschooling engagements? and (3) How do they navigate through the tensions they feel between their identity
as mother, teacher, and wife, among others? Narratives of the three mothers who were interviewed indicated that their
motivations to remove their children from school are consistent with those observed by Lois (2013). The participants’
motivations and decisions were grounded on their identities as ideologues and pedagogues, as well as socio-relational
reasons, e.g., the need to protect their children from negative peer influence and their desire to strengthen family unity.
Given the relatively high cost of home-schooling service providers, most of whom are US-based, mothers strategize
to make the cost manageable. The mothers in this study desire to engage in cultural production, through their
engagement in an alternative means to school their children. They manage their emotions and position themselves in
stances of power to effectively navigate the complexities of their multiple roles and the demands of marrying home
and school. However, their agency is limited to the options at their disposal, and constrained by structures such as
national testing and curriculum requirements.
Session 6E
EXAMINING GENDERED CITIZENSHIP: EMERGING ISSUES IN PHILIPPINE FEMINISM
Women, like other marginalized groups, have always had a difficult relationship with the nation and with citizenship.
In the Philippines, from the first Philippine Republic, women were not accorded the rights of full citizens, marking
citizenship and nationhood as a male preserve. One can refer here to the denial of Philippine women of their right to
vote which had to be won through a decades-long struggle that began at the turn of the 20th century and culminated
only in 1937.
But the history of women’s claim-making to the rights that define citizenship and the corresponding identity markers
of nationhood has been a continuing contestation that marks present day struggles. These struggles continue to
challenge the unmarked but gendered nature of citizenship. As women assert their needs and demands, their struggles
bring about strains and dysjunctures with mainstream parameters of conceptions of the transnational, national and
local; public and private; and the rights of citizens and their relationship to state and nation.
Gendered Citizenship: It Has Always Been Sexual!
Sylvia Estrada-Claudio
Taking off from the struggle for a Reproductive Health Law, the presenter examines how arguments for and against
the Law reveal contrasting social prescriptions about women as Filipinos and their differential entitlements as sexual
beings, marked as having special and circumscribable reproductive roles and functions. The paper then examines the
tensions of culture-claiming and national identity prescriptions by anti-RH proponents, as these contradict
international human rights standards and reveal the fraught relationships between nationalism and the demands of
transnational progressive solidarity.
Through a Feminist Lens: Women in the Informal Economy Assert Gendered Citizenship
Rosalinda Pineda Ofreneo
This paper will examine the decade-long process of engagement by organized women in the informal economy for
legislation that will best ensure that their rights as citizens and as workers will be at par with rights provided to those
in the formal economy. It will use a feminist lens in analyzing the content of the proposed Magna Carta of Workers
in the Informal Economy, and its recent revisions based on the recent recommendation of the ILO Conference
regarding transitioning from informality to formality. Particular attention will be paid to provisions on social
protection, which workers in the informal economy sorely lack, and how the gender dimension of this deficit is
expected to be addressed. Aside from content analysis, the paper will draw from the author’s long-term engagement
in the advocacy process, side by side with grassroots women in the informal economy, along with other feminists who
have injected a gender dimension to the overall struggle of informal workers for visibility, voice, access to social
protection, and justice.
Envisioning the Feminist Solidarity Economy through Women's Solidarity Enterprises
in the Informal Economy
Nathalie A. Verceles
This paper focuses on women in the informal economy, specifically self-employed/own-account micro-entrepreneurs
and sub-contracted workers. Three case studies in three field sites were accomplished, and these covered, in each of
the field sites, the solidarity enterprise and its women participants. The research methodology is feminist and the
methods used were participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and focused group discussions.
Through a gender analysis using Naila Kabeer’s Social Relations Approach, the paper examines how solidarity
enterprises, through their own practices, rectify the subordination of women in the informal economy as workers and
as women. The effects of women's participation in a solidarity livelihood project on their situation in the household,
community, market, and on their relations with the state/local government, together with personal changes
experienced, were also investigated.
Given the nascency of the solidarity economics paradigm in the Philippines, this research contributes to furthering
and deepening an understanding and appreciation of it based on existing practices of women in the informal economy.
Feminist economics analyses are central in this study, and feminist visions of an alternative economy are coalesced
with solidarity economics to delineate the contours of a feminist solidarity economy. The case study enterprises are
benchmarked against this vision of a feminist solidarity economy in order to provide recommendations towards the
practice of a more explicitly feminist solidarity economy.
This study is rooted in the lives and voices of grassroots women and integrates the social and political dimensions of
their lives with the economic. It is a contribution to the efforts of women worldwide to advance and claim economic
and social justice for women of the South.
Of Poverty and Food Security: The Role of Women’s Home Gardens in Times of Recurrent Typhoons
Teresita Villamor Barrameda
How do households of farm workers cope with poverty and recurrent typhoons? What is the role of women in their
households’ food security? How do women’s home gardens respond to the food security needs of these farming
households in everyday survival and in recovering from recurrent typhoons? Using the life story method, the study
examines the lives of ten women from farm working households in a rural barangay and the multiple roles they play
in their households’ food security. The study highlights women’s survival strategies in coping with chronic poverty
and the adverse effects of recurrent typhoons – loss of livelihoods and incomes, high prices of basic commodities, and
food insecurity. In such difficult circumstances, women were able to tide over food insecurity in their households
through their home gardens. Recognizing women’s role in households’ food security as well as the crucial role of
their home gardens in recovery from recurrent typhoons, this study puts forth the following key recommendations: (a)
women to be given voice and participation in decision-making bodies in planning and programs in disaster risk
reduction and management at all levels; (b) women to participate in decision-making in economic/livelihood programs
at the community level; (c) NGOs and LGUs to integrate women’s home gardens in designing economic/livelihood
programs for typhoons and climate change adaptation of households in poor communities; and (d) the need to organize
women to empower them in claiming their entitlements of their right to food and land.
Session 7A
ENCYCLOPEDIA AND NATION I
In September 2016, the Cultural Center of the Philippines will launch the second, revised edition of the CCP
Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, referred to as EPA2. Begun in May 2013, the new EPA2 will have 12 volumes, two
more than the 1994 edition, namely : two volumes on the more than 55 ethnolinguistic groups of the Philippines,
discussing their various art forms in relation to their histories, political systems, economic systems, social
organizations, religious systems; two volumes on the literatures of the Philippines in all languages, traditions, and
forms; one volume each for Architecture, Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Theater, Film, and Broadcast Arts (the last a
new volume); and a last volume for the index and references. Each of the art volumes is composed of historical essays
on the art form, its forms/genres/types, its aspects of production, its significant works, its artists and organizations,
and its timeline. Unlike the first edition in 1994 and the CD-Rom version in 1997, this new edition will have a digital
version in addition to a limited printed edition.
Using their experience in the editing, writing, and publishing of EPA2, these twin sequential panels composed of the
area and co-area editors will present a reflexive analysis of the aims, scope, and methodology that they followed or
observed in preparing this new edition, evaluating both the process and the product in relation to the larger goal of
nation-building through culture that the CCP is committed to. Fully conscious that the creation of a canon of art works
and the interpretation of the significance of these works within a chosen historical narrative are necessarily implicated
in politics and ideology, the editors will discuss how EPA2 imagined and defined the Philippines as a nation vis-à-vis
the continuing issues of ethnicity, religion, gender, class, race as well as colonization, globalization, and the diversity
of cultural traditions in Philippine history and society.
Imagining the Nation Through an Encyclopedia of Philippine Art
Nicanor G. Tiongson
Like the first edition, the new CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (EPA2) of 2016 was undertaken by the CCP in
pursuit of one of its goals: the continuing definition of a national cultural identity among Filipinos based on a
knowledge and appreciation of the achievements of Filipino artists through the ages.
In choosing the entries to EPA2, the editors were careful to represent the best works of artists from all cultural
traditions (ethnic, folk, popular), all ethnolinguistic groups, religions, and regions, and all sectors and classes of
Philippine society. In presenting these achievements, the editors sought to underscore their significance from the
native’s point of view, even as they showed how these achievements came about as artistic responses to specific
material and temporal conditions. Given the diverse sources of our cultural traditions, the EPA2 believes that the
aesthetics of Philippine arts must necessarily be pluralistic, because they are relative to the varying conditions under
which art is created all over the archipelago.
In documenting the artistic achievements of our peoples, this encyclopedia hopes to contribute to the preservation and
strengthening of the national memory, which is crucial to our identity as a nation. Moreover, in gathering and making
accessible the creative works of our ethnic and folk artists, this encyclopedia offers a wealth of traditions and sources
from which contemporary artists may draw inspiration and in which they may discover a sensibility more in
consonance with the roots of the majority of our people. With the encyclopedia, Filipinos of all generations and classes
will have not only a ready source of cultural information but a firm basis for defining their identity as Filipinos.
(Re)-Tracing the Foothpath of Philippine Dance: Dancing Bodies and National Memory
Basilio E.S. Villaruz and Ruth Pison
Documenting dance in any medium has always been fraught with challenges. As movement vanishes the moment it
is executed, to record its many aspects in written language poses many difficulties. While the opportunity offered by
CCP’s project to update the 1994 Encyclopedia of Philippine Art allowed dance scholars and practitioners to
strengthen the study and discipline of dance in the Philippines, it likewise enabled us to reflect on the politics of
knowledge production, movement vocabulary, and how these impinge on the idea of the nation.
The volume on dance is expected to provide a comprehensive summary of Philippine dance, a seeming suite of dances
from the northern, central, and southern parts of the Philippines. Capturing in capsule form the provenance and
movement of a dance, an organization’s contribution to Philippine dance, and a choreography’s/ movement’s
significance was a formidable task. This paper will discuss the perils and possibilities involved in the project and argue
that despite the dangers of such an ambitious work, it is a necessary undertaking connected to the enterprise of nationformation. Instead of claiming a canon for Philippine dance, the volume wishes to invite more queries from its readers.
Despite the ideological implications of this kind of knowledge creation, the volume seeks to contribute, above all else,
to the discourse of the nation because its pulse is felt in the dancing bodies of its people. With a volume on Philippine
dance, we partially set in print the nation’s history inscribed in the people’s body.
A Hundred Years of Writing about 'Philippine Music': The Place of the CCP Encyclopedia
In Minding the Nation
Jose S. Buenconsejo
Before Jose Maceda introduced systematic studies on Traditional Philippine Music (TPM) in the 1950s, the subject
was already in the minds of Filipino intellectuals such as Pedro Paterno and, perhaps, Isabelo de los Reyes, as early
as the 1890s. A decade after and for the next hundred years of thinking on the subject, a plethora of discourses surfaced,
each coming from a particular orientation and intended to specific readerships. Epifanio de los Santos’s essays on
TPM were informed by the unreliable orientalist "auto-ethnographic" writing of Paterno as well as works by Spanish
observers like Retana and Walls, but de los Santos's essays are interesting for it listed down music genre features and
was an "archive" of some sort like Isabelo de los Reyes'. This convention of publicizing the itemization of Philippine
music in public would continue with the researches by Bañas, Roa, notably Romualdez, and A Buenaventura in folk
music in the ensuing decades, some of which contained pioneering ideas in the realms of music historiography and
organology. After the war, the archive of Philippine music was continually mined and reinscribed by derivative
scholars like F Santiago and Antonio Molina, only to be broken once more by the scientific musicological science
introduced in the country by Corazon Dioquino and Jose Maceda in the 1950s. Decades after, new types of Philippine
music entered this archive as evidenced in the first edition of the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art.
In my presentation I offer a synoptic view of the contents of the Philippine national musical archive, particularly
critiquing the exclusions of certain Philippine music genres that would inevitably reveal conflicting ideologies about
highbrow and lowbrow Philippine music. In today's national archive, it pains the national body that regional musicians
are not yet in the pantheon of Philippine music monuments. Such exclusion had to do with the canon of “legitimate
music” that a Western-built music academy would police and uphold.
Theater, Encyclopedia, and Nation as Evolving Projects
Apolonio B. Chua and Galileo Zafra
The paper highlights the contributions of the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art 2 (EPA 2) in imagining the nation
through the various theater artists and organizations, forms and types, scholarship and publications, and major works
that were included in the Theater Volume. It also tackles issues and problems encountered in the actual production of
the compendium, thereby focusing attention on the writing of EPA 2 and of the nation both as evolving projects.
The paper discusses several theater forms and types, as well as major works which the Encyclopedia has documented
to highlight the various ways traditions are transformed by theater artists and groups to respond to various historical,
socio-political, and artistic contexts. The paper also tackles how the EPA 2, Theater Volume contribute to the
expansion of a theater canon. It examines several published materials used in the academic context to define the
existing canon which will then be compared with the evolving canon of the Theater Volume.
Session 7B
THE REGIME OF BLOOD AND BEAUTY: THE ABJECT ARCHIVES OF MARTIAL LAW
In October 2015, the Manila-based glossy magazine Philippine Tattler featured the sixty-year old preternaturallyenhanced congresswoman Imee Marcos on the cover of their “fashion issue.” Dressed in a red terno, wearing the color
of her family’s political party, the image was quickly altered into anti-Marcos memes by tech savvy Philippine citizens
on social media. One meme shows the congresswoman’s feet and her terno stained in blood, as she sits on a pile of
bloody skulls. The diabolical images of her late father and her elderly mother, bathed in red light, float in the
background. Another meme shows the congresswoman’s photo next to the skeletal image of Joel Abong, a
malnourished boy from Negros Occidental, who became the face of poverty and human rights violations during the
last decade of the Marcos regime. With these popular texts and meanings in mind, our panel follows the unforgettable
and the forgotten “roots and routes” of Philippine popular culture. Recalling Walter Benjamin’s “Paris Arcades”
project, our panel on popular culture consists of abject “images, texts, signs and things” relating to Martial Law:
olfactory memory (Devilles), noir film (Capino), kitsch and government propaganda (Balce), and gay beauty pageants
in Tondo (Lopez). Our panel critiques Philippine popular culture as “an archive of thought, of perceptions, of history
and of the arts.” Eschewing the image of Imelda Marcos (or her daughter Imee) as an icon of beauty, we consider how
notions of beauty might return us to brutality and the violence of the totalitarian state.
Smelling the City: An Auto-geography of Pasig City
Gary Devilles
This paper is an attempt to explore Metro Manila’s scent in factories in so far as these factories are indices of the
urbanization and transnational post-Fordism economy of the country in the 70s. I use my story growing up in the
1970s, as both my parents were factory workers for American firms, to trace how these factories formed and sustained
communities in Pasig and how they nurtured our collective identification with American culture. Since most of these
firms were corporate sponsors of TV soap operas, I will also talk about our fascination with TV melodramas as part
of this colonial formation and concomitant alienation. Hence, this paper problematizes the city’s scent as both the
material condition and trope of our Americanization, in so far as scent is invisible yet pervasive, and extends to social
attributes, real or imagined power. As smelling the city reveals our intricate relationships, patterns of behavior and
embodied subjectivities, this paper aims to contribute to a wider and growing discourse of auto-geography, an
accounting of oneself not just in time but more importantly in a particular place or setting through sensory
ethnographic field work.
Martial Law Noir: The Politics of Lino Brocka’s Jaguar
José B. Capino
In the years leading up to the end of Martial Law – what Marcos called the period of “normalization” – Lino Brocka
made a socially relevant “sex drama action” film called Jaguar (1979) in the tradition of the American film noir. Noir
was a style of genre cinema that was sensational, populist, grittily beautiful, and yet also capable of vividly
representing the major socio-political issues of the day. Brocka’s experiment aimed to reconcile the commercial
demands of the local box office with the preference for substance and pictorial beauty among the international film
audiences that had recently discovered his work. My presentation sheds
light on that experiment, with emphasis on the socio-political implications of the film’s script and cinematography.
Using rare archival documents, I will bring to light the story of how scriptwriters Jose Lacaba and Ricky Lee – two
former political detainees tortured by the regime – created scenarios that excoriated social conditions under Martial
Law and fantasized the trial of Imelda and Imee Marcos by a Communist kangaroo court. Through a scholarly analysis
of cinematography and mise-en-scène, I will also discuss the layers of social critique encoded in the film’s intricate
visual design. In Jaguar, the architecture of Manila’s slums and the coercive rituals of Martial Law are turned into
picturesque commentaries on such issues as social inequality, urban criminality, and state violence. The film’s social
critique got under the skin of Imelda Marcos and the regime’s censors, resulting in the film’s bowdlerization and
temporary embargo.
Fascinating Fascism: An Archive of Marcos Kitsch and Propaganda
Nerissa Balce
State University of New York, Stony Brook
The title of my paper borrows from Susan Sontag’s essay of the same title. Sontag correctly observed the deep, dark
secret of some feminist and cultural studies scholars: that we are fascinated by fascism. She describes the rehabilitation
of the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, Nazi propagandist and Hitler’s lover, by contemporary feminist critics.
Riefenstahl’s “de-Nazification,” as Sontag put it, and Riefenstahl’s elevation as an avant-garde feminist artist
happened in the early 1970s, after the publication of a book of her black and white photographs of an African tribe.
Sontag captures what I see as the rehabilitation of the Marcoses on social media, with the emergence of memes that
support Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.’s bid for the vice-presidency in 2016, and YouTube video clips that present the Marcos
era as a period of prosperity and peace. Against these acts of forgetting, my paper analyzes various examples of Marcos
kitsch and propaganda that circulated then, from paintings of the Marcoses to ghostwritten propaganda books. I read
these texts alongside human rights reports and a U.S. Congressional report from the 1970s. As Walter Benjamin
argued, we approach our past through a thorough excavation, “like a man digging”: “Language has unmistakably
made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but rather a medium.” Using visual and textual
language, this paper maps the violence of the totalitarian state in the language of 1970s kitsch and propaganda.
Spectacular Spaces, Spaces of Spectacle: Philippine Gay Beauty Pageants and the Aesthetics of
Otherness in the Martial Law Period
Ferdinand Lopez
The “Mujeran” or drag ball has ceased to exist in Tondo, Manila. In its heyday, it was the biggest, grandest, and most
spectacular gay dance party from the 1950s until 2010. The “Mujeran,” from the Spanish “mujer,” meaning female
or woman, was an occasion for inscribing the bakla feminized self in the public spaces of community. Also known as
“Wagwagan,” a Tagalog word meaning “to shake” as in a dance move, its other signification would indicate the
person’s ability to get rid of something as superfluous as guilt and shame in a predominantly Catholic environment,
or the violence and aggression that attend homophobic reactions. The mujeran or wagwagan, I argue, is the precursor
of the media-mediated performance of bakla identity and aesthetics of otherness in the national stage. In this paper, I
will attempt to document the mujeran in Tondo, Manila’s oldest and poorest community which has been a consistent
site for resistance and subversion in different periods in Philippine history and discuss how the bakla negotiates the
social proscription and political surveillance during the Imeldific Regime of Blood and Beauty (a.k.a. Martial Law).
Further, I will touch briefly on Eat Bulaga’s “Miss Gay Philippines” aired in the 1980s over Channel 9, controlled and
operated by a Marcos crony, and end my presentation with a critical discussion of celebrity stylist, Jun Encarnacion’s
“Philippines Five Prettiest,” the most prestigious gay beauty pageant of the Marcos regime.
Session 7C
THE NATION IN THINGS: MUSEOLOGY ANDITS CONSTRUCTIONS
IN/OF THE PHILIPPINES
The panel is proposed with the intention of bringing into the ambit of discourse the work in museums that submit to a
taxonomy, interpret, represent, and otherwise form narratives around identity. In the Philippines, this interrogation has
not been attempted substantively. Philippine museums having thus far remained outside debate and critical regard.
The members of the panel have been aware of and troubled by the distance of Philippine museums from discussion
and debate about its practices and conventions. Whether private or public, Philippine museums regularly appeal to
the national, promote tropes of national emergence, and presume to articulate tradition. Filipino curators today are a
field of specialists on genres of “culture” (the word in large measure left as an unreflective category) who perform to
trope-making and trope‐ sustaining imperatives. Hence this idea for a panel that explores a terrain of cultural
production and culture production.
The panel will describe the inner workings of museology in the separate practices of the speakers so that the collective
critique of their field is informed by cartographies, so to speak, of museology itself as it has filtered down from the
West to the Philippines. Each speaker will make reference, in particular, to submitting to a taxonomy and rhetorical
conventions diffused into the Philippines without much remarking, but with, they will assert, significant – if
questionable – impact on the discourses of nation and identity.
Accessioning Nation in Museums: A Critique-In-Progress
Marian Pastor Roces
TAO Management, Inc.
Museum accession records are not ethically neutral systems. Their taxonomizing imperatives are harnessed to the
same ideological regime – indeed, to entire epistemological fields – that sustained colonial enterprises during
modernity. And because these enterprises brought into being the concept of nation, there has been continuity in this
taxonomizing work. Nations took over and carried forward the imperative of deploying the entire institution of the
museum and its conventions to stabilize fluid identities, to mark off boundaries and prevent seepage between and
among categories dividing aspects of human endeavor, and to move artefacts and artworks from the messiness of
historical change to the neatness of a cenotaph.
This position upon which this paper is built – the imbricatedness of museum practice in empire building and
subsequently nation-building – acknowledges and builds on a diverse critical literature undertaken in the last three
decades. The paper will not endeavor a review of this literature other than to gesture towards key texts. It will instead
develop its own argument in two parts. It asserts that collecting and accessioning materials from a field that has been
known as “ethnographic” from a circumscribed geography, the Philippines has contributed to the hard-wiring of the
political concepts of nation for this country since its emergence at the end of the 19th century until the present.
The Nation in Things, The Nation in Texts: Pedagogical Impulses of National and Local Museums
Ma. Jovita E. Zarate
University of the Philippines Open University
Museums assign to itself a pedagogical function. The study sets out to examine how the National Museum and two
local museums within its ambit take on this task and then proceeds to examine other such possibilities. In particular,
the notions of the national and the local will be examined and how this duality deploys official narratives to represent
a unitary, ordered, homogeneous, and over-sentimentalized nation.
The categories of the national and the local have been summoned as the constitutive elements of the nation and its
attendant artefact – national identity. These two categories define each other: the national absorbs the enunciations of
the local; the national selectively affirms the validity of local histories to become weft and warp of the national
tapestry, as it were. The local, on the other hand, is represented as the synecdoche of the national and, on some
occasions, as microcosm, a way of seeing the patterns and structures of history through the minutiae of its pithy
narratives. The local is thus retrofitted to serve a totalizing narrative, even providing ethnographic texture to what is
an already known and prefigured category of the national. In realizing this function, I assert that what is generated is
a set of bounded knowledge that enables the construction of the category of national identity, and an ideal template of
citizenship and belonging that may potentially be hierarchical, essential, and exclusionary.
The Nation in Images
Corazon S. Alvina
Independent Scholar
Photography and its use to generate visual documentation of cultures resulted in voluminous images of the Philippines
produced during the Spanish and American colonial periods. Not only photographers but ethnographers, diplomats,
travelers, and merchants of Spain and the United States contributed to the existing (but dispersed) bulk of photographs
of the last 150 years, including albums, glass slides, negatives, and diapositives. By and through the lenses of other
continental Europeans and the British, there are these photographic documents, many of them now used as optical
presentations of anthropology or as “visible history.” Museums have differing classifications of archival photographs:
as part of the ethnographic collection, especially if contemporary or identified with, or related to specific ethnographic
objects; as a section of a larger museum division – the library; and, as works of art in a museum of art. In the
Philippines, however, libraries, not museums, hold archival photographs. The collection of archival photographs in
many museums has generally not been prioritized, and has not been logistically possible.
In this study, the museological practice of referring to the category of material under the rubric of archival photographs
will be explored, as indeed how the wielding of these images within an exhibition has been within the mold of the
imagery of particular genres of nation and identity, such as the notion of tipos del pais and indeed the nomination of
objects both old and current as “Filipiniana” in circulating images of “peoples of the Philippines.”
The Philippine Ethnographic Collection of the Weltmuseum Wien: Preliminary Analysis of
Embedded Discourse
Maria Fe P. Quiroga
The Vienna collection of Philippine ethnographic material, mostly dated to the late 19th century, provides a window
of opportunity to explore at least one track of European scientific regard for one object of study: the so-called
Philippine peoples. The first part of the paper describes the collection of the Weltmuseum Wien, formerly Museum
für Volkerkünde (Museum of Ethnology) and its main collectors in the late 19th century. Beginning as early as 1839,
more than 1,500 items comprise the Philippine collection in Vienna, Austria. The geographical provenance as divided
by the museum under the category “Land,” is diverse: more than 900 are from Northern Luzon, about 400 from
Mindanao, 98 from Sulu Archipelago, 6 from Batan Island, 30 from Palawan and less than 20 from Visayas.
The second part of the paper examines the emphasis of the collection and the possible relationship(s) between this
study of an Other and the imagination of 19th century Philippine nation. The Philippine collection in Weltmuseum
Wien are mostly ethnographic objects, with designated ethnicities, and identified general geographic provenance.
There are also a few zoological, botanical, and geological specimens, and human remains. Preliminarily, it may be
conjectured that at least for the objects acquired in the early 19th to early 20th centuries, the collection aligned with
the lines of a 19th century evolutionary paradigm, and furthermore embedded in the broad universe of European
colonial power. These ethnographic objects, along with associated biological specimens, made their way to
Weltmuseum Wien and other museums, whose canon of the late 19th century was to classify and depict the
ethnographic objects within an evolutionary narrative from savage to civilized – extracted/removed from its own
context, and the group of people who made these objects assigned a place in the less advanced stage of human
evolution.
Session 7D
RECOLLECTION AND RESISTANCE: CULTURE AND CINEMA
IN THE MARCOS AND POST-MARCOS ERAS
This panel explores the conflicted cultural legacy of the Marcos regime and its aftermath across a range of spheres:
from heritage tourism, cultural policy, and urban architecture to film archiving, international film festivals, and
auteurism. The range and diversity of cultural forms established and transformed by the conjugal dictatorship of
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos (1965-1986) attests not only to their far-reaching instrumentalization of film, broadcast
media, tourism, and urban space, but also to the enduring legacy of the tactics of domination, resistance, and
remembrance that emerged both during and in the aftermath of the dictatorship. On the one hand, the thematic of
recollection underwrites all of the papers in this panel: Taltha Espiritu’s exploration of the commodification of cultural
heritage in the 1974 mass ceremony Kasaysayan Ng Lahi (History of the Race); Bliss Lim’s consideration of
institutionalized archival memory in the National Film Archive, first established in 1981; Rolando Tolentino’s
discussion of the memories surrounding the Manila Film Palace and the Manila International Film Festivals of 19821983; and Patrick Campos’ analysis of the retrospective revaluation of art cinema auteur Mike de Leon, whose early
1980s films were read as a response to Martial Law. On the other hand, the motif of resistance is an area of shared
concern in the papers as well: while youth opposition in the First Quarter Storm was reified in Marcos era propaganda
cinema (Lim), logics resistance can be uncovered in performances of Philippine indigeneity (Espiritu); in the reflexive
critique of state surveillance (Tolentino); and in a reappraisal of nationalist film historiography (Campos).
Kasaysayan ng Lahi: Anticipating Creative Industries in Marcos’ New Society
Talitha Espiritu
Wheaton College, Norton, MA
Kasaysayan ng Lahi (History of the Race) was a 1974 mass ceremony staged by the Marcos regime to promote heritage
tourism in the Philippines. As a “tourist production,” Kasaysayan ng Lahi anticipated the turn to the “Creative
Industries” in Europe and North America in the 1990s. This cultural policy phenomenon has gained considerable
traction in various cities in the global South. At its core, Creative Industries discourse promotes a place-bound model
of development centered on incubating export opportunities around cultural festivals and tourism. However, recent
debates about this model of cultural policy have centered on how it exploits cultural labor: though it valorizes the artist
as an ideal laborer, it has yet to be proven that the Creative Industries produce desirable work, let alone good jobs.
This was no less true for Kasaysayan ng Lahi, which transformed indigenous communities into self-exploiting cultural
performers. This paper places critical analyses of human displays and heritage tourism in productive dialogue, and
examines the continuities and discontinuities between the 1974 staging of Kasaysayan ng Lahi by the Marcos regime
and contemporary debates about the Creative Industries. Against established views of human displays and heritage
tourism as either exploitative or socially empowering, this chapter examines how the performance of “native”
identities could serve the socially exploitative logics of the Creative Industries as well as lay the groundwork for the
enactment of indigeneity as a form of political resistance.
The Marcoses and the Archive
Felicidad “Bliss” Cua Lim
University of California Irvine
The conjugal dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos had an unprecedented appreciation for the power of film
and media. In the 1965 elections, the Marcoses cunningly wielded a range of media— print journalism, radio,
television, and a controversial propaganda film, Iginuhit ng Tadhana (1965)—to achieve Ferdinand’s first presidential
victory. Media raised the Marcoses to national power in 1965 but were also key to their ouster in the 1986 People
Power Revolt. In the intervening years, film and media were central to their monopolistic takeovers and their cultural
initiatives: from televised propaganda films broadcast on the eve of Martial Law (The Threat…Communism, The
Enemy from Within, and from a Season of Strife) to the creation of a tragically short-lived National Film Archive
(NFAP), which lasted from 1981-1986. After the closure of the NFAP, the Philippines was without a state film archive
for 25 years, until a new NFAP was established in 2011. The first NFAP was entangled with other key cultural entities
and architectural undertakings, such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), the National Media Production
Center (NMPC), the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (ECP), the Manila Film Center, and, in the post-EDSA
years, the Philippine Information Agency (PIA). Despite its ephemerality, the pioneering Marcos-era film archive
bequeathed enduring problems for moving image archive advocates in the Philippines. What was the place of the film
and media archive in the cultural policy matrix of the Marcos regime? How was the archive articulated with the
aspirations, excesses, and abuses of the dictatorship? Ultimately, this paper seeks to explore the deeply ironic legacy
of key Marcos propaganda films as they intersect with the regime’s densely reticulated web of film policies and
cultural institutions.
The Manila Film Palace and International Film Festival (1982-83) and Other Cinema Memories
of the Marcoses
Rolando B. Tolentino
In this presentation, I discuss memories of the Manila Film Palace and the Manila Film Festival, primarily the first in
1982. I draw on two interviews with jury members of the first festival that allude to the surveillance and spectacle of
the Marcos regime. I use the Manila Film Palace as site of cinema, cultural politics and the transnationalism of the
Marcos regime, as well as its continuing transformation as an earthquake condemned zone in the 1990s and
rehabilitation into a transgender show, primarily catering to Korean tourists in the present. My insistence is that the
infrastructure for cinema of the Marcoses in the 1980s provided a compass to the continuing and enduring issue of
cinema and the state in the present. I will also use a television documentary on the Film Palace and contemporary
films that use the Film Palace as location of the diegesis of the films.
Locating Mike de Leon in Philippine Cinema
Patrick F. Campos
The paper draws on filmic, popular, and scholarly texts in order to trace how auteur Mike de Leon (MDL) has been
discursively defined from the time of his landmark arrival in Philippine cinema with Itim (1976) to his turn to radical
filmmaking with Signos (1983) and Sister Stella L. (1984), at the time of the Marcos regime, through his struggle to
make films sporadically during the presidencies of Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, and Joseph Estrada, from 1987 to
1999. On the one hand, it locates the meaning of “Mike de Leon” as it has been critically regulated to politicize the
notion of “Philippine cinema” as a response to Martial Law. That is, the paper analyzes how critics, against the grain
of entertainment journalism, have located de Leon in the discourse of nation, at the same time as they limn the
supposed shape of Philippine cinema according to MDL’s reified location in it. On the other hand, the paper reflects
on the limitations of nationalist film historicizing by revaluating de Leon’s body of work in hindsight through the
frame of his last four films, Hindi Nahahati ang Langit (1985), Bilanggo sa Dilim (1987), Aliwan Paradise (1992),
and Bayaning 3rd World (1999), and reconfiguring the director’s relationship with Philippine history beyond the
signifiers that are Marcos and Martial Law.
Session 7E
WHO’S AFRAID OF REVOLUTION? CREATIVE TENSIONS IN CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE
POETRY, FICTION, THEATER, AND LITERARY TRANSLATION I
Skirting the Traps and Puzzles of History in Gina Apostol’s The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata
Jophen Baui
De La Salle University Manila
The presentation focuses on the postmodern qualities of Apostol’s work – multiple voices, ambivalences and
ambiguities – in retelling the 1898 Philippine Revolution to underscore the liberty it accords us in re-imagining history
as exemplified both in history books and Philippine literature, and thus opening and posing challenges and possibilities
to the younger generations of writers and readers.
Is the Nation Still Imagined? The Re-Imagining of the Filipino in the Age of Facebook in
Joselito Delos Reyes' iStatus Nation
Adrian Crisostomo Ho
The late historian and theorist Benedict Anderson posits that the nation is a “socially constructed community, imagined
by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group” – that is, the members of a so-called “nation” simply
embrace a mental image of their kinship since they neither interact with nor know each other. However, in today’s
age of digital globalization, where people from within and outside of a particular community interact with each other
via social media, one cannot help but ask the question: Is the nation still imagined? This paper will attempt to answer
this question by examining the Filipino identity vis-à-vis an Andersonian reading of Joselito Delos Reyes’ iStatus
Nation
On Mounting the Mountains: Texts and Performances of Various Cordillera-based Theater Groups
Mario “Em” Mendez, Jr.
De La Salle University Manila/University of the Philippines Diliman
This paper examines how identities are negotiated in four theatrical performances of various Cordillera-based groups:
the resident university theater companies: Dulaang UP-Baguio of the University of the Philippines, Baguio’s ‘Sayaw
ng Panahon’ and Tanghalang-SLU of Saint Louis University’s ‘Power Plays,’ the Bontok municipality LGU organized
play ‘Tawid di Litagawa’, and the DKK-Tadek, an NGO produced dramatic performance inspired by Petra Macliing’s
fabled resistance. The subject of identity can be seen as a common thread that unites and at the same time contradicts
the aesthetic and political practice that these various groups demonstrate. The choice of texts used and the manner of
performances also reflect the philosophy and politics of a theater company, thus giving them identity/ies. The way
identities are negotiated in these performances serve as a vehicle in interrogating how context/s intervene and inform
a production onstage.
The Filipino Novelist's Imagination of Nation and Asian Community
Clarissa V. Militante
The paper raises the question: Beyond nation, how do Filipino novelists imagine communities in the archipelago as
well as in Asia, Southeast Asia in particular? How does he/she regard and construct time, space (geographies),
community, nationality, and the larger Southeast Asian community in fictional space, or does he/she even think of this
as a setting or inspiration for characters? Why not? It will interrogate the myth of unique Filipino identity that
supposedly binds us as nation but separates us from Asian community/ies, by using commonalities in socio-economic
and political conditions as examples. It will assert too that these commonalities should be elevated into shared
experiences through literature.
Session 8A
ENCYCLOPEDIA AND NATION II
In September 2016, the Cultural Center of the Philippines will launch the second, revised edition of the CCP
Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, referred to as EPA2. Begun in May 2013, the new EPA2 will have 12 volumes, two
more than the 1994 edition, namely : two volumes on the more than 55 ethnolinguistic groups of the Philippines,
discussing their various art forms in relation to their histories, political systems, economic systems, social
organizations, religious systems; two volumes on the literatures of the Philippines in all languages, traditions, and
forms; one volume each for Architecture, Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Theater, Film, and Broadcast Arts (the last a
new volume); and a last volume for the index and references. Each of the art volumes is composed of historical essays
on the art form, its forms/genres/types, its aspects of production, its significant works, its artists and organizations,
and its timeline. Unlike the first edition in 1994 and the CD-Rom version in 1997, this new edition will have a digital
version in addition to a limited printed edition.
Using their experience in the editing, writing, and publishing of EPA2, these twin sequential panels composed of the
area and co-area editors will present a reflexive analysis of the aims, scope, and methodology that they followed or
observed in preparing this new edition, evaluating both the process and the product in relation to the larger goal of
nation-building through culture that the CCP is committed to. Fully conscious that the creation of a canon of art works
and the interpretation of the significance of these works within a chosen historical narrative are necessarily implicated
in politics and ideology, the editors will discuss how EPA2 imagined and defined the Philippines as a nation vis-à-vis
the continuing issues of ethnicity, religion, gender, class, race as well as colonization, globalization, and the diversity
of cultural traditions in Philippine history and society.
If only the Stones Could Speak: Architecture and a People’s Memory
Rene Javellana
While an encyclopedia, which in our days of faster and ever-changing technologies, will necessarily be a work in
constant progress and can never aspire to be permanent and canonical, it can nonetheless establish a time-anchored
baseline upon which a more enlightened future can be raised. Although they are so visible, architectural structures
that appear to have no useful function or have deteriorated over time can easily fall under the onslaught of bulldozers,
backhoes, and wrecking crews determined to clear space for a “new development.” But with every demolition, unless
well-researched, thought through and carefully managed and executed, we may be destroying the memory of what
makes us distinct and unique in the community of cultures and nations. In the twenty-first century’s globalizing of
culture, much of what is unique to peoples and communities is in danger of being obliterated to express capitalist
monomania, where the bottom line is the bottom line. An encyclopedia that includes a volume on architecture
preserves what may be lost once the wrecking ball comes. It may be the last chance to save a memory.
Rethinking CW: The Philippine Literary Tradition and Creative Writing in the Academe
Om Narayan Velasco, University of the Philippines Los Baños
Glenn Diaz, Ateneo de Manila University
As an institutionalized practice, creative writing in the Philippines since EDSA has largely been associated with the
academe, through a close-knit network of academic programs, workshops, publication venues, and other cultural
institutions. This “academization” has perpetuated, in the case of English writing, a tendency to privilege foreign
models and influences, and, in the case of literature in the vernacular, Tagalog hegemony as representative of so-called
national literature. These were exacerbated by the onslaught of globalization in the 1990s, marked by unhindered
access to foreign ideas and uneven, Manila-centric development, respectively.
The literature volume of the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art 2, in its attempt to trace the country’s distinct but
also overlapping literary traditions, seeks to address the limitations of this model. Literary texts like oral and folk
literature are accorded their due space, and regional literatures, as embodiment of the national experience in their own
right. This paper will show how this encyclopedia maps the history of Philippine literature, specifically in fiction and
poetry, which will hopefully help ground and broaden the perspectives of the Filipino writer.
Art on the Airwaves: Forging a Nation of the Everyday
Elizabeth L. Enriquez
The Cultural Center of the Philippines is perhaps the only institution promoting and nurturing Filipino culture and the
arts that has had the foresight and conviction to name and recognize broadcasting as art – in spite of the rather common
dismissal of radio and television as nothing more than shallow media of entertainment that serve to dumb down their
listeners and viewers, and in the process serve less than principled political and economic ends. Today there are
several organizations, in addition to associations of media practitioners, like religious groups, civic organizations, and
schools, that give awards to those adjudged as outstanding broadcasters, programs, and broadcast stations, recognizing
the power of the media to shape public consciousness, if not their value as cultural expressions.
In 1994, the CCP put out the first edition of its Encyclopedia of Philippine Art. The second edition, which is being
launched this year, includes a volume on broadcasting, so far the most public recognition of broadcast as an art form.
The new edition has the courage to remove the traditional distinction between the so-called “high art” and “low art,”
a dichotomy which places broadcasting in the latter category. While recording, examining, and celebrating all artistic
and cultural expressions of the Filipino today, the 12-volume work ignores the high art-low art binary. But
broadcasting is indeed different in several ways: It escapes or deviates from conventional views of art; its function
and effect are in the everyday rhythms of our social, political, and economic lives. Yet it is precisely these qualities
that enable broadcasting to provide a common cultural experience among diverse and dispersed Filipinos and thereby
contribute to the forging of a nation.
On Writing Manobolandia for the CCP Encyclopedia of Art 2: Cultural Work and Transformation through
Critical Scholarship and the Peoples’ Movement
Louise Jashil Sonido
In narrativizing the nation’s history, many indigenous groups are silenced, excluded, or reduced to historical footnotes,
as if they continue to signify an inaccessible past that has nothing to do with the continuing struggles of the nation and
nation-formation.
The work of updating the first two volumes of the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art on the Peoples of the
Philippines, while first and foremost an intellectual and academic endeavor, yields inevitably to a political and
ideologically transformative process: looking for indigenous researchers involved in current academic life, looking
for new expressions of thought in indigenous oral narratives, looking for the changes in indigenous ways of life and
their dynamic political situations – in effect, looking for the nation and the ways that life in it has been lived through
the narratives of the indigenous people. In my case, this process has been as deeply personal as it has been political as
I, a settler in Mindanao, have had to confront the histories of the people whom strategic resettlement, as a form of
internal colonization, has historically displaced, oppressed, and silenced. This level of engagement—from the view of
an outsider wrestling with a sudden and particular kind of intimacy with the indigenous—opens up new ways in which
the nation, scholarship, and even citizenship can be imagined.
Session 8B
ON THE ARCHIPELAGIC PERSPECTIVE
This panel aims to explore Philippine and diasporic Filipino arts, pop culture, and media in relation to an “archipelagic
perspective.” As defined by UP professors Merlin Magallona and Jay Batongbacal in their collection Archipelagic
Studies: Charting New Waters, this perspective takes into account the geographical realities of the Philippines as a
nation “fragmented into more than 7,000 islands. Separated and surrounded by about 2.2 million square kilometers of
waters, the islands are rounded by coastlines 17,640 kilometers long.” Such realities are continually overlooked by
the “Procrustean framework of an externally-sourced paradigm,” namely that of continent-based notions of
nationalism as well as transnationalism. This panel investigates the roots and routes of Pinoy pop culture, film/media,
and television, taking seriously the ways that Filipino artists/media makers and their practices, at home and in the
diaspora, help us to remember and re-imagine the Philippine nation, based upon its geographical location and physical
properties, as a tropical place and an archipelago.
Markets of Resistance
Angel Velasco Shaw
Philippine Women’s University
The Philippine highland city of Baguio developed from the U.S. government’s obsession to build a “Little America”
in the midst of the Philippine-American War. Confiscating thousands of hectares of tribal lands and displacing rightful
owners over a 30-year period, the Americans built Baguio and made it a flourishing city that housed a crucial military
outpost, served as a lush U.S. playground, and secured its place as a national tourist destination. Representative of
Cordillera, ethnic indigenous cultural identities and commerce, Baguio’s markets are the mainstay of its local
communities. These market stalls are not merely filled with staple foods or souvenirs that reduce indigenous culture
to culturally bankrupt objects. They are also where locals congregate, gossip, and keep oral traditions alive; buy and
trade the latest trends and relief goods. They represent a waning cultural tradition and signify resistance to greedy
supermarket chains and mall developers.
I will present my work Markets of Resistance (MoR), a multi-disciplinary art/cultural project and collaboration
between the students and faculty at Philippine Women's University (PWU) and Ax(iS) Art Project, a Baguio-based
collective of indigenous and non-indigenous traditional and contemporary artists, scholars, poets, and community
workers. Philippine nation-building endeavors often do not include a critical analysis of its postcolonial and
multicultural status. This exclusion is a result of two distinct colonial rulers’ suppression of Filipino indigenous and
ethnic indigenous cultures and their subsequent internalized belief that they are unimportant or inferior. MoR worked
against such profound erasure of local histories and cultures, instead shedding light on how both these, in fact, continue
to impact the Philippine nation.
"I've never Been to Me": Simultaneous Proximities and the Geography of Self in Ramona Diaz's
The Learning
Allan Punzalan Isaac
The State University of New Jersey, Rutgers
Since the first Thomasites arrived on Philippine shores in 1901, the early 21st century has witnessed the bodily tides
turn as Filipinos become global educators recruited by American cities to be science, math, and special education
teachers. Ramona Diaz’s The Learning documents how four Filipinas from across the Philippine archipelago, recruited
to Baltimore’s struggling and de facto racially segregated public schools, negotiate their racial place in the US
black/white binary as well as their filial duties to their families back in the Philippines as export migrants. When an
army of foreign, racially distinct, laborers from a former colony are recruited to resolve the inequities of race and class
in the United States, what transformations take place in these new proximities of subjects brought about by neoliberal
state policies to resolve both race and global economic contradictions of capital?
The archipelagic form and lens make visible the gaps and contours in between entities as sites of negotiations and new
relations. As Eve Sedgwick notes in Touching Feeling, “what is crucial to queer relationality is not only the act of
comparison, but a critical examination of the space ‘in between,’ which is not a space separating discrete categories,
bodies, or languages, but binds, transforms, and translates them quite queerly. How might an emphasis on relationality
demonstrate, in new ways, the multiplicity of inflections and intersections between gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity,
national and religious affiliation, and disability?” Thus, this paper looks at these economically enforced proximities
to explore a geography of self-embodying multiple spaces and life trajectories, thus queering relations and definitions
of family, nation, and “realities.”
Teleserye Realness: Global Mediascapes and Queer Filipino/a Lives
Robert Diaz
OCAD (Ontario College of Art & Design) University
Toronto, Canada
This paper examines the historical significance of the teleserye – a local form of television soap opera – as a medium
from which Filipino/a LGBTQ experiences enter diasporic and global consciousness. Since the release of My
Husband’s Lover in 2013, other teleseryes have attempted to mimic its success by focusing on queer concerns – [from
the dilemmas of elite lesbians dealing with their demanding parents in The Rich Man’s Daughter, to the dreams of a
beki child of becoming a boxing champion in Beki Boxer, to the struggles of an underprivileged transgender woman
with her transition in Destiny Rose.] Rather than see such inclusion as automatically liberatory, this paper instead
tracks how the teleserye exposes the political limits and possibilities of rendering queer Filipino/a lives via the
televisual medium. Such an inclusion, I argue, both re-articulates and subtends normalized class, gender, and sexual
identities in an age of neoliberal subject formation. With its increased viral presence as new media, the teleserye also
connects diasporic Filipinos/as, acting as conduit for nationalist sentiments and ideals. This paper thus focuses on the
queer teleserye in order to expand the archives currently studied within Filipino Studies, moving beyond ethnographic,
literary, and filmic genres.
On Tour: Pinoy Indie Rock Itineraries
Christine Bacareza Balance
University of California Irvine
In 2011, a group of Manila-based indie bands and DJs embarked on their first ever Excursion Tour. Pedicab frontman
Diego Mapa organized the show in collaboration with Baguio-based musician, Jethro Sandico. As part of a network
of musicians and bands within the Manila indie rock scene, Mapa called upon his band friends to participate in the
DIY gig. Agreeing to simply split the “gate share” [earnings at the door] and pay for their own travel and housing
expenses that weekend, the musical acts such as Bagetsafonik, Taken by Cars, Pedicab, Gaijin, and DJ Mon, along
with their family and friends, made the six-hour trip “up the mountain” to the City of Pines. Since then, Mapa and
friends have replicated the Excursion Tour model in two other Philippine cities, Davao and Cebu. Each time, and
without corporate sponsorship, they collaborated with local musicians in order to benefit from their knowledge of
local venues and audiences as well as to showcase local bands as their opening acts.
In their willingness to shift location and focus from the metropolis of Manila to other Philippine cities, these Excursion
Tours help us further understand the truly archipelagic nature of the Philippine Islands. This paper disobediently listens
to simple notions of cultural imperialism and musical authenticity by listening in on the tropical renditions of these
Excursion Tours and other artist-initiated/DIY tours of Pinoy indie rock’s musicians. By examining the alternative
and extra-national circuits that Pinoy indie rock constructs as well as circulates, this paper is an expansive reflection
upon the interventions and potential of an archipelagic perspective for Filipino popular music studies.
Session 8C
MOBILITIES AND MOVEMENTS: RE-IMAGINING PHILIPPINE QUEER FUTURE
This panel finds its focus in movements and mobilities. By this, we refer to the ways ideas and concepts travel around
the globe as they rub against objects, people, and institutions leaving traces that generate new possibilities. We take
up these notions of movements through spaces and social mobilities as they pertain to Filipina/o sexual minorities.
Contemporary identities from around the globe find anchors in movements and communities in the Philippines.
Whether generating a universal sense of struggle for equality or a shared consumer logic of market capitalism,
movement limits and inspires possibilities. Additionally, social and geographical mobilities develop through unequal
interconnections. These frictional interactions can lead to new arrangements of culture and power (Tsing 2005).
Inspired by this year’s call to re-imagine communities, scholarship, and citizenship, we take this proposition quite
literally to consider how trans/national frames move through the Philippines as they facilitate circuits of movement
and exchange that have long characterized the experiences of Filipina/os throughout their diasporas. We ask: to what
extent do Philippine sexual minorities construct movements that complicate what we know about Filipina/o as a
modernized social formation? How does a study of communities on the move thus challenge the already complex
taxonomies of sexual identities that count as forms of Filipina/o citizenship? If recent scholarship on Filipina/o sexual
minorities calls for the inevitable death and haunting of local ways of identification, how might we re-imagine the
living communities on the move? John Andrew G. Evangelista explores meanings associated with the practice of
“Pride in Metro Manila” and the different social conditions shaping these meanings that unravel the bounds of
Filipina/o citizenship. Paul Michael Leonardo Atienza provides ethnographic vignettes from preliminary fieldwork on
gay dating app users in greater Metropolitan Manila that destabilize the encroachment of a global LGBT hegemony
around the world. Bernadette Villanueva Neri examines early childhood education as a space of possibility in the
dissemination of topics pertaining to gender and sexuality. Roland Sintos Coloma tracks how LGBT advocacy in the
Philippines seems to be lagging behind, moving ahead of, and going beyond queer social movements and results in
the global North.
From Invisibility to Invincibility: Gaining Sexual Citizenship through Pride March
John Andrew G. Evangelista
University of the Philippines, Diliman
Celebrated in major cities around the world, Pride March has spread throughout the globe both as an idea and as a
movement strategy. As an idea, Pride carries the constructed memory of the famous Stonewall Riot. The famous 1969
Riot has been dubbed as the most meaningful historical game changer in modern LGBT activism. As a strategy, Pride
is believed to have solidified the stature of public demonstration as one of the most useful tools in making LGBT
advocacies visible. These western meanings associated with Pride are negotiated and appropriated in LGBT
movements in Global South nations. As the idea and strategy of Pride spread across these nations, new meanings are
constructed and associated with the march reflecting exigencies local and unique to various localities. Using data
collected through interviews with local movement leaders and volunteers, this paper seeks to explore meanings
associated with the practice of Pride in Metro Manila and the different social conditions shaping these meanings. I
situate these meaning-makings within current notions of Filipino/a citizenship. Citizenship becomes a major point of
contestation to which the local practice and meaning-making of Pride are both directed. My assertion will unveil how
various meanings associated with the Metro Manila Pride March seek to reveal the exclusionary notions of Filipino/a
citizenship and to broaden what it means to be Filipino/a citizens. By broadening notions of citizenship and revealing
their exclusionary character, Pride March makes sexual minorities in the Philippines visible as citizens not just in the
realm of culture but also in the realm of a politicized civil society.
Intimacies and Horizons on the Move: Gay Dating App Ecologies in Translocal Manila
Paul Michael Leonardo Atienza
Feminist anthropologist of science and technology Lucy Suchman argues that humans and machines re/configure each
other through negotiations in their everyday interactions. This frictional relationship (Tsing 2005) is intertwined with
a relational system fraught with unequal ebbs and flows within sociotechnical infrastructures. Sociotechnical
infrastructures refer to the entanglements between hardware, bodies, and affect used in the meaning-making and
translation of im/materialities within the shared ecologies. This paper explores socio-technical infrastructures that
scaffold Filipino users of gay dating apps. I argue that these users circumvent normative social scripts and hierarchies
of class, sexuality, and gender as they try to establish connections and intimacies on gay dating apps. Mobile digital
devices are a staple in the Philippines for people to connect with each other due to poor telephone landline
infrastructures (Perterria 2005). As such, Filipina/os have become tech savvy. This multi-sited project looks at the
self-fashioning and communicative experiences of gay dating app users in the greater Metropolitan Manila region.
Reflecting on preliminary ethnographic research conducted over the summer of 2015, this presentation will provide a
sketch of complex and overlapping new media ecologies that highlight gay Manila’s hopes, desires, and aspirations
for homosocial bonds. New media technologies are portals of exchange between the Philippines and the world that
shrink time and space as they simultaneously create new distances among previously linked imaginary entities. This
work adds to a growing body of literature that tracks emerging sexual and gender identities that contest a homogenous
global LGBT hegemony.
Batang Makulit, Mapagpalayang Bulilit: Integrating Gender Sensitivity and Responsiveness in Kindergarten
Bernadette Villanueva Neri
University of the Philippines, Diliman
Under Republic Act 10157, kindergarten serves as a “transition stage from informal literacy to the formal literacy in
schools.” It also becomes a venue for the intersection of various concepts and ideas introduced in the students’
families, which are then either reinforced or rejected by the educational institution. Since children in this stage are still
in their formative years, when “self-esteem, vision of the world, and moral foundations are established” (Department
of Education 2012), it is highly important to study the content of the kindergarten curriculum to make sure that the
design really prepares kindergarteners not only for formal education but also for the realities of their community. Early
childhood education then becomes a rich ground to introduce and discuss matters that are not usually tackled in the
former basic education system such as issues on gender and sexuality.
This is a preliminary study on the integration of gender sensitivity and responsiveness in kindergarten curriculum
and pedagogy.
On Cruel Optimism of LGBT Organizing
Roland Sintos Coloma
Miami University, Ohio
This paper investigates three case studies of LGBT activism in the Philippines within the past decade: (1) the
legislative advocacy for a federal non-discrimination law built on a coalition among sexual minorities, people with
disabilities, indigenous communities, and elderly citizens; (2) the electoral campaign to elect self-identified and out
LGBT politicians in Congress; and (3) the street and media activism to redress the murder of transgender Jennifer
Laude at the hands of a US soldier. These case studies provide significant insights into the educational and political
strategies that work alongside with, yet also go beyond, the anti-normative drive in the queer global North. Employing
the temporal categories of “behind time,” “ahead of time,” and “beyond time,” the paper tracks how LGBT advocacy
in the Philippines seems to be lagging behind, moving ahead of, and going beyond queer social movements and results
in the global North. It points to the lack of anti-discrimination laws, same-sex marriage, and sexuality education in the
Philippines. Yet it directs attention to the ways in which Filipino LGBT advocacy refuses the so-called universal terms
of queer activism and progress by linking sexual oppression and violence to postcolonial legacies, military geopolitics,
and uneven international relations. By refusing time frames that measure queer progress, the paper extends queer
theory without anti-normativity by drawing attention to the gaps and silences in queer studies in the global North and
by putting at the center LGBT politics and pedagogies in the global South and in the Philippines in particular.
Session 8D
TRANSPORTATION MODES, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND PLANS: A HISTORY OF
TRANSPORTATION AND URBANIZATION IN METROPOLITAN MANILA FROM THE
JAPANESE PERIOD TO THE MARCOS ERA
Transportation modes and infrastructure, particularly those who move people and goods in large numbers, are
commonly planned, constructed, and managed in urbanized environments. This proposed panel seeks to present four
papers that are part of a larger study being pursued by the Third World Studies Center, National Center for
Transportation Studies, and the Department of Geography of the University of the Philippines on the history of mass
transit in Metropolitan Manila from 1879 to the present. One of the papers in this proposed panel narrates the history
of the management and eventual decline of a particular mass transit mode in Manila – the Meralco tranvia or street
car - during the Japanese period. Two other studies, on the other hand, discuss the positions and policies that were
developed by planners and development experts from different government and private institutions with respect to
road and rail-based infrastructure particularly during the 1970s and 1980s. All of these histories on transportation and
plans have portions or the whole extent of an ever-expanding Metropolitan Manila as its management and planning
area. As such, the final paper of this panel examines the ever-changing territorial extent of what was considered the
Metropolitan Manila Area during the Marcos era. It is hoped that these papers would encourage historians,
geographers, and urban/land use planners to consider the history of urbanization as well as transportation planning
and management as potential research topics in their future academic work.
Manila’s Tranvía during the Japanese Occupation: Decay and Death
Ricardo Trota Jose
Department of History
Meralco’s tranvía had become a fixture in pre-war Manila’s public transportation network. When the Japanese took
over Manila, they seized control of the tranvía. Initially, it ran as it did during the pre-war days, except with less
frequency. Without spare parts and poor maintenance stemming from mismanagement and lack of know-how by the
Japanese management, the tranvía made fewer and fewer runs. It fell into decay and by late 1944 was seized entirely
by the Japanese military for its exclusive use. The network was destroyed during the Battle of Manila in February
1945. This paper shall detail how the tranvía died the death it did, utilizing Filipino as well as Japanese sources.
Ang Magkaribal: A History of Road versus Rail in Metropolitan Manila, 1957- 1985
Gerard L. Daguio
Traffic congestion in Metro Manila has been the object of policy and planning intervention since the 1960s. By the
1970s, the proposed infrastructure solutions to the region's emerging transport woes were on whether to increase and
improve the quantity and capacity of the road systems or to develop a mass transit system based on rail transport. Most
planners and development experts then advocated roads as gleaned from documents and plans by private or
government institutions. Justifications were provided for the construction of more roads and little attention was given
to train transport or the development of a rail-based mass transit system. Over time, reports and planning documents
reflected the steady decline and neglect in the management and maintenance of the government-owned Philippine
National Railways, which included the Metro Manila-based commuter services. With the use of historical documents,
transportation materials, and planning blueprints, this study seeks to shed light on the debate between the two modes
of transportation infrastructure and contributes to addressing the current gaps in planning history literature.
A History of What Might Have Been: Mapping Unimplemented Mass Transit Plans for Metro Manila
using Geographic Information Systems
Johnson C. Damian
The daily predicament of heavy traffic in Metro Manila has resulted in the notion that the region’s mass transit system
is poorly planned. However, transport documents from the 1970s reveal that this is not entirely true. Numerous plans
for the railway system – which are notably different from the rail transit lines that we have today – were drafted in
anticipation of the Metro’s ballooning population, economic advancement, and traffic demand, but these were not
carried out. The question that remains to be addressed is whether these aborted plans could have serviced the
commuters more effectively than the existing infrastructure.
Using a Geographic Information System (GIS), the unimplemented mass transit plans for Metro Manila are
reconstructed in maps. A digital geo-database is created by compiling and processing information from historical texts,
blueprints, satellite imagery, and transport plans created by the Department of Public Works, Transportation, and
Communications (DPWTC) and the Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency of Japan (OTCA). Thus, the
discontinued plans and the actual transit system can be analyzed side-by-side and be overlaid with the environment
and demography of Metro Manila from the 1970s to the present. The study seeks to enrich the discourse on urban
transport planning by using historical GIS to posit ideas and considerations for future mass transit projects in the
country.
The Matriyoshka Settlement: A Historical Geography of the Evolving Definitions of Metropolitan Manila
during the Marcos Era
Marco Stefan B. Lagman
For the past four decades, it has become natural for Filipinos to perceive Metropolitan Manila as an agglomeration of
17 settlements all of which, save for one, have attained the status of highly urbanized city. While this particular
geographic definition of Metro Manila has become part of popular consciousness, many have a very faint idea of its
history as a planning and administrative creation. Using studies from the education, marketing and economics
disciplines, urban and transport planning documents and studies during the 1960s to the early part of the 1980s, and
geographic information systems knowledge, this paper seeks to provide a history of how Manila and its surrounding
towns eventually came to be perceived as a metropolitan region that became the object of research, policy-making,
planning, and administration by the state and other institutions. This study also aims to emphasize that the Metro
Manila that we know today underwent several iterations as planners and policy-makers seemingly employed several
criteria such as urbanization, land use, population, and even car registration and traffic congestion as the bases for
which to include in the metropolitan region. By rendering these into Geographic Information Systems-based maps,
the multiple versions of the Metropolitan Manila Area over the years could be best understood, appreciated, and
imagined in visual format. Moreover, as Metro Manila was being defined, an even larger area called the Manila Bay
Metropolitan Region that included the former was being proposed by the authorities as a means for further directing
growth and development of the largest cluster of rapidly urbanizing settlements in the country during the 1970s. It is
hoped that this historical-geographical study will add to the literature in the areas of Philippine history, urban planning,
and geography.
Session 8E
WHO’S AFRAID OF REVOLUTION? CREATIVE TENSIONS IN
CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE POETRY, FICTION, THEATER, AND
LITERARY TRANSLATION II
Creative Tensions in Literary Translation: The Case of Magdalena G. Jalandoni’s Short Story “Si Anabella”
from Hiligaynon to Filipino
Genevieve L. Asenjo
This paper argues that the translation by Corazon Villareal of the Hiligaynon short story “Si Anabella” (1936-1938)
by the famed Hiligaynon writer Magdalena G. Jalandoni (1891-1978) into what she calls as Hiliganized Filipino in
her book Translating the Sugilanon: Reframing the Sign (UP Press, 1994) produced “creative tensions” in recent
Philippine literary history, specifically regarding West Visayan literature, as exemplified by the scholarship and
literary criticism of Isidoro M. Cruz, “Translating Colonial Discourse: Jalandoni’s “Si Anabella” in Filipino” in his
book Cultural Fictions: Narratives on Philippine Popular Culture, Politics, and Literature (University of San Agustin
Press, 2004), and Rosario Cruz-Lucero’s “Paano Basahin “Si Anabella” ni Magdalena Jalandoni” in her book Ang
Bayan Sa Labas ng Maynila/The Nation Beyond Manila (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2007). The paper
concludes that whether in original Hiligaynon or in Filipino translation, Jalandoni’s “Si Anabella” exposes our
enduring colonial discourse in both content and form, that is, our “slave consciousness,” and is thus a perfect
pedagogical tool in our postcolonial project to be emancipated individuals and country.
Creative Tensions: Pursuing Justice for Indigenous Communities in Contemporary Visayan and
Mindanawon Literature
Kei Valmoria Bughaw
This paper presents selected works of contemporary writers from southern Philippines that tackle the theme of
marginalization and exploitation of indigenous groups, particularly relating to large-scale commercial mining,
unsustainable agriculture because of monocrop plantations, and incursion of the military and company-paid
mercenaries into lumad lands. Subsequently, it puts forward alternatives that might enable resolution of the creative
tensions and result in knowledge production and dissemination to a wider section of Filipino society
Democratizing Literature through the Archipelagic Landscape as Seen/Imagined in Philippine Ecopoetry
Rina Garcia Chua
This paper discusses selected contemporary ecopoetry from the upcoming anthology, Sustaining the Archipelago
(UST Publishing House) and interrogates how these poems are defining and redefining the concept of an “archipelago”
in local literature. Here, our archipelagic landscape will be mapped out through the ecopoems and thus will be used
in the attempt to answer the following questions: First, how does ecopoetry erase the boundaries between/among
communities to form a unified literary ecosystem? Second, how does laying out the model for “archipelagic poetry”
foster inclusivity within the literary academe and those outside of it? Third and most importantly, what can living in
an archipelago teach the world through its ecopoetry? In doing so, ecopoetry concretely contributes to democratizing
literature not only for human beings, but for all species here and everywhere else.
Creative Tensions: National Consciousness and Hybridity in Cirilo F. Bautista’s Trilogy of St. Lazarus
Joyce Roque
This paper explores the productive tension between an inherited culture and an imposed one as seen in National Artist
for Literature Cirilo F. Bautista's epic poem, Trilogy of St Lazarus. The paper argues that the poet, working in a
postcolonial setting, reimagines national memory by subverting hegemony through hybridization and, in the process,
makes the re-telling of it new again, even infusing it with hope. In the process, the poet creates a broader cultural and
critical vision that recasts national history and consciousness.
Session 8F
SOMETHING’S COOKING AT THE PHILIPPINE FRONTIER:
THE TRANS-REGIONAL ECONOMIES OF MINDANAO
Mindanao, especially Muslim Mindanao, is portrayed in the national historical narrative in largely negative terms. It
is the dark frontier where political order is virtually non-existent, thanks in part to a permanent state of war between
different social forces and the national state, and where political power is in the hands of vicious warlords, bosses, and
political clans. In the eyes of the state’s national development planners, Mindanao’s economy remains highly suspect:
indeed it has a robust export crop sector, but adjoining and sometimes overlapping it is a resilient network based
mainly in the war zones that produces and trades in illicit commodities. To write about Mindanao’s political and
economic history therefore is a fraught venture with little likelihood of success. This panel argues the opposite.
Focusing on Mindanao’s economy, the papers will show that a lateral broadening of one’s academic lens will reveal
a remarkable stable legitimate island economy that has been linked and continues to maintain ties with the maritime
Southeast Asian “regional” economy. Within the island’s war zone economy, the illicit sector does not always
dominate; in fact, in certain places it co-exists with “lawful” economic activities and often serves the latter.
Re-Imagining Imperial Space: Mindanao, the Dutch East Indies and the Trans-Regional Life of American
Empire
Joshua Gedacht
Universiti Brunei Darussalam
On March 11, 1906, Lieutenant Arthur Poillon, an American official serving in the colonial Moroland Government,
departed from Zamboanga and arrived in Manado on the Dutch-controlled island of Sulawesi. Once in the Netherlands
East Indies, Lt. Poillon prepared two separate reports: one on the civil government of Sulawesi (Celebes) and one on
the military of the Netherlands East Indies. Although ostensibly about colonial governance and military strategy, both
of these reports in fact devoted much of their analysis to various business ventures, trading relations, and infrastructure
projects. What interested Lt. Poillon the most about these initiatives was not how they confined, contained, or limited
the peoples of Sulawesi within imagined colonial boundaries. Instead, Poillon commented extensively on how locals
maintained connections with Java, the Philippines, Singapore, and even farther afield to China, Arabia, India, and
Europe. Military action and colonial government, according to Poillon, thus played a key role in constituting and
reinvigorating trans-regional connections.
This paper will examine Lt. Poillon’s Zamboanga to Manado journey as an example of what Tim Harper and Sunil
Amrith referred to as “changing geographical imaginations and the fluidity of borders and boundaries across Asia.”
(Harper and Amrith, 2012). Throughout his travels, Lt. Poillon imagined the Mindanao frontier as an integral part of
a wider region that extended far beyond the Philippines and was tied together by commerce and culture, roads, boats,
and infrastructure. This paper will argue that American officials like Lt. Poillon did not only hope to compare Sulawesi
with Mindanao as a means to learn strategies of pacification or to harden boundaries. Instead, some officials also
sought to harness, amplify, and re-direct trans-regional connections, to enhance prosperity and colonial power by
lodging it within the circuits of the wider region. In sum, this paper will demonstrate that understanding borderformation and colonialism in Mindanao requires new spatial imaginaries that can move past the American-Philippine
dyad.
'Cosmopolitan Fish': Science, Commerce, and the Transregional Nature of Mindanao's Waters, 1880-1952
Anthony D. Medrano
University of Wisconsin-Madison
In the late colonial and early national periods, Southeast Asia’s marine environment became a site of growing
importance for scientific study and industrial exploitation. Driving the expansion of sea research and fisheries work
was the need to link a perceived abundance of fish to the region’s widening cities and evolving frontiers. By 1950,
technocratic planners were championing “cosmopolitan fish” as the principal solution to the problems of national
development and economic recovery in the postwar Philippines (Avery 1950). And yet, despite the central role of the
sea and its resources in building up colonial societies and postcolonial nations, historians have generally framed this
definitive era of transition around shifts in land use and conflicts in social relations, obscuring how these catalytic
changes in nature, society, and politics were anchored in the ocean’s ecology.
Heeding this gap, my paper explores the ebb and flow of scientists, fishers, fishes, and institutions, and how the
confluence of these movements transformed the purpose of Mindanao’s waters in the period between 1880 and 1950.
Drawing on archival research conducted in Manila, College Park, and Palo Alto, it examines collections made by
Spanish ichthyologists in the late nineteenth century, records of the Philippine Division of Fisheries in the early
decades of American rule, and the writings of Filipino scientists from 1920 to 1950. By mapping how the marine
frontiers of Mindanao became hotspots for their fishery horizons and biological diversity, the essay surfaces not only
a new grammar for thinking about the social and environmental history of Philippine waters, but it provides as well a
new vocabulary for analyzing the ways in which transregional networks interacted and intersected to repurpose the
ocean’s “cosmopolitan fish” for science, commerce, empire, and nation.
Beyond violence and poverty: A thriving Maranao upland farming community
Magne Knudsen
Universiti Brunei Darussalam
Much agrarian political economy and social history literature on Mindanao demonstrates how Christian and Muslim
elites in collaboration with external parties have ‘plundered’ the island of its resources. Through discriminatory land
laws and policies, combined with patronage and repression, governing elites have undermined particularly non-elite
Moro and Lumad families’ ability to access land and improve livelihoods. This paper examines livelihoods and land
tenure in a Maranao upland village of Northern Mindanao which does not fit neatly with this master narrative. While
it would be possible to show that such phenomena as illegal logging, land grabbing, family feuds, and insurgency are
features of the local political economy also here, the paper focuses instead on how small-scale farmers have gained
access to land and developed their livelihoods. Through clearing of lands and planting of crops, dwelling, uplandlowland trade, kinship, marriage and other mostly customary and unspectacular means, it shows how upland farmers
have developed a robust mixed swidden and fixed field agricultural community over the course of four generations.
Although the status of their land ownership claims and some of their livelihood activities are contested from time to
time, illustrating the fluid distinction between ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ economies in this part of the world, many
households have been able to gradually diversify and strengthen their livelihood base and trading activities, entering
into the mainstream of the economy, not unlike relatively successful farmers on agricultural frontiers elsewhere in the
Philippines and the wider region.
Summiting Mountains, Collecting Specimens: The Scientific Expeditions of Major Edgar Mearns in
Mindanao
Ruel Pagunsan
National University of Singapore
Edgar Alexander Mearns arrived in the Philippines in 1903 to serve as the chief surgeon of the U.S. Army in Mindanao.
During his five-year tenure in the archipelago, he organized and headed scientific expeditions aimed at gathering
information “that may contribute to a better knowledge of the islands and its inhabitants.” Mearns particularly targeted
the highlands, including Mt. Apo, hoping to discover new species of plants and animals. As Mearns explored the
uplands and forests of Mindanao, he encountered “tribal” communities that were also subjected to his “scientific”
investigations. This paper interrogates Mearns expeditions in the context of imperial hunting and accumulation of
objects and knowledge about the Philippines in the early period of U.S. colonial regime. It looks at the scientific
institutions – from the Smithsonian Institution in the metropole to the Bureaus of Science and Forestry in the colony
– that aided and benefited from the collecting expeditions. Using the field journals of Mearns, the paper examines
Mindanao, to borrow from Mary Louis Pratt, as contact zone where its mountains and the interiors become not only
targets of military occupation but also sites of tension between science and local views.
Session 9A
KNOWLEDGE/POWER IN COLONIAL PHILIPPINES
Medicine and Medical Practice in the Philippines in the Late Nineteenth Century
Yoshihiro Chiba
Health Sciences University of Hokkaido
This paper discusses the transformation of both administrative institutions and medical professions of Spanish
Philippines in the late nineteenth century as influenced by the Catholic Church, the global circulating current of
Spanish physicians, the emergence of Filipino physicians, and medical practices.
In the late nineteenth century, the Superior Commission of Sanitation of the Philippines, the Central Committee of
Vaccine, the Office of Marine Quarantine and the Medicos Titulares were administratively integrated. Simultaneously,
medicine and welfare were connected in governmental services. Free medical services were provided for the poor in
Manila and its suburbs. Such medical services were launched in the Spanish empire which had been previously
dependent upon the Catholic Church.
Those medical officers were employed, to whom the Spanish had given priority. At the same time, Filipino physicians
who obtained the medical license from the University of Santo Tomas increased up to the 1890s. Public pharmacists
and vaccinators also studied at the University of Santo Tomas. After the Philippine Revolution in 1896, some Spanish
physicians asked to resign from their posts and returned to Spain.
The physicians dealt with infectious diseases, based on the proper use of the miasma theory and bacteriology.
Regarding cholera, they stressed prevention and disinfection, and a purgative was given in cases of abdominal pains
and diarrhea. Their medical practices were mainly given in patients’ home, and depended on native medicine.
“Subversiva de Todos los Principios Religiosos y Politicos” - Ilang Tala mula sa mga Pulong ng Comision
Permanente de Censura (1866-1875)
Florentino A. Iniego, Jr.
Sa pangkalahatan, hindi mapagkakailang kinitil ng Espanya ang kalayaan sa pamamahayag at pinigil ang paglaganap
ng mga liberal na ideya sa Pilipinas mula 1565 hanggang sa pagbagsak ng kapangyarihan nito noong 1898.
Ayon nga sa obserbasyon ng isang bisitang mangangalakal na Amerikano noong 1796, “Lubos na makapangyarihan
dito ang mga prayle…ipinagbabawal ang importasyon ng mga akdang labag sa kanilang relihiyon. Hinahalughog ng
komandante ang mga barko, at kinikilatis ang bawat sasakyang pandagat.”
Partikular na tatalakayin ng papel na ito ang saklaw at lawak ng panunupil sa kalayaan ng pamahayag at pagsensura
sa mga liberal na publikasyon sa Pilipinas sa ilalim ng Comision Permanente de Censura (1866-1875). Ang Comision
na itinatag noong 07 Oktubre 1856 ay binubuo isang Pangulo – ang Piskal ng Audiencia Real, apat na laigo-miyembro
na itinalaga ng Sentral na Pamahalaan, apat na kinatawan ng simbahan na pinili ng Arsobispo, at isang empleyado na
nagsisilbing kalihim.
Bagamat tinupok ng apoy ang opisina ng Comision noong 1866, napasakamay ng mamamahayag na si Wenceslao
Retana ang ilang mga mahahalagang dokumento nito. Batay sa karagdagang pagsisikap ng mananaliksik, nakalap din
ang ilang pangunahing batis hinggil sa katitikan ng pulong ng Comision noong Hunyo at Agosto 1866. Sa
presentasyong ito, ilalahad ang ilan kaukulang mga desisyon, listahan ng mga pahayagan, mga aklat, at iba pang
publikasyon na dumaan sa regulasyon at sensura ng Comision.
“Subversiva de Todos los Principios Religiosos y Politicos” – Some Notes from the Meetings of the Comision
Permanente de Censura (1866-1875)
Florentino A. Iniego, Jr.
In general, there was no doubt that Spain suppressed press freedom and prohibited the spread of liberal ideas in the
Philippines since 1565 until its last stand in 1898.
According to an American trader visiting the country in 1796, “The priests here are very powerful…No books are
allowed to be imported here contrary to their religion. The commandant searches the boat; examines every vessel.”
In particular, this paper will discuss the scope and extent of the suppression of press freedom and censorship of liberal
publications under the Comision Permanente de Censura from 1866-1875.
The Press During the Ephemeral Independence of the Philippines: La Independencia and
La República Filipina
Glòria Cano
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
The Filipino press played an important role during the last years of Spanish colonial rule and, above all, during the
period of American administration. When the US government in Washington decided to keep the Philippines, they
found out that Filipinos were not as poor and ignorant as they had assumed and that the press was a useful weapon to
fuel discontent. In fact, Joseph Ralston Hayden categorically stated that the newspapers were primarily political
organs, not business institutions. Hayden considered that their chief business was not the sale of news and advertising,
but politics.
Hayden, like W. Cameron Forbes, believed this political inclination of Filipino newspapers was mainly due to
American magnanimity which had duly brought freedom of the press and speech to the archipelago. This new-found
freedom apparently differed from or contrasted with the rigid control and censorship perceived to be prevalent under
Spanish colonial rule. This is part of the mythogenesis established in the inveterate Spanish, Filipino, and American
historiography. Actually, there was not such a binary opposition between a Spanish rigid control of the press and the
American advocated freedom of the press. Spanish colonial rule loosened or attenuated its control from 1883 till its
collapse, while the American administration, as William H. Taft explained in great detail in a confidential and personal
letter, paid the newspaper editors what was called a subventio (stipend) for advertising or giving publicity to the facts
in respect to the Government. In sum, Filipino newspapers became surreptitiously the organs of the establishment,
that is, the official propaganda of US administration.
This paper will explore and analyze the emergence of the first separatist newspapers which enjoyed true freedom of
the press during the ephemeral Independence of the Philippines. I mean La Independencia which became the official
organ of the revolution and further independent state-nation building or La República Filipina edited by Pedro Paterno,
among others. I focus on these two papers because they follow the spirit of La Solidaridad. The press that emerged
during the ephemeral independence has been minimized by historians and although La Independencia or La Republica
Filipina are mentioned in textbooks, no one has looked through them because both are clear examples of the promise
of independence denied categorically and systematically by the US administration. As we will see in this paper, both
newspapers heralded the United States as “that great and strong country with which we are bonded by a sincere
friendship.”
Session 9B
THE ECONOMIC, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
OF THE ASEAN INTEGRATION
The year 2015 marks the beginning of a new era for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as it seeks
to form the ASEAN Community. This is in consonance with the stipulations of the Bali Concord II, which states that
the ASEAN “shall respond to the new dynamics within the respective ASEAN Member Countries and shall urgently
and effectively address the challenge of translating ASEAN cultural diversities and different economic levels into
equitable development opportunity and prosperity, in an environment of solidarity, regional resilience and harmony.”
The Concord also declares that the ASEAN Community shall be composed of three pillars: the Political-Security
Community, the Economic Community, and the Socio-cultural Community.
The ASEAN integration has great potential to improve the current practice of governance in the country. However,
the regional integration is confronted with key issues and challenges. The significance of ASEAN’s role in addressing
threats to political stability and regional security leaves much to be desired, particularly on the aspect of its ability to
act as a bloc. Further, the effect of the regional integration on marginalized sectors of society, such as the farmers, is
forecast to bring more harm than benefit.
The first paper explores the diversity of the political systems of ASEAN member-states and how such diversity affects
their actions regarding China’s claim to the Spratly Islands. The second paper examines the role of government, private
sector, and civil society in materializing good governance through the formation of ASEAN community. The third
paper probes into the thoughts of Filipino smallholder farmers regarding ASEAN integration with the end of providing
holistic understanding of their plight as a sector.
Taming the Tiger: A Search for a Common ASEAN Stand to Contain China Regarding the Spratlys
Diosdado B. Lopega
This paper looks at the issue regarding the diversity of the political systems of the ten member states of the ASEAN
and how this impacts on the decisions they make in the face of China’s aggressive behavior in enforcing its claim to
the whole of the Spratly Islands.
To do this, a cursory investigation and evaluation of the individual member states is done taking into account the
individual member state’s international relations with China. Also, the organizational structure of the ASEAN itself
is evaluated in order to plot how each of the ten ASEAN regimes conforms to the organizational structure of the
regional group as well as to its reason for being. The dynamics and conditions for entry of the member states into the
association are also evaluated. This is important if only to chart the future destiny of ASEAN if it is to survive as a
viable regional organization in the face of both international and regional hegemony of strong states like China. A
regional group or any group, for that matter, is seen as a weakling if it cannot commonly act on issues, especially in
the face of a crisis situation that calls for a united stand, as in the situation of China’s massive claim of the of the
Spratly Islands. This paper contends that a search for a lasting and rules-based approach to diffuse the tension in the
Spratly Islands is in order.
On the other hand, this paper also investigates China’s motives in her claim of the Spratly Islands but still assumes
that international standards in settling disputes are considered and given premium.
The paper concludes by suggesting a middle ground based on accepted international norms and constructs that are
already in place. It is the contention of the study that a peaceful co-existence among the states in Northeast and
Southeast Asia, including Japan, is impossible in the face of saber-rattling by anyone who wields military, economic,
and political power.
ASEAN Economic Community and Philippine Governance: Challenges for the Government, Private Sector
and Civil Society
Gladys P. Nalangan
At the end of 2015, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries are set to achieve
economic integration with the realization of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), one of the pillars on which
the ASEAN Community is built. Similar to other regional economic integration (REI) groups, the AEC is expected to
promote economic growth, political stability and peace. It is also anticipated that the AEC will lead to good
governance. Implementing the AEC Blueprint requires ASEAN member countries to practice transparency,
accountability, adherence to the rule of law, responsiveness, and consideration of the public interest—some of the
criteria for good governance. Effecting good governance involves the participation and cooperation of the government,
the private sector, and civil society.
This paper determines how good governance will be achieved with the establishment of the AEC and examines the
roles of the Philippine government, the private sector, and civil society in the AEC and the challenges they will
encounter in carrying out these roles. Desk research and document analysis of secondary data from relevant institutions
involved are employed in completing this study.
Critical involvement of and concerted effort from the three actors of governance (government, private sector and civil
society) are advantages in making tangible the gains (i.e., economic development) brought by REI particularly the
AEC.
Uncertain Present, Bleak Future: The ASEAN Economic Integration through the Lens of Filipino
Smallholder Farmers
John Raymond B. Jison
During the 12th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit held in Cebu City, Philippines, the ASEAN
Member-States envisioned an integrated ASEAN Economic Community by 2015 that aims to create a globally
competitive single market and production, which shall materialize through the integration of their economies. It is
argued that the ASEAN economic integration is more detrimental to Philippine agriculture than beneficial. For one,
the agricultural system in the Philippines remains to be underdeveloped, rendering local smallholder farmers illequipped to compete in the free market. For another, the influx of cheaper agricultural imports in the local economy,
let alone the agricultural sector’s lack of competitiveness, leaves the fate of local farmers hanging in the balance.
This paper employs individual in-depth interviews as its primary data gathering tool and interpretive social science as
its research approach in analyzing the thoughts of Filipino farmers regarding the ASEAN integration. The local
farmers in the Philippines are among the poorest of the poor and, therefore, are highly vulnerable to various socioeconomic risks. Assessing their understanding of the ASEAN integration leads to a holistic understanding of the plight
of Filipino farmers as a sector and provides an impetus for the government to reexamine its position in the proposed
economic integration.
Session 9C
POVERTY, ACCESS TO EDUCATION AND SPIRITUALITY: GLIMPSES OF A
SAMA DILAUT COMMUNNITY VIS-À-VIS SOCIAL EXCLUSION
Marginalized ethnic groups worldwide are seen to exhibit some type of social exclusion from the mainstream of
society and the Sama Dilaut of the Philippines are not exempt from this. Labeled as the poorest sector in Zamboanga
City and mendicants of the streets, the Sama Dilaut were once the proud navigators of the Sulu Sea, and are indigenous
to the littorals of the Zamboanga Peninsula. In this study, the researchers seek to show that simple societies in the
Philippines do experience some type of social exclusion and stigmatization. This study on social exclusion was
conducted in Barangay Taluksangay and Ayuda-Badjao Community in Zamboanga City, where the participants were
Sama Dilaut residents, for a period of one year. The methods employed were the Key Informant Interview (KII) and
Focus Group Discussion (FGD). The first paper by Nerlyne Concepcion presents the factors that contributed to the
Sama Dilaut social exclusion. The second paper by Hashim Alawi seeks to illustrate the stigma of social exclusion of
the Sama Dilaut through the experiential accounts of the participants. Finally, the third paper by Francis Jumala, where
data was derived from the in-depth interview with the shaman, is a case study that delves into the Spirit World of the
Sama Dilaut which is seen as one factor that deters social inclusion into the mainstream of Filipino Society.
Social Exclusion: Experiences and Encountered Problems of the Sama Dilaut
Hashim Alawi
Social exclusion is rooted in the relationship of the individual with the State and its key institutions whose functions
are to establish and ensure social cohesion; social exclusion is viewed as a failure of the State (Ion, 1995 in Bhalla and
Lapeyre, 1997). It further reflects individual choices that may be voluntary, patterns of interest between actors, and
“distortions to the system such as discrimination, market failures and unenforced rights.” Access to labor markets,
for example, provides the individual rewards and recognition, as well as dignity, which should alleviate the detrimental
effects of being excluded, thereby increasing social integration, and it is implicitly assumed that employment is a
means of alleviating poverty. As shown in most literature, IPs of the world have encountered the same experiences
and problems; the Sama Dilaut of Zamboanga are not an exception. The researchers’ interest in this in-depth case
study stemmed from their being acquainted with the Sama Dilaut and their being socially excluded particularly in the
socio-political arena, which perhaps could be attributed to poverty and lack of skills that could somehow serve as
qualifications for social inclusion. This interest also stemmed from the researchers’ being active in fields where the
plight of indigenous peoples has been of interests. By shedding light on the different situations of the Sama Dilaut,
the study seeks to understand their situation through their narrative experiences and to take account of the problems
of social exclusion within and among them.
Resigning to the Will of the Ancestors: A Glimpse of the Sama Dilaut Worldview vis-à-vis Social Exclusion
Francis Jumala
Ancestor veneration in the southern Philippines has been observed to persist in simple societies and among the
Indigenous Peoples (IPs), such as the Sama Dilaut of the Sulu Sea and the Zamboanga Peninsula. This has been seen
also in complex societies in Asia, such as the Balinese of Indonesia, the Chinese, and the Japanese, to name a few.
The belief in the supernatural powers of the ancestors paved the way for rituals of ancestor worship, the determination
of bride price, botched circumcision, culture-bound diseases, with the ancestors being consulted. Among the Sama
Dilaut, the persistence of ancestor veneration is intertwined with the supernatural influence of the ancestors, coupled
with the fear of the ancestors’ ire that may lead to maladies such as bad luck in trade and illnesses. This paper stems
from the researcher’s anthropological inquiry into the religious sphere of the Sama Dilaut Community in Taluksangay,
Zamboanga City. The participants of the study were the Sama Dilaut ancestral worship practitioners who were also
the participants in the study done on Social Exclusion by a team of which the researcher was a member. Above all,
this paper seeks to shed light on the deeply seated attachment of Sama Dilaut to their ancestors on the basis of the
emic of the participants.
Secondly, it seeks to describe the processes involved in the performance of the ritual. Finally, it also seeks to show
how such attachment becomes one of the factors that becomes the vehicle for Social Exclusion.
Factors of Social Exclusion of the Sama Dilaut: Their Resilience in the Society
Nerlyne C. Concepcion
The term “Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines” is defined in the 1987 Philippine Constitution which mandates the
State to recognize, respect, and protect the rights of IPs to preserve and develop their cultures, traditions, and
institutions. The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 guarantees the rights of IPs to ancestral domain, selfgovernance/empowerment, social justice/human rights, education and cultural integrity. Despite these, it is salient that
many of our IPs have remained marginalized by economic parameters and are socially excluded due to the lack of
acceptance that have made them not competitive in life. This is manifested in many incidents, such as mendicancy
and the increasing number of street children in the city. The study aims to document the Sama Dilaut’s understanding
of and insights into their social exclusion from mainstream society and to identify particular factors perceived to be
the reasons for their social exclusion as individuals and as a community, and to determine some issues and alternative
solutions to lessen social exclusion. Qualitative phenomenological case study was used to obtain a multiple perspective
constructed from the views of the 62 participants. The present plight of the Sama Dilaut can be understood from their
own points –o- view and not from outsiders’ who have tended to label them negatively. Further, it is hoped that this
study will contribute studies on indigenous peoples worldwide.
Session 9D
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN ASIA PACIFIC
The Spanish Civil War was a major international issue in the 1930’s. This panel explores the impact of the civil war
in Asia, and specifically the Philippines, where it coincided with a crucial moment in the country’s transition from an
American colony to a quasi-independent Commonwealth. Spanning the Pacific and Atlantic worlds, this panel traces
the complex responses of different groups of Filipinos and Asians in the civil war and uses the wide-ranging public
debate about Spain as points of entry to reconstruct the complex transnational radical networks and ideological crosscurrents that shaped the politics of the Philippines and Asia.
The Impact of the Spanish War in Asia-Pacific
Florentino Rodao
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
In the 1930s, any important event had international impact, and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) was one of them.
The fight among Spanish political and military groups was widely perceived by the rest of the world as an ideological
dispute, and leftists around the world supported the Republican regime as a way to crush Fascism while rightists did
the same with Francoist rebels against the presumed rise of communism. Domestic politics, however, influenced much
on how the Spanish War impacted in every continent, Asia being the most patent example. While anti-colonialism
was the most important aspect of its impact in India, the overall fight against Fascism was prominent in Australia and
New Zealand, probably the territory with the biggest number of International Brigade members in relation to the total
of its population. In the Philippines, Catholicism was the biggest issue while in Japan the issue was the war’s relation
to the coup held merely a month before. The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1937 was the clearest example
of the many facets of the Spanish conflict's impact. The Communist Party of China used Spain to promote its proposal
for a United Front against the Japanese menace while the Japanese army hurried to check in Spain the quality of Soviet
weaponry. In my paper, I want to show how reactions in Asia demonstrated the globalised impact of the Spanish War.
Filipinos in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
Francis M. Navarro
From 1936 until 1939, an ideological battle was waged on the Iberianpeninsula which polarized Spanish society
between the two protagonists of the war, the Republicans who were an uneasy alliance among the Communists,
Socialists, and the Anarchists, and the Nationalists composed and supported by the Spanish Falange and the rebellious
armed forces led by Gen. Francisco Franco. Anti-Fascist organizations and sympathizers from all over the world
signed up and volunteered to fight on the side of the republic by either joining the International Brigade or by directly
joining the various armed groups of republic. This paper seeks to explore some of the individual stories of these
Filipinos who found themselves on both sides of the conflict, and the dual role played by the Communist Party of the
Philippines and the Communist Party of the United States in forging an alliance against Fascism from the Philippines
and the United States.
The Philippine Left and the Spanish Civil War
Vina A. Lanzona
University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) became a major issue in the Philippines during the 1930s, sparking widespread
debate at a crucial moment in the country’s transition from a colony of the United States to a quasi-independent
Commonwealth. This transition was greatly complicated by the growing threat of imperial Japan, and public debate
about the Spanish Civil War helped galvanize and focus a broader discussion about Japanese political influence in the
Philippines, as well as Japanese military expansion in Asia. This paper explores popular debate about the Spanish
Civil War in the Philippines, focusing on the critical role played by the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA)
in forging a Philippine Popular Front (PFP) in the period after 1935. The pivotal moment in this process was the
merger between Socialists and Communists which created the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) in 1938.
Brokered by the American James Allen, a member of the CPUSA with strong links to Filipino radicals in the United
States, the merger was based on the adoption of a popular front against Japanese and European fascism in the
Philippines, and laid the groundwork for much greater cooperation between the United States, Commonwealth
President Manuel Quezon, the CPUSA and the PKP. Using the debate about the Spanish Civil War as a point of entry,
this paper reconstructs the complex international and imperial networks that shaped the politics of the Commonwealth,
highlighting the central role played by American and Philippine communists in the politics of the late 1930s.
Session 9E
RE-IMAGINING THE ROLE OF LIBRARIES IN PHILIIPINE STUDIES
“Do libraries still matter?” This question is often asked of librarians, based on the assumption that “everything is
online.” But no, not everything is online—especially when it comes to Filipiniana, which is published in limited
numbers. The role of libraries and librarians in Philippine Studies has been limited, for the most part, to preserving
and providing access to the print and digital resources that scholars and researchers need. This panel, which seeks to
reimagine the library as a proactive partner in the promotion of Philippine Studies, features the following presentations
on ensuring the greater accessibility of scientific publications by Filipino scholars through their inclusion in
institutional repositories by Stephen Alayon; on the mainstreaming of information resources on indigenous cultural
communities and indigenous peoples of South Central Mindanao by Fraulein Oclarit; and on recognizing the value of
studying books as material objects with their own histories using Rizal’s Sucesos as a case study by Vernon Totanes.
Promoting Preservation and Access to Scholarly Works in the Philippines
Stephen B. Alayon
Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center, Iloilo
Sustainable development and improved governance, through an information society, requires the development and
accessibility of digital resources. Several institutions and universities in the Philippines have initiated digitization
projects and developed digital libraries. The common objective is to preserve important records, heritage collections,
and scholarly works signifying institutional memory and legacy. Digital libraries and institutional repositories were
developed to improve visibility and access to institutional publications, cultural and scientific heritage collections,
theses and dissertations, and other publications. This paper presents the experiences of select Philippine libraries,
archives, and museums in digitizing and providing access to institutional publications. It highlights the role of
librarians as advocates in preserving, curating, promoting, and disseminating significant scholarly works. It aims to
convince Philippine Studies researchers of the benefits of having their works digitally preserved and deposited in
institutional repositories. An international organization’s experience with the preservation, promotion, and provision
of access to scientific publications written by Filipino scientists will be presented. Search and download statistics, as
well as requests for access from Filipino and foreign students, faculty, researchers, and the public in general, will be
analyzed. Greater accessibility of scientific publications generated from publicly-funded researches is seen as one of
the impacts of this initiative.
Mainstreaming Information Resources on Indigenous Cultural Communities/Indigenous Peoples
Fraulein Agcambot Oclarit
Holy Trinity College of General Santos City
Indigenous cultural communities (ICCs)/indigenous peoples (IPs) have a wealth of cultural knowledge that can foster
better understanding between them and mainstream society. A portion of this knowledge has already been captured in
static formats, and found their way to libraries, institutions, and portals. Information on and access to these resources,
however, is still limited to individuals with access to these institutions or to web-based online catalogs. This paper
argues that these information resources embody indigenous peoples’ visual and textual “voices.” As cultural products,
they are critical to cultural sustainability. Libraries, as cultural agencies, are both places and spaces for mainstreaming
these resources. Librarians, as cultural agents, are in a strategic position to amplify indigenous people’s voices by
promoting these resources to a broad range of audiences, including scholars and researchers, and to the members of
the ICCs themselves. This paper surveys academic and public libraries, relevant government agencies, and
nongovernment organizations in south central Mindanao. Using a mixed-methods approach, an annotated bibliography
will be generated to document studies on and by ICCs/IPs. The objective is to increase visibility of and mainstream
these resources among scholars and researchers, so that ICCs/IPs will be better represented in future research
undertakings.
Rizal’s Sucesos, Book History, and Libraries: A Case Study
Vernon R. Totanes
According to Teodoro Agoncillo, “Philippine historiography by Filipinos has its beginnings with the publication of
Jose Rizal’s edition of Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas in Paris in 1890.” Rizal’s annotated edition
of Morga’s Sucesos was not literally the first history book written by a Filipino, but the importance it has been accorded
by Agoncillo and other scholars is well-deserved. Using Rizal’s Sucesos as a case study within the framework of the
emerging discipline known as “book history,” this paper seeks to demonstrate the value of studying books not only as
texts, but as material objects with their own histories. This will be done by reviewing the secondary literature on
Rizal’s Sucesos, analyzing bibliographical data for its various editions and translations, and examining different copies
of the 1890 original in libraries around the world.
Session 9F
EUROPEAN ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA –
PRESERVATION ANDCONSERVATION: THE PHILIPPINE EXPERIENCE COMPARED
WITH OTHER COUNTERPARTS
During over 300 years of the Spanish presence in the Philippines, Spanish settlers founded more than 200
settlement/population centers (cities, provinces, towns/pueblos), extensive defensive structures, and religious
complexes, convents, and churches. These structures constitute the urban and architectural heritage of the Philippines,
a rich heritage connected to the European tradition. The conservation, preservation, and diffusion of a rich architectural
and urban heritage are crucial to assure the identity and origins of a country, but also the bases of an emerging and
prosperous industry based on cultural tourism.
This panel is oriented towards the sharing of experiences in assessing architectural and urban heritage from the
European period in the area of South China Sea, as this extensive area has been a rich hub of trade in culture and
commerce, shared by several European countries in the past and Asian countries at present. Local experiences in
assessing the architectural and urban heritage from the European period in any of these countries, at the national,
regional, and local scales are welcome. Studies on conservation policies, heritage retrofit, master plans, and case
studies are included in this approach in order to boost the interest and know-how about these valuable Filipino
architectural and urban heritage.
Considerations on Heritage Buildings in the Philippines
Juan Ramon Jimenez Verdejo
University of Shiga Prefecture, Japan
The study is focused on the current status of cultural heritage buildings in the Philippines. Most of the cultural heritage
buildings in the Philippines were built during over three centuries of Spanish colonial period (1565-1898). This
heritage consists of around 919 baroques churches, defense system (432 places: garrisoned forts, watchtowers, fortress
churches, fortified towns, small forts and signal towers), and many old heritage houses.
The cultural heritage buildings in the Philippines have several issues to contend with. The exact number of tangible
cultural heritage buildings in the entire Philippines is not known well, even among experts. There is no detailed
documentation of each cultural heritage building.
The number of a tentative list of World Heritage sites for nomination is large. It is possible to appreciate the intention
of the various cultural agencies to protect the cultural heritage, but the priority is not clear; a long-term perspective is
difficult to see. The activities to protect the program have been dispersed, and the experience and technologies have
not been sufficiently accumulated. There are many cases of historic buildings with the possibility of recognition as
heritage. It is necessary and very important to improve this recognition by the community and to increase the
community’s awareness about their own cultural heritage. In the case of heritage protection, it is necessary to consider
also the history of each specific ethnic.
The awareness of the protection of cultural heritage and the security of the heritage areas are connected with each
other. Cultural heritage requires protected areas and in recent years the security concerns have been increasing. This
trend must continue for the resolution of the security situation in the future.
Environmental Retrofit of Architectural Heritage - Case Study of San Agustin Church and Malate Church
in Manila
Jesús Alberto Pulido Arcas
University of Shiga Prefecture, Japan
In recent years, retrofitting of architectural heritage has become a common issue in countries where economic
resources must be allocated for proper conservation. In this area, environmental retrofit is where many researches and
policies have been focusing because of the importance of adapting architectural heritage to the surrounding
environment.
This research shows case studies of San Agustin Church and Malate Church, both located in Manila. In cooperation
with Escuela Taller de Intramuros in Manila, the Spanish Embassy in the Philippines, and AECID Filipinas (the
Spanish Agency for International Cooperation), an environmental conservation plan has been devised for these two
valuable properties. In the first stage, which is being undertaken at the moment, an environmental monitoring of
variables has been completed in both churches in order to assess their effect on the materials and the comfort conditions
of the occupants. Computer simulation of these variables is being undertaken also in order to devise proper
conservation and intervention strategies that do not alter the original conditions of these properties. This research is
aimed at showing the present and future trends of an emerging interest in environmental studies applied to the
conservation of architectural heritage by means of on-site fieldwork and computer simulation techniques.
Religious Architecture and Spanish-Filipino Legacy on Heritage in Macau
Vincent Wai-kit Ho
University of Macau
Historically, Macau was ruled by Portuguese from the mid-sixteenth century until the late twentieth century. During
the Third Royal Portuguese Dynasty (1580-1640), Spanish missionaries established St. Dominic church, St. Francis
Church, and St. Augustine Church during this period of Iberian Union. The relations between Manila and Macau were
also strengthened in those six decades. In this paper, the author argues the importance of Spanish architectural heritage
in the context of the “Historic Centre of Macau” inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2005, with a brief
comparison of the monuments in Philippines. The impact of the changing of the physical appearance of those three
heritage sites after conservation and rebuilding will be highlighted. The paper will analyze the function and use of
those three monumental churches as places of worship among the Filipino population in Macau since the early twentyfirst century. The author will present the relation between urban architectural heritage and identity in the context of
Filipino and Spanish influences in Macau.
Session 10A
PHILIPPINE MARINE ENVIRONMENTS: HISTORY AND HERITAGE
IN THE AGE OF DUGONG
In recent years, scholars have turned their attention to mapping and making sense of how oceans connect societies,
markets, polities, and faiths. This literature has been rich and dynamic, pushing the bounds of knowing places and
peoples beyond the confines of areas, states, and regions. New conceptualizations of space and community have been
borne from these interdisciplinary efforts. And yet, despite the upsurge in sea-framed projects, there remains,
ironically, a significant blue hole in the available body of work. The ocean, its ecology, and the experiences of those
that have worked the marine environment remain largely absent in and marginal to this emerging field of oceanic
studies. Therefore, as a way of building knowledge about the ocean as a “contact zone,” this panel explores the social
world of Philippine marine environments through the intersection of nature, work, and culture. It takes as its temporal
range the “age of the dugong,” a marine mammal that was once abundant in the seventeenth century when Fr.
Francisco Ignacio Alcina described it, but is now on the verge of extinction in today’s archipelago. Furthermore,
framing the papers, the panel asks: how might stories about the entanglement between seas and societies recast our
understandings of Philippine history and heritage? How might these stories, moreover, foster new ways of imagining
and inscribing the ocean and its fauna in Philippine Studies? Indeed, by examining how communities have shaped,
and were shaped by, Philippine marine environments, this panel not only opens up a new mode of inquiry for seeing
the colonial past and the postcolonial present, but it offers as well a new space for writing at the interstices of
Anthropology, History, and Science Studies.
In Search of the “Big Fish”: Hunting for Large Marine Vertebrates in the Bohol Sea
Jo Marie Acebes
Ateneo de Manila University and Balyena.org Foundation
Fishers of the Bohol Sea have been hunting whales, dolphins, whale sharks and manta rays since at least the late 19th
century. These large marine vertebrates are commonly referred to by fishers as “big fish”, or “dakong isda” in Visayan
and “malaking isda” in Tagalog. This is a study of the interactions between the fishers of the Bohol Sea and the large
marine vertebrates living within it. It examines how the “big fishes” shaped the lives of the coastal peoples living
around it and how both the marine environment and people continue to interact and change each other. It also analyses
how these fishing practices in turn influenced the changes in the Bohol Sea and the animals living within it. Using a
multi-disciplinary approach, ethno-historical research methods were used and combined with data gathered from
biological surveys and catch landings. The nature of the Bohol Sea and the ecology of the large marine vertebrates
within it influenced the fishing practices of the people and consequently affected the way they lived. The long history
of the dynamic and changing set of interactions between the Bohol Sea people and the environment led to the dilemmas
apparent in the present and presents implications for the future of Philippine marine and fisheries policies.
Teaching “Intercultural Understanding” for “Managers” in Tropical Ecosystems: Narratives from
Philippine Contexts
Maria F. Mangahasc, University of the Philippines Diliman
Suzanna Rodriguez-Roldan, Ateneo de Manila University
Advocates and professionals involved in marine protected areas management may find themselves in worksites of
specific multi-cultural settings and engage both with other professionals and with locals across culture gaps (including
class or poverty and gender divides). This was the basis for introducing the 1-unit course “Intercultural Understanding”
as one of the first courses for a Professional Masters in Tropical Marine Ecosystems Management (3-U.P.). As
facilitators of the course, we observe that while the students are initially readily able to articulate observations on
cultural and social differences, they however tend to gloss over them. The course module involved making the
students conduct participant observation, such as join a fisher for a day of his work at sea and produce field notes. We
attempted to review some basic concepts from the social sciences to focus their attention on heterogeneity within
society and community, on different perspectives and ways of knowing environments, and on uneven voices (power)
as something to be aware and knowledgeable of, simply to provoke the idea that ‘good management’ could involve
picking up vocabularies of local concepts, identifying discourses and translating between different worldviews/ways
of perceiving the nature of Nature, and appreciating different contexts of negotiation. This paper reflects on and
examines evaluation material stemming from the experience of teaching this course.
Bisayan Wisdom Heritage: Place Names, Reef Fishing, and Raiding
Cynthia Neri Zayas
University of the Philippines-Diliman
Among the seafaring peoples of the Philippines, the Bisayan are the most famous of all. Both as fishers and boat
crews, they are most sought after manpower. They can be found wherever productive fishing spots are and or where
ports for commercial fishing exist. For more than 25 years of field research among Sebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray,
Masbatenos, among others, I have realized that there is a body of knowledge that the Bisayan have shared in the
various places they have visited or migrated to. The wisdom they have shared can be found in the loan words, methods
of fishing, the conduct of business, etc. My presentation is about wisdom heritage, a body of knowledge accumulated
for many centuries as the Bisayan engaged the various bodies of waters in our archipelago. I shall limit my discussion
to the place name Panacot, a controversial shoal, which is also known today as the Scarborough Shoal. I argued
elsewhere that even before Pedro Murillo Velarde’s map of the Philippine Archipelago of 1734 identified the shoal
on the West Philippine Sea, it was known to the Bisayan and Bangingi Sama from their raiding activities along the
western coast of northern Luzon as well as contemporary sojourns of the Bisayan fishers in the area. Using linguistic
analysis, historical and ethnographic data, I will further argue that traditional reef fishing developed various methods
that the Bisayan fishers learned from the many types of shoals, reef, lagoons they have visited.
Session 10B
GLOBALIZATION AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF EMERGING FOOD TRENDS
IN THE PHILIPPINES
Scholarship on the cultural, social and political dimensions of food has remained underdeveloped in the Philippine
food studies literature. In the National Philippine Studies Conference in November 2014 (National Museum), we
collectively presented a paper positing that the current food studies in the Philippines have thus far focused on agrarian
issues, food security, socio-economic consumer decision-making, and nutrition. Very few works have examined food
in the lens of cultural politics. While the cultural and historical aspects of “Filipino food” have been carried out by
scholars like Doreen Fernandez, we argue that there is a need for more inquiry into the contemporary cultural politics
of food in the Philippines, particularly in relation to the forces of globalization. The collection of papers in this
proposed panel interrogates a diverse array of emerging food trends (the rise of local food, the proliferation of healthy
food, and the rationalization of the carinderia) in the perspective of multiple disciplines (environmental studies,
political science, and cultural studies), both theoretically and empirically. Notwithstanding the diverse disciplinary
perspectives, each paper contributes to the general literature on the cultural politics of food, as well as the current
debates in food studies vis-à-vis globalization. Each paper also supports the key underlying theme of the conference,
which is the re-imagination of scholarship on Philippine cultures and society. We do this by bringing together the
social scientific and humanistic studies of food in the Philippines using a cultural politics perspective.
(Re)Defining the Local in the Global: The Cultural Politics of Local Food in Philippine Cosmopolitan Spaces
Marvin Joseph F. Montefrio
Yale-NUS College, Singapore
There is a growing number of food retail establishments in cosmopolitan spaces in the Philippines that claim to sell
“local” food. These establishments ostensibly challenge the “unhealthy” and “unsustainable” agro-industrial, fast food
chain now perceived to be dominant in the country. While this phenomenon partly resonates with the literature on
social embeddedness and food system localization focused on the West, what is becoming even more apparent are the
tensions showing up between the local establishments and their consumers. Drawing from field research in Manila
and nearby cities, it was evident that both “local” food establishments and consumers are being influenced by trends
from the West, but in disparate ways. Proprietors of food establishments derive their ideas of “local” food mostly from
the Western conceptions of “slow food,” “organic,” and “farm-to-table,” which are entangled with subtle advocacies
of indigenous peoples and smallholder farmer support and nationalism. Consumers, on the other hand, are motivated
mostly by health and/or the desire to satisfy their cosmopolitan palate which are primarily informed by social media.
Hence, consumers demand food ingredients mostly sourced from North America and dining experiences patterned
after Western conceptions of restaurants. In response, the “local” identity of these food establishments is transforming
to accommodate cosmopolitan consumer demands.
Body Politics and Producing Healthy Bodies: A Genealogy of Healthy Foods in the Philippines
Antonio P. Contreras
The discourse on healthy foods in the Philippines and its associated healthy lifestyle, on the surface, appears to have
cosmopolitan beginnings and is largely defined in the context of the habitus of the elites and the upper middle-classes
of society. Indeed, vegetarianism, the counting of calories, and the trendy diet regimens, such as South Beach and
Cohen diets, have found their niche in the everyday experiences of the privileged and those who can afford them. This
paper argues that the emergence of this discourse is very much tied up with the emergence of the body, not only as a
biological physicality, but as a social object for the articulation of meaning and power and upon which the discourse
of control is implied as a confrontation between indigenous constructs of nourishment with the more global constructs
of a desirable body that is the site not only of production but also of consumption.
McCarinderia: A Theoretical Inquiry
Jeremy C. De Chavez
De La Salle University
It is reasonable to conclude that the carinderia is a cultural form that has, for better or worse, evaded the
transformations of cultural homogenization associated with globalization. Considered to be predominantly situated in
the marginal spaces of cosmopolitan Manila, the carinderia is often perceived as offering food that is representative
of local flavor and taste because of its successful evasion of and resistance to cultural convergence. This paper, which
is primarily a theoretical inquiry, suggests that the carinderia is not excluded from the changes – and thus challenges
– brought about by global cultural flows. This paper suggests that the transformations of the carinderia are dictated
by what George Ritzer calls “McDonaldization,” rationalized and, consequently efficient approach to food production
and consumption. This inquiry will draw on the work of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer to suggest that the
apparent standardization of both production and taste is both symptom and consequence of this unique mode of
glocalization.
Session 10C
EXPRESSIONS OF DESIRE, INVENTION, AND SOVEREIGNTY UINDER EMPIRE
This panel examines expressions of desire, invention, and sovereignty during the US colonial era in the Philippines in
order to understand the landscape and scope of the imperial imaginary and its interlocutors. Tessa Winkelmann offers
a study of an emergent popular cultural form that circulated a racialized sexual fantasy of the imperial social world,
which elided the violence of colonial sexual relations through comic spectacle. Neferti Tadiar examines the native as
a form of narrative in José Rizal’s novel El Filibusterismo in order to theorize the human as a particular globalized
mediatic form upon which the anticolonial struggle could be better apprehended. Finally, Genevieve Clutario unearths
the critical writing of Tarhata Kiram, a pensionada to the United States, to note the subversive acts generated by an
experience of colonial education. These papers grapple with the power of colonialism, the world it generates, and
illuminate how narrative forms and acts speak back to power and reimagine alternative futures.
A Physics Lesson: Humans as Media in Philippine Anti-Colonial Struggle
Neferti X. M. Tadiar
Barnard College, Columbia University
In this talk I propose a cultural archaeology of seemingly defunct human mediatic forms – the use of humans as the
media of other humans’ will and expressive agency – that continue to operate despite the early 20th century U.S.
colonial project to eradicate such forms through the implementation of universal standards of human life and
experience in the making of citizen-man. I propose this archaeological project through a reading of José Rizal’s 1891
novel, El Filibusterismo, a local catalyst in a broad social, economic, and cultural revolution that would historically
inaugurate not only a new nation, but also a new global moment of imperialism, in which the capitalist mode of
production would reign supreme. I delve into this political moment of transformation of natives into nationals
encapsulated by Rizal and the anti-Spanish colonial struggle in which he figured prominently as one site for examining
the role of human mediatic forms in an extensive history of Filipino social struggles against the evolving protocols of
global capitalism. However, rather than seeing the practices and relations of humans as media as simply “resistance”
to the precepts and protocols of “capitalism proper,” i.e., as a mode of accumulation predicated on modern freedom,
I propose to understand the integral connections between such persistent forms of life and the expanded reproduction
of capital in and through the colonial world in an attempt to consider overlooked forms of social cooperation and
invention, which remain important resources for political and economic consideration in the present.
“You Cannot Make a Slave of a Man after Educating Him”: Tarhata Kiram, Sovereignty,
and Subversion in Philippine-U.S. Histories
Genevieve Clutario
Harvard University
In February 1927, Tarhata Kiram publicly critiqued and responded to accusations of sedition by the American colonial
government. Her experience as “special pensionada” at the University of Illinois failed in making her a “slave,”
instead, giving her the theoretical and political tools to critique both the undemocratic actions of the United States and
Filipino elites towards marginalized peoples of the Philippine southern region. This paper explores Kiram’s
experiences as an exchange student and her return to Jolo in the 1920s. Kiram embodied U.S. agendas, desires, and
fantasies of modernizing its colonial subjects through institutions like education as a way to suture, mold, and shape
the Philippines and its inhabitants for American gain. American public media closely documented Kiram’s university
social life and the transformation of her physical appearance and presented such details as evidence of the success of
her Americanization. However, Kiram’s actions, writings, performances, and self-stylization upon her return to Jolo
disassembled the careful crafting of U.S. education in a series of acts of subversion. I argue that Kiram claimed a
personal and communal sovereignty in her participation and support of uprisings in Sulu, in her public written critiques
of both U.S. empire and consolidation of a Filipino elite power, and in her physical conversion that rejected American
aesthetics of modern femininity. Ultimately, Kiram embodied the complexities and tensions not only between the
Philippines and the United States, but also between regions and ethnic groups, calling into question dominant
narratives of nation-building, colonialism, and sovereignty.
Philippine Picture Postcards: Interracial Intercourse and the Staging of an Imperial Imaginary
Tessa Winkelmann
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Around the turn of the century, picture postcards became popular souvenir items for Americans to purchase while
traveling abroad. In the case of the Philippines, the most popular and most printed pictures for postcards were those
depicting landscapes and those that portrayed native inhabitants, namely women. This paper explores a sub-genre of
postcard that depict scenes of interracial romantic intercourse between Americans and Filipino colonial “wards.” Such
postcards depicting or suggesting interracial relations ranged from casual photographs of integrated social scenes with
relatively benign captions of images of (supposedly) married couples with overtly racist captions. While the popularity
of these cards may seem at odds with the concurrent popularity of anti-miscegenation laws and attitudes in the United
States at the time, this paper argues that these ubiquitous postcards were not at odds with notions of white racial purity.
These souvenir postcards reinforced racist attitudes towards colonial people by depicting families or romantic
relationships as ridiculous spectacle. The aesthetics of empire in the images presented here also have the added
consequence of sanitizing the realities of interracial intercourse in the Philippines. The understanding of interracial
romantic pairing as ridiculous spectacle renders as invisible or as anomalous any interracial relationships that may
have actually occurred. The reality of widespread interracial sexual intercourse and the very uneven and exploitive
conditions of such relations was made to look implausible through the imagery of laughable romantic interludes.
Session 10D
FILIPINO SUBJECTS AT THE INTERSTICES AND INTERSTITIAL SUBJECTS IN THE PHILIPPINES
This panel explores transnational channels of mobility as generative sites of diasporic subject formation and the
historical experiences of Southeast Asian, humanitarian, and political lives situated at the interstices of the nation. In
this panel, the regional exchange of people, forms of knowledge, and the localized engagement of transnational
practices serve as the articulate basis for reinforcing relations of power, collaboration. and resistance. The transnational
experiences of mobile subjects require the input of complex actors – administrators, government officials, students,
and refugees. Each strives to grapple with ways of enacting and forming their own needs, desires, and ambitions within
novel settings. Panelists seek to explore: (a) how Filipino accommodation of refugees has historically inscribed
distancing scripts of governing international displacement and dispelling social dissent in the Philippines; (b) the
social life and socio-political positions of Thai students in the interwar Philippines as a relatively large yet déclassé
group among foreign-educated students in pre-WWII Thailand; and (c) the intellectual trajectory of alternative
education models used during the Marcos period to inform U.S. public knowledge regarding authoritarianism in the
Philippines. Presenters use a wide array of methodologies and materials to explore the dynamics of power and subject
formation through transnational education. In putting together these different actors in distinct locations as well as
exploring varied periods of tutelary dominance, panelists seek to re-figure common dichotomies between Asian
American Studies and Philippine Studies; the nation and the empire; and the soft and hard forms of power that shape
our study of transnational subjects.
Staging Filipino Hospitality: Distance Scripts in the Humanitarian Governance of Filipino Refugees
James Pangilinan
University of British Columbia, Canada
The UNHCR has recently sought to persuade the Philippines to prolong its long history of hospitality by
accommodating more refugees. The Philippines’ Immigration Act of 1940 is usually cited as being visionary for
predating international definitions of 'humanitarian' and 'persecution’ by eleven years. How the Philippines has
“precociously” offered hospitality over different periods of colonial administration, postcolonial collaboration, and
contemporary humanitarian partnerships remains a question to be explored. As a Commonwealth (1935-1946), the
Philippines offered a space for the settlement of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism. After World War II, Russian “Nansen
refugees” similarly found refuge in the war-ravaged Philippines. In the 1970-90s Palawan and Bataan hosted
“Southeast Asian” refugees even as the Philippines suffered its own immiseration under Martial Law. Such
humanitarian acts of “Filipino hospitality” situate the independent nation within an emergent international system of
states. This postcolonial system, which the Philippines helped to found, nevertheless articulated geopolitical
conditionalities expressed through humanitarian aid. Humanitarian accommodation in the Philippines has
simultaneously marked the Philippines as exceptionally compassionate while also producing a national “geo-body”
within charged geographies of colonial power and capitalist hegemony. By analyzing policy treatises on settlement
“opportunities” and geographic inquiries concerning resettlement capacities in Asia, I elaborate on how the
Philippines, like other states in the “Global South,” plays a key role in the humanitarian management of displacement.
As manifested in other contexts, these roles unfold according to geopolitical “distancing scripts” of postcolonial
benevolence, preventative protection, and neoliberal governance at a distance.
The Philippines Project: The Goddard-Cambridge School and Philippine Studies during the Marcos Era
Mark Sanchez
For three years during the 1970s, Filipino American anti-martial law activists traveled to Boston, Massachusetts to
work towards Master’s degrees in Philippine Studies. Under the instruction of noted anti-imperialist and anti-Vietnam
War activist Daniel Boone Schirmer, they studied at the Goddard-Cambridge School of Social Change, an
experimental program which also offered degrees on Women’s Studies, Third World Studies, and U.S. Culture.
Among their cohorts, students worked towards a melding of theory and practice. Together, they experimented with
collective learning models and sought a foundational base of knowledge on the Philippines that would allow them and
their communities to better carry out the anti-Marcos struggle from the United States. Throughout its brief existence,
the Goddard-Cambridge School of Social Change faced a wide breadth of institutional challenges, ranging from
funding issues, to conservative backlash, to tensions within their attempts to create a non-hierarchical (and yet
institutionalized) space. Students within the Philippines project dealt with racism as well as isolation from their
communities. While the program lasted briefly, this attempt to create a different kind of educational model can help
us more fully understand the wide networks of anti-imperialist and anti-authoritarian activism of the period. Further,
the history of such alternative educational models might offer us possibilities for our own contemporary pedagogical
and institutional orientations.
Swinging at the Interstices: A Social History of Thai Students in Interwar Philippines
Arthit Jiamrattanyoo
University of Washington, Seattle
Hindered by the First World War and the concomitant economic difficulties, Thai students in the late 1910s began to
travel to the Philippines to study in the US colonial education system in lieu of Europe. Combined with those following
suit in the last decades before the Asia-Pacific War, they constituted the second largest group of foreign-educated
students in prewar Thailand. This paper argues that, in a similar vein to their antecedent and contemporary Thai
counterparts in Europe and the US, their expatriation can be conceptualized as a process of multi-layered transition,
which resulted in their condition of permanent liminality and in their status as both a subject and object of “danger”
in the perception of the Thai elite. As a “figure of danger” and an interstitial subject, they enthusiastically ventured
into an exploration of exoticism in Philippine society, including colonial jazz modernity and sexual intimacy with
Filipino women, just as the Thai government inaugurated the Office of the Superintendent of Thai students in Manila
in the 1930s as a mechanism of transnational biopower for “danger” control. Drawing largely upon life writings of
Thai students who lived in the Philippines before and during the Asia-Pacific War, this paper attempts to reconstruct
their lived experiences and cross-cultural encounters in the Philippines to demonstrate that, as their interstices between
nations, the Philippines served not only as a cultural vessel through which they transmitted mediated innovations of
the US to Thailand, but also as an in-between space that provided Thai students with room to maneuver in where they
could indulge and constantly redefine themselves despite the often stigmatized representation imposed by the Thai
elite, and self-consciously oscillate between contradictory identities for survival during the wartime.
Session 10E
THE PHILIPPINES AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
Strategic Selection: Philippine Arbitration against China in the South China Sea
Krista E. Wiegand
University of Tennessee, Knoxville. USA
It is highly unusual for East Asian states to seek peaceful dispute resolution through binding methods of international
law, arbitration, and adjudication at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). What is puzzling is why states use one
particular dispute resolution method or another, and in the specific case of the Philippines, why the government chose
to pursue arbitration knowing that China would not agree to participate. In this paper, I theorize that the Philippine
government chose to pursue arbitration against China unilaterally because it hoped to use the legitimacy of
international law, mainly the highly legitimate standards of UNCLOS, to counterbalance China’s military aggression.
Due to the overwhelming imbalance of military power between the two states, the Philippines is unable to counter
Chinese military force militarily without US support. However, the Philippines is able to seek legally binding action
against China, and if they win the arbitration decision, this would provide the Philippines with legitimacy, reputational
gains, and status among the international community, regardless of China’s denunciation of the decision. This
arbitration finding could set an important legal precedent for territorial and maritime disputes, not only in East Asia,
but at the international level.
Peace in Southeast Asia: ASEAN or Balance of Power? A Realist Response to Security Community
in Southeast Asia
Sherlyn Mae Hernandez
This essay attempts to provide a realist response to the constructivist concept of security community in Southeast Asia
by arguing that it is not ASEAN as a security community that maintains peace and stability among states in the
Southeast Asian region but as merely a balance of power, as argued by realists. Firstly, the essay will provide a
background on the concept of security community and how it was applied to the Southeast Asian region, as argued by
constructivist scholars led by Amitav Acharya. Secondly, this paper argues that there is no such thing as a security
community in Southeast Asia, especially as compared to the European Union, but rather only as a balance of power.
While the situation of the Southeast Asian region fits the definition of a ‘secure’ region and a ‘community’, Southeast
Asia may be criticized a lot for not being a security community. Circumstances such as human rights issues occurring
internally among ASEAN member-states, territorial and maritime disputes, and the unsuccessful ASEAN
Communities disproves the idea of security community in the region. Finally, the essay will attempt to project the
possibility of a security community in the future by implementing reconstructions on ASEAN as a regional
organization.
Charles Lindbergh and Early Philippine Environmentalism
Paul A. Rodell
Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, USA
A little known aspect of Charles Lindbergh’s life was his activism on behalf of endangered species and indigenous
peoples. This activism came late in his life, but was very genuine. He was on the international board of directors of
the World Wildlife Foundation for which he traveled the world promoting conservation and the protection of
endangered species. In addition to his forays into Africa and Latin America, Lindbergh travelled to Southeast Asia in
the late 1960s. He first worked with a few sympathetic government officials in Indonesia, but soon transferred his
attention to the Philippines. There, he worked with early pioneers in the environmental movement such as Sixto K.
Roxas and was welcomed to Malacañang by President Marcos who was then on his first term. In large part Lindbergh’s
efforts resulted in the establishment of protected areas for the Philippine Eagle (then known as the Monkey-Eating
Eagle) and the Tamarao and he later worked closely with the newly created office of Parks and Wildlife under its
founding director Jesus Alvarez (Philippine Wildlife Conservation).
This paper will explore Lindbergh’s dramatic change of thinking that led him to his interest in what was then known
as conservationism and how he used his cachet as an internationally recognized figure to help promote the movement
in the Philippines. His efforts went far to help lay the groundwork for the movement’s lasting impact and continued
growth and should be of interest to today’s activists.
Session 10F
PHILIPPINES-CHINA RELATIONS: INSIGHTS ON POWERS, ECONOMY, AND LAW
The panel explores three themes on Philippines-China relations. Chito Sta. Romana problematizes the power rivalry
between the US and China and how this affects the West Philippine Sea as well as the bilateral relations between the
Philippines and China. The paper underscores that the power competition has escalated, resulting in a more complex
dynamic in dealing with the Philippines-China bilateral tensions. Tina S. Clemente explores the economic dimension
of Philippines-China relations, focusing on the concept of vulnerability in Philippine economic security. This
perspective yields more strategic value than merely building scenarios around possible sanctions from China. Jay
Batongbacal analyzes the kind of bilateral diplomacy and web-based discourses that now describe Philippines-China
relations. Employing Rawlsian justice tenets, the research explores an alternative perspective towards the bilateral
dispute.
The Escalating US-China Rivalry in the Asia-Pacific Region: Its Implications for the West Philippine Sea
and Philippines-China Relations
Chito Sta. Romana
Philippine Association for Chinese Studies (PACS)
This paper looks into the implications of the escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China in the Asia-Pacific
region on the relations between the Philippines and China. The US over the past year or so has adopted a firmer
attitude towards China's actions to assert its territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea. This was recently
manifested in the US decision to deploy a guided-missile destroyer to sail within 12 miles of an artificial island
constructed by China and to have B-52 bombers fly over the skies of the South China Sea. China has protested the US
actions and warned against what it views as "provocative acts." The escalation in the strategic competition between
the US and China raises the controversial issue of whether the two powers are headed for an inevitable clash, based
on the analysis by the realist school of international relations. Alternatively, the strategic competition raises the
question whether the two can find a way to ease tensions and resolve their clash of strategic interests, based on the
views of the liberal and constructivist schools. But the emergence of the big power rivalry between the US and China
has profound implications for the territorial and maritime disputes between the Philippines and China. The arbitration
case filed by the Philippines against China will serve to clarify the legal basis of the maritime dispute, but it will not
resolve the more fundamental territorial dispute over ownership of the disputed features in the West Philippine Sea.
This paper argues that the geopolitical competition has now become more pronounced and has complicated the
bilateral disputes since the Philippines is a treaty ally of the US and has publicly supported the US actions to challenge
China's claims in the South China Sea.
Philippine Economic Vulnerability in Philippines-China Relations
Tina S. Clemente
In light of current Philippines-China maritime tensions, alarmist statements on implications of possible sanctions from
China have been raised. However, what is more important to explore, is the state of Philippine economic vulnerability
regardless of the imposition of sanctions. This perspective is more far-reaching in its strategic considerations as this
puts the emphasis on the Philippines’ security strategy instead of merely being China-centric. The research contributes
a valuable dimension to understanding Philippine economic statecraft better as well as that of China. The investigation
looks into three major aspects of the asymmetrical bilateral economic relationship. The first important inquiry is the
pattern of asymmetry in trade and investment. Nuances in China’s economic interests in specific Philippine industries
and sectors shall be looked into. We wish to elucidate how critical engagement in these interests is to China, given
that the dollar value or traffic of trade and investment may not easily reveal criticality. The second inquiry is on how
the integrated regional production base affects China’s external behavior. In other words, we ask how linkages in
global economic arrangements influence China’s strategic actions towards the Philippines. The last inquiry delves into
how the dynamic in Philippine domestic development should become part of Philippine strategic calculations.
Colliding Cultures, Roiling Racism in Socially-mediated Foreign Relations: Philippines and China since 2012
Jay Batongbacal
Since 2012, Philippines-China relations have taken a decisive turn for the worst, dominated by disjointed legalist
discourses peppered with claims to irreconcilable legal truths and an overwhelming sense of racism that has poisoned
the atmosphere between the two nations. Through discourse analysis of published texts and statements, this paper
surveys both the toxic diplomacy and even more toxic online discourses that have come to characterize relationships
between the Philippines and China. It posits that racism and racial prejudice have reared their ugly heads, both
informally and formally, cloaked or buoyed by legalist claims. The paper raises an alarm over how such a discourse
may, in the long run, actually be far more damaging to both nations and calls for a return to civility and rational
discourse based on a proper framing of the Philippines-China dispute using Rawlsian principles of justice.
Session 11A
GOVERNING THE RISKS AND PRECARIOUSNESS UNDER THE CONTEMPORARY
RECONFIGURATION OF “THE SOCIAL”: THE ETHNOGRAPHIES OF VULNBERABILITY AND
RESILIENCE IN THE PHILIPPINES
This panel tries to identify a distinctive feature of the contemporary reconfiguration of “the social, an assemblage of
institutions such as the state, civil society, market, community, and family, which is expected to work as a devise to
secure and “tame” various risks, such as poverty, unemployment, ageing, and marginalization, brought about by the
precariousness of the current world. “The social” can also be conceptualized as a sphere of governmentality which is
a working of power that aims to shape, guide or affect the conduct of others, neither through commanding nor
controlling, but through structuring the possible field of action of free actors in order to achieve a security of risks.
The case of the Philippines is significant and suggestive because it indicates how, and in what way, an undoubtedly
neoliberal rationality of the government of risks are often coexisting with seemingly contrary principles such as social
welfare, redistribution, planning, and state intervention in the intimate sphere such as the family. The panel presents
variegated ethnographies that indicate the intricate relationship between, or entanglement of, vulnerability and
resilience found in various communities facing the contemporary precariousness in the Philippines. Particularly, the
papers in this panel reevaluate the informal institutions such as patronage and clientelism which more often than not
coexist or intermingle with the formal institutions provided by the state for achieving the government of risks and
precariousness.
Deploying “the Social” without Welfare State: Formality and Informality of the Homeowners Associations in
Urban Informal Settlement of Metro Manila
Koki Seki
Hiroshima University
In the process of decentralization since the early 1990s, various non-governmental entities such as People’s
Organizations, NGOs, cooperatives, and associations have been empowered to become main actors of social
development in the Philippines. In the setting of the urban informal settlers’ community, various social policies are
implemented by mobilizing the Home Owners Association (HOA). Contradicting the expectation that the HOA should
bring about “participatory democracy” among the indigent urban communities as stipulated in the “Magna Carta of
Homeowners Association” (RA9904), the associations are in reality permeated with intimate personal relationships
and notions of patronage and clientelism, rather than with notions of publicness and citizenship. Avoiding the view
which simply denounces patronage and clientelism as a hotbed of corruption, the paper, based on fieldwork in
Marikina City, argues that these informalities can be considered as “personalized problem solving-networks” (Auyero
2000), “intimate hierarchy” (Ansell 2013), or “new politics of distribution” (Ferguson 2015), which are notions that
have a significant implication for re/imagining the emerging contour of “the social” in the contemporary Philippines.
Morality, Expectations, and Negotiations: Contextualizing the Conditional Cash Transfer Program
in the Philippines
Itaru Nagasaka
Hiroshima University
Since its start of implementation, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program in the Philippines, a human development
program adopting the conditional cash transfer (CCT) scheme, has received much scholarly attention. While
anthropological studies of the CCT have, to date, elucidated the neo-liberal logic inherent in it, the social and historical
contexts of the communities where CCTs are implemented have not received sufficient attention. Drawing on the
author’s longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork and recent preliminary research on 4Ps in a rural village of the llocos
region, this paper examines, in relation to existing social relationships and morality in the community, how the
implementation of 4Ps is affecting and altering people’s expectations and life strategies.
Bodies of Work: Healthcare at the Bottom of the Migrant Care Chain
Yasmin Y. Ortiga
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
This presentation elucidates the complicated effects of nurse migration on source countries such as the Philippines,
where both private and public institutions actively capitalize on the growth of aspiring migrants seeking to live and
work overseas. I show how the country’s status as a top source of migrant nurses sparked a widespread interest in
nursing among aspiring migrants and their families, leading to a massive influx of nursing students into understaffed
public hospitals within the country. These students (and the tuition fees they pay) become part of the perfect neoliberal
strategy, where their presence allows public hospitals to make up for the lack of state funding and support, without
actually addressing the structural issues that lead to such problems. Yet, at the same time, patients unable to pay
hospital fees are often compliant, submissive, and unable to advocate better care, thus providing nursing students with
the “ideal” bodies to “practice” skills for dream jobs overseas. As a result, the poorest patients within the Philippines
serve as the bodies for aspiring migrants on which to hone their skills for patients in the first-world hospitals. Such
outcomes provide a more nuanced view of the inequalities that result from the global movement of nurses and what
this means for migrant-sending countries.
Global Articulation Regime: Social Formation of the Philippines
Ota, Kazuhiro
Kobe University
The paper examines the welfare regime of the Philippines by focusing on poverty policies. The regime is formed with
a functional mixture of state, market, community, and household, all of which are framed in the globalizing context.
It will also discuss the articulation between the modernized formal and the social in the Philippine regime.
Session 11B
RE-IMAGINING BELONGING: SOCIETY, KINSHIP, AND POWER
IN THE 21ST CENTURY PHILIPPINES I
For Filipinos both within and beyond the boundaries of the archipelago, belonging is a matter of negotiating
countervailing attachments, some of which push outward toward the national, transnational, or diasporic, while others
pull inward toward the ethnic, communitarian, or familial. As such, belonging also involves negotiating processes of
alienation and exclusion, both from kin and from imagined communities, as a result of migration, civil conflict, and
structures of inequality. This panel aims to trace dynamic forms of belonging among Filipinos within and without the
nation. The work of contributors speaks to the creativity, tension, and labor involved in establishing, reworking, and
contesting belonging amid countervailing attachments and processes of exclusion. We aim to build upon
anthropological insights suggesting that belonging is shaped by uneven experiences of social power, whilst
acknowledging that a central aspect of personhood is being related to others. This panel explores what are often
ambivalent forms of belonging by engaging with topics of society, kinship, and power in the 21st century Philippines,
including (but not limited to): domestic and global migration, the performance of identity, consumption practices,
kinship and familial relations, ethnicity, local and national politics, wellbeing, social differentiation and nationhood.
Papers included in this panel consider the centripetal and centrifugal forces that shape belonging, for example: how
might engagements with civil society (from INGOs to informal nonprofit community groups) be understood in relation
to the power dynamics imbued within familial relations, local politics, or translocal movements? The compiled papers
from senior and emerging scholars address the diversity of these dynamics across the Philippines and throughout the
Philippine diaspora.
Belonging in the Anthropocene: Global Climate Justice and Local Experiences in the Philippines
Noah Theriault
University of Oklahoma
In recent years, the Philippines has faced a series of exceptional monsoons, floods, and typhoons—a pattern consistent
with its ranking among the countries most affected by climate change. Amid this seemingly endless string of disasters,
Filipino diplomats and activists have made questions of justice and accountability central to their appeals for climate
action on the part of wealthy nations. Their efforts have constituted a powerful claim to belonging within the global
Climate Justice movement. As an evocative new idiom for socioenvironmental activism within and across national
boundaries, Climate Justice calls attention to systematically uneven levels of responsibility for and vulnerability to
anthropogenic changes in the Earth system. Climate Justice invokes notions of belonging that efface intra-national,
regional, and local differences in favor of solidarity and accountability on a global scale. This paper will examine how
the rise of Climate Justice intersects with long-standing struggles for social inclusion and justice in the Philippines.
To what extent do appeals to justice on a global scale resonate with local experiences of structural marginalization
and environmental vulnerability? How are movements of peasants and urban poor taking up Climate Justice and
toward what ends? Climate Justice envisions novel forms of belonging on a global scale, but the extent to which this
emergent movement can address regional and local experiences of injustice remains to be seen.
The Prosopography of Prominent Families in Region 12: A Study of Power Relations
Marlon B. Lopez
Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology
Families and clans have dominated the arena of Philippine politics for a considerable period. Needless to say, these
families have been known for their prominence in power and influence, not just in their locality but also in national
elections where they are considered kingpins and local kingmakers. Hence, the prosopography of prominent families
can offer important contributions for understanding the role of family politics in contemporary Philippine political
life. This study seeks to analyze the factors contributing to the rise and continued hierarchy of the Acharons of General
Santos City and Lopezes of Maasim, Sarangani. Also considered will be the factors concerning the rise of “new”
political families in Southern Mindanao, namely the Pacquiaos of Sarangani Province and the Lumayags of
Polomolok, South Cotabato. In addition, this study aims to explore the effects of these factors on the prominence of
these families in their common geographical space, Region 12. Archival research is the primary method of data
gathering; however, key informant interviews will also be employed. This study will contribute to the rare collections
of literature that discuss local political elites, especially their rise and continuance in the Philippines. Data presented
in this paper will provide an important foundation for further research concerning the dynamics of family politics that
are prevalent in local administration and governance.
Filipino Town: Remaking of Culture in Cosmopolitan Toronto
Yshmael Cabana
Toronto-based Educator and Artist
Of the 250,000 Filipinos that reside in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, roughly 21% live within Wilson Heights. It
has one of the country's highest population density of Filipinos, predominantly young families, first generation
immigrants. For a long time, the question is still mulled over: “Why is there no distinct Filipino town in Canada?”
Filipino Town, also known as Little Manila, is a geographic area with a significant concentration of people of
Philippine origin, having a strong ethno-cultural identity, and socioeconomic activity. This speculative research takes
off from an initial textual, visual and ethnographic approach to an area of settlement of Filipino migrants in Toronto’s
northwestern inner suburbs. It looks at the intentions of Taste of Manila, the first Toronto Filipino street festival that
is meant to harness vernacular creativity of the everyday. It seeks to uncover the dynamic between notions of politics
of representation and diaspora nationalism in the context of urban place-making.
Session 11C
ARTICULATING DISSENT IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY AND CULTURES
We often think of dissent as something that is articulated using spoken or written words. Yet dissent can also be
expressed non-verbally, through images, for example, or when people gather and effect a common physical body, as
in EDSA, in which people expressed their dissent (and effected action) by physically gathering together. When do
we think of an action, image, or expression, as constituting dissent?
This panel collects papers from different disciplines and historical moments to explore various phenomena as dissent,
broadly speaking. Moving chronologically from past to present, Thomas explores military disobedience as dissent,
looking at mutiny, desertion, and disobedience during the British occupation of Manila in the late eighteenth century.
Justiniano treats the political underworld of late nineteenth-century Manila, in which state agents pursued unknown
enemies and in which secret societies organized, as incubating the 1896 Katipunan-led revolution. De la Cruz explores
religious apostasy as dissent via a manuscript on Philippine Spiritism written by a Spanish Augustinian in the early
the twentieth century. Manzanilla treats the work of contemporary photographer Xyza Cruz Bacani as it challenges
political and artistic convention, documenting as well as providing an example of what we may consider a visual
practice of dissent.
Mutiny, Desertion, and Disobedience in the Eighteenth-Century British Occupation
Megan Thomas
University of California, Santa Cruz
This paper explores histories of mutiny, desertion, and disobedience in events connected to the British occupation of
Manila in 1762-1764 and asks how those actions may be viewed as dissent. During the British occupation of Manila
(1762-4), many British forces deserted, despite being far from home (most were Indian sepoys). Sepoys who did not
desert and who survived the long and difficult posting in Manila eventually mutinied against the captain of the ship
that was supposed to bring them home, suspecting that they would never arrive there under his command. In related
events, Pangasinense troops, who had been raised to defend Manila during the early days of the British attack, turned
back on the road and reportedly rejoiced when they learned that the Spanish had lost Manila.
The paper explores each of these instances of unruly disobedience, asking what we can understand about why people
took these actions of desertion, mutiny, and turning-back, and then asking whether news and rumors of such
disobedient acts might have encouraged later ones. The paper also asks when and in what ways these kinds of actions
– desertion, mutiny, or turning back--may be expressions of dissent, and if so, what they were dissenting from. To
what degree is it useful to think in terms of dissent – what might that help us see – and when does that framing risk
flattening the complexity of how these individuals and collectives took actions or decisions?
Dissent, Repression and Revolution: Descent into Manila’s 'Dark Labyrinth,’ 1895-1898
Maureen Cristin S. Justiniano
University of Wisconsin Madison
The transformation of nineteenth-century Manila into a cosmopolitan city as a result of direct Spanish colonial
engagement in the Philippines left an indelible imprint on the nature and intensity of the 1896 Revolution that erupted
at the zenith of Spanish colonial rule. By analyzing Manila’s complex social matrix and the close interactions existing
within this urban milie, it is possible to develop a better understanding of the secret society, Katipunan, and its path
towards revolution. During the period of turbulent political upheavals threatening Spain and the rest of its declining
empire in the 1890s, the colonial administration intensified state repression in the Philippines to enforce law and order
while hunting down enemies of the state. By 1895 the escalation of state terror against suspected native opposition
forced the Katipunan to become radicalized and more inclined toward armed struggle.
This clandestine milieu was the birthplace of the revolutionary Katipunan and the 1896 armed rebellion against Spain.
The confluence of the institutionalization of Spanish urban policing and covert surveillance, as well as the formation
of the secret organization, created the essential elements of a clandestine political underworld in Manila that I refer to
as the 'dark labyrinth.' As the colonial state descended into the underworld of espionage, manipulation, and deception
in search of its unknown enemies, so too did the Katipunan, to ensure its survival. Consequently, the descent into
Manila's ‘dark labyrinth,’ I will argue, incubated the 1896 Katipunan-led revolution both by fostering organized
subversion and intensifying state repression.
The Double Apostasy of Salvador Pons: Spiritism and Catholicism in the
Early Twentieth-Century Philippines
Deirdre de la Cruz
University of Michigan
When is apostasy more than just the abandonment of one’s faith, but also a form of political dissent? This question
was particularly pertinent at the turn of the twentieth-century Philippines, when the transfer of colonial power meant
the formal end of the Spanish Catholic regime and new possibilities for denominational affiliation and practices of
faith opened up. This paper takes up this question through the quixotic figure of Salvador Pons, a Spanish Augustinian
who for a decade rebelled against his erstwhile order, aligning himself with the secular clergy, the newly formed
Iglesia Filipina Independiente, and Kardec-inspired Spiritism. The paper looks specifically at Pons’s manuscript, El
espiritismo en las islas Filipinas, probably the most comprehensive source for the history of Spiritism’s early spread
in the islands that Pons wrote after he returned to the Augustinian order. How do we read a text that has been written
from a perspective formed by two successive detractions? What does this tell us about the temporal, textual, and
ideological limits of dissent?
Visual Voice: The Migrant Photographs of Xyza Cruz Bacani
JPaul S. Manzanilla
National University of Singapore
A Filipina photographer was recently recognized for her contributions to the world republic of images. Xyza Cruz
Bacani’s photographs give us glimpses of places she inhabits and the various peoples she observes and engages with.
She remarkably pierces through images from afar, plays with light and shadow, maneuvers the geometry of spaces,
and frames the world outside as a reflection of a troubling human condition. A particular focus on migrant workers
places their plight before global attention. Disputing the consideration of deplorable situations as proper subjects of
beautiful photography, she says that she wants to give a “visual voice” to the “invisible people” and, hence, redefines
what “photographable” subjects are and ought to be.
Bacani’s own story as a domestic helper alters our own visions of who is privileged to see and who is endowed to
photograph. Revealingly, she sees her home in various parts of the world and recognizes different kinds of people in
her native country while capturing inimitable moments seen from the margins and below. This is a kind of visual
rebellion that demands attention in our world increasingly consumed by “photogenic” selfie images. Bacani’s own
lifework of photography is a subject worthy of study for an art and cultural history of vision and visuality. It, moreover,
presents to us a socio-cultural history of presence and visibility. This study strives to understand Bacani’s production
of images as a practice of photographic dissent that is profoundly cosmopolitan in a different and enlightening sense.
Session 11D
HERITAGE AND IDENTITY
Selling the Drama: Music and Identity in the Popular Zarzuelas of Severino Reyes, circa 1906
Isidora Miranda
University of Wisconsin Madison
In 1906, playwright Severino Reyes followed up on his growing repertoire of popular zarzuelas with another libretto
that put his views on colonialism on center stage and provided more material for local composers to write music in
Tagalog. Similar to its precursors like Walang Sugat (1902) and Filipinas para los Filipinos (1905), La Venta de
Filipinas al Japon became a vehicle for Reyes to construct a Filipino cultural identity under the growing imposition
of U.S. colonial rule. The musical score also became a testing ground for its composer, Jose Estella, who created music
fusing European conventions with local and popular musical idioms like the kundiman. This zarzuela provides a rich
study for the complicated relationship between music and identity, and underlines the contradictions often found in
scholarship that seek neat and tidy definitions of cultural nationalism. In the zarzuela’s efforts to construct the
“Filipino,” I argue how nationalist sentiments were also accompanied by the more disparaging practices of exoticism
normally associated with Western imperialism. Similar strategies of “othering” can be found in the repertoire of
European opera and Anglo-American early musical theater in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that pit
an imagined “Japan” as its exoticized object. Seen thus, the present study seeks to reevaluate simplified nationalist
readings of popular zarzuelas and to highlight the duality of newly emerging cultural forms to subvert colonial
authority at the same time as it constructs new social hierarchies through musical and theatrical representation.
The Archives of the University of Santo Tomas, Manila: A Heritage from a School for the World
Regalado Trota Jose
The Archives of the University of the Philippines
The Archives of the University of Santo Tomas (or AUST, the initials by which it is cited in scholarly works) is the
repository of documents pertaining to the history of the University. The paper wishes to impart that the UST Archives
document not just the development of the school but the growth of the Philippines and her cultural worlds. Its records
include those pertaining to the many Philippine heroes who studied or taught here, not just Jose Rizal. The baybayin
documents from 1613 and 1625 have been declared National Cultural Treasures. There are manuscripts and other
materials written in various Philippine languages such as Kapampangan, Ibanag, Isinay, and Ivatan, as well as sources
for the ethnography of the speakers of these languages. There are records and maps of the “friar lands” in Laguna.
Telegrams from the late 1890s detail the distress of the Spanish community upon the coming of the Revolutionaries.
Letters and memoranda detail the development of education in the Spanish, American, and contemporary periods.
Notes by a chaplain give us eyewitness accounts of the expeditions sent to Mindanao in the second half of the 19th
century. Correspondence and pamphlets bring out the little-known role of the Philippines as the launching point of
Christian missions to China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Carolinas Islands. Apart from manuscripts, a section is
devoted to publications of the UST Press, which date all the way to the 1620s.
Heritage Information and Interpretation
Erik Akpedonu
The interpretation of a heritage resource identified and marked as being of local or national significance is critical for
raising public awareness and appreciation in the name of community-development and nation-building. In the
Philippines, this task is undertaken by various national cultural agencies, local government units, and occasionally
private initiative. Unfortunately, with a few remarkable exceptions on-site, heritage interpretation in the form of
information boards, texts, illustrations, visual and audio guides, as well as digital devices, often still leaves much to
be desired. Many significant sites remain wasted opportunities for developing comprehensive informative and
interesting narratives regarding their historical, cultural, technological, or even ideological significance. Even for
important, officially acknowledged sites, information, if provided at all, is often scant, irrelevant, or de-contextualized.
They thus require a level of background information usually not available among domestic, and especially foreign
tourists, and most locals. This paper explores various contents and forms of heritage interpretation as can be found in
museums and declared sites in Metro Manila and its surrounding provinces, Bohol, and Ilocos Sur. It compares these
with examples from Singapore, Mexico, Italy, Great Britain, and Germany, where over time various alternative
approaches have been employed in site and artifact interpretation, sometimes ideologically colored. Analyzing
strengths and weaknesses, the paper proposes selected areas for potential intervention in the Philippines to enhance
the visitor/tourist learning experience in an entertaining, yet insightful way. While it is important to know that an
object or building is significant, it is no less important to know why.
Session 11E
MANAGING HERITAGE
Notes on a Music Collection from Oslob, Cebu
Patricia Marion Y. Lopez
The paper seeks to present a music collection found in Oslob, a town on the southern tip of the island of Cebu, as
shaped by cultural influences from the late nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth centuries. Through the
examination of the origins of select musical works, the paper sketches the possible paths taken by music products (in
the form of printed and copied music) from Europe and within the Philippines, to be used mostly for a town’s religious
and devotional rituals.
The music collection belonged to Oslob’s former church organist, Bernardo Luna. The works, most no longer in use,
represent a wide-ranging repertoire of liturgical, extra-liturgical, and secular works (marches, fox trots, waltzes,
balitaws) in a town in the early twentieth century. They also point to a relatively high level of music literacy among
church musicians no longer evident today. Apart from musical works obtained by parish priests for the town’s use,
musicians who joined regimental/constabulary bands or who received musical training as church apprentices, copied
works by hand from sources in Cebu City and brought them to Oslob, further enriching the town’s repertoire. The
town’s organists, who often played the roles of band leaders and choirmasters, chose which works to perform on
certain events, and sometimes adapted/arranged them to fit the needs of the times.
Post-Disaster Heritage Management in the Philippines: Case Studies of the Loboc Church in Bohol and
Guiuan Church in Eastern Samar
Mary Josefti Nito
Earthquakes and typhoons always leave behind a trail of altered lives and properties. Recognizing these realities,
especially with the increasing intensity of these hazards due to climate change, programs and policies were created,
geared towards post-disaster rehabilitation and risk-reduction. However, these policies, particularly the national
framework for disaster risk reduction and management, are unfortunately silent about the response, rehabilitation and
recovery of the cultural heritage sites. Though not yet included in the national framework, there are existing local
community efforts in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of cultural heritage sites destroyed by disasters. This paper
looks into the local projects and community efforts in the recovery, rehabilitation, and reconstruction of heritage sites
destroyed by natural hazards. In particular, this paper will compare and contrast the post-disaster heritage management
for Loboc Church in Bohol and for Guiuan Church in Eastern Samar which are both classified as a National Cultural
Treasures by the National Museum of the Philippines. This study will discuss (a) the gravity of the destruction; b) the
local and community response and action; and c) the national and international supports received for the rehabilitation.
By putting together these local experiences, this study aims to contribute to the formulation of a national framework
for post-disaster heritage management, because resilient communities move forward into the future carrying with them
the heritage of their past.
World Heritage Site Tourism and Its Impact on a Local Economy: A Study of Vigan, Ilocos Sur
Nobutaka Suzuki
University of Tsukuba, Japan
This paper explores how the influx of tourists affects economic conditions around World Heritage Sites. World
Heritage tourism has grown worldwide and is believed to have a tremendous impact on economic development at all
levels. Particularly, for developing countries like the Philippines, it can alleviate poverty and offer opportunities for
income-generation. Vigan, on the northern island of Luzon, is a good exemplar for examining the interplay between
cultural heritage tourism and local economics. Vigan was named a World Heritage Site in 1999 because of its wellpreserved houses and grid design urban plan, introduced during the Spanish colonial period. Tourist attractions in
Vigan have evolved around not only cultural heritage preservation, but also the discovery of intangible local traditions
such as historical narratives, pottery making, hand-woven cottons, and eco-tourism. These efforts offer unique
opportunities for tourists to witness and experience a variety of local traditions. They also increase Vigan’s fame
among domestic and international travelers as a tourist destination. This paper’s quantitative approach evaluates
Vigan’s number of tourists and businesses, gross sales of the service industry, and local government revenues,
concluding that Vigan’s World Heritage status has contributed significantly to the tremendous growth of the local
economy, in both the private and public spheres. This further suggests that local economic development through
cultural heritage tourism is primarily attributed to Vigan’s good city governance and stakeholder status.
Session11F
POINTED CONVERSATIONS: FILIPINOS ABROAD
Liga: Basketball and the Displaced lives of Ilonggo Migrants in Seoul, South Korea
Clement C. Camposano
In an interview, Pacific Rims author Rafe Bartholomew says that you cannot just write a story about basketball in the
Philippines by focusing only on the sport. Basketball "is involved in so many parts of society... that it becomes a book
about the Philippines, about history, about Filipino identity, about politics there, about all of these big things... that
this supposedly little thing – basketball – works its way into." Not meant as an academic exercise, Bartholomew's
foray into Philippine basketball nonetheless provides a helpful starting point for a cultural analysis of basketball among
Filipinos. This study goes beyond Bartholomew's exploration, first, by unpacking generalized notions about the
Philippines and Filipino-ness used by the latter and focusing analysis on the sport as it has seeped into the everyday
lives of Ilonggo migrant workers in Seoul, South Korea. Second, it will locate analysis of basketball as engaged in by
displaced individuals within the tradition of theorizing represented by Appadurai (1986) and Miller (2005). Appadurai
asserts that things have "social lives" and closely examining how they are culturally defined and put to use reveals a
wealth of data about societies within which they are embedded. For his part, Miller challenges the binary of subject
and object by arguing that we become what we are “through the historical world created by those who lived before us
and confronts us as material culture, and that continues to evolve through us" (8).
Filipino Language Program for Korean-Filipino Children in Multicultural Korea
Ronel O. Laranjo
The Republic of Korea, from being a homogenous society, is recently shifting to being a multicultural society. This is
due to the influx of migrants in Korea due to labor shortage which is a result of low birthrate since the 90s. Mixed
marriages also increased to address the declining marriage rate of Korean men with local women. Marriage migrants
drastically increased and the number of Filipino marriage migrants ranks third after China and Vietnam. These families
were labeled as “multicultural families.” The government intensified its cultural integration of these multicultural
families in Korean society by establishing different multicultural family support centers which provide social and
educational services. However, these initiatives were geared toward the implicit goal of assimilating marriage migrants
and their children into Korean society (Kim, 2011). With this background, Wika Nga: Klase ng Wikang Filipino para
sa mga Batang Koreano-Filipino, a Filipino language program was conceived and realized to strengthen the Filipino
heritage of the Filipina mothers and their children who were raised in Korea. This paper will discuss the aims of the
program, the content of the curriculum and the different institutions involved in the said program. The researcher
asserts that this program not just promotes Filipino identity but serves as a venue for Filipino marriage migrants to
assert their identity in Korea’s multicultural society.
Dynamics in the History of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Nigeria
Saliba B. James
University of Maiduguri, Nigeria
The paper focuses on the history of Filipinos in Nigeria with particular reference to the dynamic changes in the nature
of migration and the experiences of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Nigeria. The study investigates the
beginnings of the migration process with the involvement of the governments of Nigeria and the Philippines as the
major push and pull factor; the initial emphasis on recruitment of professionals such as teachers, doctors, accountants,
engineers, and technicians to address Nigeria’s manpower and developmental needs, unemployment, and foreign
exchange challenges of the Philippines; the working conditions and experiences of the workers; the integration
processes; the impact on the Nigerian and Philippine economies; the disengagements of governments and growing
role of the private sector in recruitment, especially the oil sector, aviation and private companies; the emergence of
Filipino enterprises in Nigeria; and the overall implication of this on the development of Nigeria-Philippine bilateral
relations. The paper believes that the progressive development in Nigeria-Philippine relations through international
migration is a pointer to robust growth in Africa –Asia relations.
Spiritual Ethnoscape: The OFW’s Pinoy Faith as a Strategy towards a Holistic Sense of Self
Mary Jannette L. Pinzon
This paper attempts to describe Appadurai’s concept of ethnoscapes in the context of the OFW spiritual experience.
It interrogates how religion or religious rituals, spirituality and faith in God contribute to the OFWs’ spiritual
ethnoscape where perspectives and strategies are adopted to cope and survive working abroad. It explores how the
Pinoy faith figures in an “ethnoscape gaze” as a strategy to achieve a holistic sense of self. The method used is online
survey questionnaire among OFWs based in Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study
reveals that the OFWs have carved a unique ethnoscape where they retain their religious and cultural identity, adapt
to their new situation and stay open to global processes.
Session 12A
THE SYSTEM OF POLITICAL DYNASTIES AS CENTERPIECE OF POLITICAL REFORM:
ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES
CENTER FOR PEOPLE EMPOWERMENT IN GOVERNMENT – DILIMAN
The resiliency of political families in the Philippines is proven by their domination of the national and local elections
in May 2016 – in bigger numbers and by their penetration of the Partylist system. The panel discussion aims to explain
this resiliency through quantitative, historical, socio-cultural, development studies, and political perspectives. It will
also look into the failed attempts through legislations and by CSO movements to implement the constitutional
provision against political dynasties – now the centerpiece of political reform - as well as remaining pragmatic and
structural approaches that can be pursued to equalize electoral opportunities. The panel presentation papers are based
on CenPEG’s previous and current studies on political families in the Philippines for the past 10 years.
Political Families and the Quality of Local Governance: A Quantitative Approach
Danica Ella P. Panelo
Structural constraints in the form of political families have been considered as enduring features of Philippine politics
and blamed for the country’s dysfunctional system of governance. Yet literature on the said issue remains inconclusive
on many important questions. One overarching puzzle, in particular, is the need to explain clearly the inconsistency
of socioeconomic outcomes in LGUs when all such units have been invariably ruled by well entrenched political
families. Moreover, it is argued that there are other factors which confound, if not modify, the effects of political
kinship on socioeconomic outcomes. This paper thus seeks to appraise this problem by examining social spending
data in 81 provinces and 145 cities in the Philippines between 2001 and 2012. The findings will show implications on
local leadership’s correlation with socioeconomic outcomes, and whether political variables such as kinship, electoral
competition, and length of incumbency affect the quality of local governance.
From Traditional to “Alternative”: Political Families in the Party List System
Carl Marc L. Ramota
The inception of the party list system under Republic Act 7941 boded a new era for Philippine electoral politics long
dominated by political families. The entry of organized, marginalized groups and other grassroots organizations in
Congress purportedly presaged the realization of inclusive and relevant policy making. But successive party list
elections and Congresses showed otherwise, with mainstream, traditional parties and even Malacañang sponsoring
party list groups. Worse, political families have also commandeered the party list system for rent seeking goals. The
paper looks into the machinations of political families and how they steer the party list system as an instrument to
extend their sphere of influence in local and even national politics.
A Glimpse of Bicol Political Dynasties: A Socio-Cultural Perspective
Evita L. Jimenez
The resiliency and traditional influence of dominant political families in the Philippine provinces is exemplified by
the Bicol region. Patronage politics remains strong in Bicol – considered one of the less developed regions in the
country and a microcosm of deeply-embedded oligarchic politics. The undeveloped socio-economic conditions of the
region remain a fertile ground for both leftist and traditional opposition politics, along with the emerging regional
autonomy movement. Aside from its material and historical base, the sustainability of the region’s structure of political
dynasties can be explained by a socio-cultural perspective. The particular focus of this paper will be informed by the
socio-cultural perspective to analyse the feudal dynamics of political patronage allowing dominant political families
to continue to rule locally with far-reaching implications on national politics.
Aborting Legislative Actions to Implement the Anti-Dynasty Constitutional Provision
Bobby M. Tuazon
Legislative actions pursued in countless Congresses since 1987 for an implementing law of the anti-dynasty provision
of the Constitution have failed. Absent an implementing law on the anti-dynasty provision, the system of political
families which supplies the ruling elites in both the national and local levels has remained well-entrenched with its
network expanding vertically and horizontally in recent decades. The institution of political dynasties in the Philippine
Congress as well as the executive department is so overarching as to make legislative measures either virtually dead
in the water or a futile exercise. This paper will explore alternative approaches that can still be taken especially by the
civil society to address the issue of political dynasties toward the democratization of the country’s political system.
Session 12B
RE-IMAGINING BELONGING: SOCIETY, KINSHIP, AND POWER
IN THE 21ST CENTURY PHILIPPINES II
For Filipinos both within and beyond the boundaries of the archipelago, belonging is a matter of negotiating
countervailing attachments, some of which push outward toward the national, transnational, or diasporic, while others
pull inward toward the ethnic, communitarian, or familial. As such, belonging also involves negotiating processes of
alienation and exclusion, both from kin and from imagined communities, as a result of migration, civil conflict, and
structures of inequality. This panel aims to trace dynamic forms of belonging among Filipinos within and without the
nation. The work of contributors speaks to the creativity, tension, and labor involved in establishing, reworking, and
contesting belonging amid countervailing attachments and processes of exclusion. We aim to build upon
anthropological insights suggesting that belonging is shaped by uneven experiences of social power, whilst
acknowledging that a central aspect of personhood is being related to others. This panel explores what are often
ambivalent forms of belonging by engaging with topics of society, kinship, and power in the 21st century Philippines,
including (but not limited to): domestic and global migration, the performance of identity, consumption practices,
kinship and familial relations, ethnicity, local and national politics, wellbeing, social differentiation and nationhood.
Papers included in this panel consider the centripetal and centrifugal forces that shape belonging, for example: how
might engagements with civil society (from INGOs to informal nonprofit community groups) be understood in relation
to the power dynamics imbued within familial relations, local politics, or translocal movements? The compiled papers
from senior and emerging scholars address the diversity of these dynamics across the Philippines and throughout the
Philippine diaspora.
Thinking of Kapatiran: Elderly Aspirations for Well-being in an Informal Settlement in Manila
Maria Carinnes P. Alejandria Gonzalez
This paper explores the forms of negotiation that the elderly living in an informal settlement in the City of Manila
engage in to attain their aspirations for well-being in the context of their membership in a nonprofit group called
Kapatiran, a Filipino term for “brotherhood.” The study took place in the Baseco Compound, the largest informal
settlement area in Manila. It is against this backdrop that this work articulates on the concept of well-being in relation
to the attainment of security in terms of land tenure, food, and health. Using the narratives of 137 elderly who are
members of Kapatiran, it was found out that: (1) membership in the organization was motivated by feelings of
exclusion within the family and the general society due to their perceived economic nonfunctionality; (2) the
organization enables the elderly to have a community that allows them to share their aspirations and issues; and (3)
the organization has become the primary tool of most elderly to access governmental services and benefits that
partially address their feelings of insecurity and vulnerability. This work further argues that the pervading theme of a
“dependent elderly” sector needs to be revisited as the elderly in Baseco Compound have been shown to participate
in various forms of activities that enable them to negotiate their roles in their households and in the community.
Biomedical Citizenship and Pharmaceutical Consumption in the Philippine Uplands
Will Smith
University of Queensland, Australia
In the absence of effective healthcare infrastructure, commercially manufactured pharmaceuticals are seen as an
important (and often primary) way in which nation states may enter into lives and bodies throughout Southeast Asia.
However, despite the growing rapidity with which commercial medicines have become a basic household necessity
throughout the region, often as product of state policy, the relationship between pharmaceutical use and nationbuilding is poorly understood. This paper explores how national belonging is experienced by households residing on
the ‘peripheries’ of the Philippines through changing ideas of health and well-being. By focusing on the healthcare
practices of indigenous households on Palawan Island, the project considers how supposedly peripheral peoples may
also be active makers of knowledge regarding health, disease, and the body through their procurement and
consumption of pharmaceuticals. In examining these practices, I argue that indigenous households navigate not only
the personal and familial management of well-being, but use these experiences to position themselves within larger
political communities – and, in doing so, highlight the embodied, biomedical aspects of indigeneity, citizenship, and
belonging in upland Southeast Asia.
Tracing Belonging through Market Relations and Moral Framings: Rural Sari-sari Store Engagements on
Central Palawan Island
Sarah Webb
University of Queensland
On central Palawan Island the ubiquitous Philippine institution of the sari-sari store shapes local social relations and
moral framings of personhood. I argue that it is through these relations and framings that some living in rural sitios
negotiate what it means to belong to local social networks, to the nation, and to notions of modernity. In regions such
as the rural, forested areas of Palawan Island ‘connections’ have oft been discussed in academic literature, media, and
everyday conversations in terms of market engagements. Here I consider the ways in which local market
intermediaries position both buying goods from and obtaining commodities for their Tagbanua and Batak neighbors
as a single involvement, which they frame in highly moral terms. Simultaneously, intermediaries often morally
criticise the economic practices of those they consider to be “their collectors” [of local products]. These indigenous
peoples, of course, have their own moral articulations of such relations. Such moral framings are complicated by the
local political economy, through which the economic activities of market intermediaries arguably reproduce the
marginalisation of local indigenous families. However, anthropological investigations of moral framings provide
insight into why the values which underpin such arrangements cannot be reduced to critiques of “cumbersome
patronage” (Jocano 1997, 2; see also Cannell 1999; Milgram 2004). Through uneven relations of pity, obligation, and
interdependency it becomes not only possible but also imperative for those with capital and connections to ‘provide’
for others (Szanton 1972, 12930; McKay 2012, esp. 25). For researchers tracing the ways belonging is imagined and
pursued in rural sitios, sari-sari store engagements provide an example of how market intermediaries become involved
in their neighbors' lives, and in doing so, constitute themselves and others as moral persons.
The Devil's Scrapbook: Capital, Sorcery and the Everyday
Christina Verano Sornito Carter
Appalachian State University, Boone, NC
The fieldwork notebook according to Michael Taussig, can be read “as a type of modernist literature that crosses over
into the science of social investigation and serves as a means of witness”. (Taussig 2011) Part data, part diary, the
fieldwork notebook combines the personal and subjective experience of the day-to-day life of fieldwork. Perhaps in a
similar way, the family scrapbook, a repository of the ephemera of everyday life, can also be read as a means of
witness. Beyond photographs, the scrapbook includes anything from business cards, newspaper clippings, personal
effects, and household lists. Sometimes these items evoke warm memories, while others seem to hold mysteries.
During my fieldwork in 2011, I recovered a number of family scrapbooks and memorabilia from a rusted cabinet in
my aunt’s home in Santa Barbara, Iloilo. My research examined the legacy of a well-known healer in the town, a
legacy that reemerged as a minor town scandal and reopened the closet of dormant family drama. What might a family
scrapbook bear witness to? What about the mundane life of a family might be interesting to a social scientist? In
reading these scrapbooks and writing about the context of their discovery as well as their contents into my own
fieldwork notebooks, I realized that I was reinscribing a new family dynamic, one that brings into question my place
as an anthropologist digging about in the well of family secrets. On the other hand, as the child of immigrants to the
U.S. now returning to a “home” full of ghostly effects, I began to think of the gothic as a useful trope to read a (my)
family scrapbook.
Session12C
(MIS)APPROPRIATING JAPANESE PERFORMANCE TRADITIONS AND ITS CONTRIBUTIONS
TO CULTURAL EXCHANGE
This panel, whose members had the opportunity to collaborate with masters/culture-bearers of Japanese performance
traditions, "re-imagines" a community of Filipinos with greater appreciation of Asian Heritage. They will
explore/examine the appropriation of Japanese performance traditions of Noh, Kabuki and Bunraku by Filipinos and
its contribution to the expanding of the cultural space in the academe to include the teaching, learning, understanding,
appreciating and performing non-Western, non-mainstream performance traditions with the hope of transmitting them
to the next generation as intangible cultural heritage. They will also discuss their aspiration for an increased
consciousness and awareness of Asian aesthetics among Filipinos and more reflections on our own “Asian-ness”
especially in cultural productions. Moreover, the contribution of these intercultural collaborations between
masters/culture-bearers of Japanese traditions and Filipino performers and students in the deepening of cultural
exchange will be looked into.
Appropriating Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio’s Filipino Noh play Ang Paglalakbay ni Sisa: Isang Noh sa Laguna
Amparo Adelina Umali, III
This study will discuss two levels of appropriation. The first level of appropriation will show how Amelia Lapeña
Bonifacio’s Filipino Noh play - Ang Paglalakbay ni Sisa Isang Noh sa Laguna –“borrowed” only the literary structure
of the Japanese Noh drama. The second level of appropriation will show how Lapeña Bonifacio’s Filipino Noh play
became the source material of UPCIS’ Shinsaku (newly-created) Noh staging of Ang Paglalakbay ni Sisa Isang Noh
sa Laguna. Although it “borrowed” only the essence of Lapeña Bonifacio’s literary text, this Shinsaku Noh staging
appropriated all the other elements of Japanese Noh Theatre, such as Noh dance, chant, vocal music, a small orchestra.
It also makes use of Noh masks and costumes.
Filipinos Replicating Kanjincho
Amparo Adelina C. Umali, III and Jeremy de la Cruz
This paper will discuss the process of replication in the very first appropriation of Japanese performance tradition on
Philippine stage by Filipinos in Kanjincho, A Kabuki. Performed in two languages – Filipino and Japanese – by an all
Filipino cast of non-Japanese speakers, it will examine the efforts of the Filipino cast, artistic and production staff and
the contribution of Japanese masters in ensuring that the performance will be a near perfect replication of the kabuki
play.
Sisa, as shitekata (principal actor), Through the Eyes of the Audience
Laureen Theresa Lioanag
I will present the reception of Filipino audience to Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio’s appropriation of Jose Rizal’s character
Sisa in the UPCIS’ shinsaku (newly-created) Noh staging of Lapeña-Bonifacio’s Ang Paglalakbay ni Sisa: Isang Noh
sa Laguna. The reactions gathered from reflection papers of the audience comprised primarily of students will be
analyzed to see the impact of the re-imagining of Sisa, as a shite (principal role) in the said production and to further
develop promotional plans for future Noh productions.
Filipinos Performing Bunraku: Process of (Mis) Sppropriating Bunraku to the Filipino Experience
Patricia Bianca Andres
Bunraku is a Japanese puppet theater tradition proclaimed by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible
Heritage of Humanity in 2003. In 2012, through the creative research of a team of Filipino performers and scholars,
Filipinos were given an opportunity to be introduced to the study and practice of Japanese Bunraku under the
mentorship of Naoshima Onna Bunraku. Naoshima Onna Bunraku is an all-women community puppet theater group
from Naoshima, Kagawa, Japan.
The team of Filipinos, who later became the UP Center for International Studies (UPCIS) Bunraku Ensemble, initially
studied Japanese Bunraku performances. Later, with the intent of teaching Bunraku to Filipinos and finding a new
way of artistically expressing the Filipino culture and experience, the ensemble began appropriating the techniques
and movement of Bunraku to create experimental Bunraku puppet performances.
This study will describe the process of how Filipino learner-practitioners appropriated the practice of Bunraku onto
the production of Filipino puppet performances. This include initial efforts that begun with the creation of a Filipinomade puppet and later the use of Bunraku puppet movements combined with Filipino gestures to create Filipino
Bunraku performances. The study will discuss the performances by the UPCIS Bunraku, some of which address
contemporary socio-political issues, as well as those by Teatrong Mulat ng Pilipinas such as Sinuyaman, a Filipino
Bunraku that was adapted from the Myth of Sinuyaman of the Agusan Manobo.
Session 12D
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE 20TH CENTURY FILIPINO NATIONALISM
As we stand in the 21st century globalism, our panel attempts to look back on mid-20th century Filipino nationalism.
Although still debated, it seems safe to say that the 21st century globalism emerged in the legacy of nation-states of
the 20th century. Theorists of pro-business globalism claim that nations need to enforce regulations in order for
corporations to have fair competitions against one another and, therefore, globalism needs nationalism in the form of
regulatory states. Migration theorists also see the world still divided by nations. They claim that nation-states are still
the dominant form of governmentality via their power to control the flow of people. They also reveal that migrants’
networks have much relevance to their cultural and language background, which clumsily overlaps with their national
origin, and that the host society often sees the migrants in the image of nationhood. By focusing on various aspects of
the mid-20th century Filipino nationalism, each of the papers that follow will reflect upon what still continues, what
has been lost, and what got revived in the transition from the 20th century to the 21st century.
The Universal and the Local in the Brotherhood: Empire, Nation and Fraternity in Philippine Freemasonry
from Mabini to Kalaw, 1892-1917
Francis A. Gealogo
The involvement of Filipinos in Freemasonry was often regarded as one of the contributory factors that led to the
spread of liberalism and nationalism among the ilustrados of the late nineteenth century. The majority of the reformists
and propagandists of the period became attracted to the craft and became leaders of the Filipino Masonic movement
in Spain. The outbreak of the Philippine Revolution also saw the involvement of Freemasons in the revolutionary war,
giving the necessary leadership to the movement for independence as well as providing some of the ideological
inspiration and the needed structures of governance, initially for the secret society, then later on for the formal
establishment of the revolutionary government. During the American colonial occupation, the Masonic movement
became the venue for the articulation of ideas of democratic representation and governance for most of the lodges, as
the new colonial order gave Masons a different context for them to participate in the public sphere.
The tensions and contradictions between a nationalist oriented Freemasonry and the organization of Masonic
jurisdictions based in the empire would be most pronounced in two significant periods of the early history of the
Philippine Masonic movement. First, during the 1890s, when Apolinario Mabini, Pedro Serrano Laktaw, and Marcelo
del Pilar were debating on the idea of forming the Gran Consejo Regional de Filipinas, under the Gran Oriente
Espanol, and second, in the 1910s up to the 1920s, when Teodoro Kalaw and Timoteo Paez would have to contend
with the formation of the Grand Lodge of the Philippine Islands under the Grand Lodge of California. The paper
examines these tensions and highlights the question of the formation of Masonic jurisdiction in the country in the
context of nationalist movements and imperial expansion in the archipelago.
Manuel L. Quezon's Trans-Pacific Itinerary: Mexican Influences on the Social Policies of the
Philippine Commonwealth
Taihei Okada
Shizuoka University
The Philippine Commonwealth has been considered under two divergent images due to its transitional status: either
as a continuation of the U.S. colonial state or as a predecessor of the Philippines' post-independence authoritarian rule.
What has been lacking from these perspectives is how the Philippines tried to establish itself as a modern state in the
turbulent international politics of the late 1930s. Although there have been several assessments of Manuel L. Quezon's
politics, they are more concerned about his personality or domestic politics. During his tenure as a major political
figure, especially in the 1930s, he made quite a few overseas travels, not just to the United States but to places like
Mexico and Japan. In this presentation, I would like to pay close attention to the influences of Mexican President
Lazaro Cardenas on Manuel L. Quezon.
Two background notes are of particular pertinence. First, the 1930s saw the world-wide decline of democracy, which
culminated in three different camps – liberalism, fascism, and communism. Second, this was the age that gave birth
to welfare states, most notably in North America and northern Europe. Both the Philippines and Mexico did not easily
fit into any of the three camps or the model of welfare state. Given their status as fragile states located on the periphery
of the U.S. Empire and the resulting cleavage between the elite and the masses, I would like to argue that these two
states showed another type of rational response to the international politics of the late 1930s.
The “History Wars” over Philippine Nationalism/s: A Reconsideration
Oscar Campomanes
In 1972, erstwhile American Filipinist Joel David Steinberg published an essay titled “An Ambiguous Legacy: Years
at War in the Philippines” in the journal Pacific Affairs; in it, he dissected the forms of self-empowerment that
ironically weakened Filipino nationalist politics from the time of Emilio Aguinaldo through the postcolonial regimes
in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Writing about the “ambiguous legacy” of anti-colonial and decolonial
Philippine nationalism in the context of the period he covered, Steinberg himself expressed ambivalence about the
prospects and future of such nationalism given its pronounced statism, and the prevarications of the elite leadership
that tended to aspirations and orientations a “movement” or historical trend. Thirty years later (2002), eminent
Filipino historian Reynaldo Clemeña Ileto situated this “ambiguous legacy” of Philippine nationalism/s within “the
history wars” occurring in the Philippines and Southeast Asia/Asia during the period of decolonization (especially the
1950s, and against the backdrop of the Vietnam War in the next decade); addressing the participants of a
historiography workshop, themed “Can We Write History?: Between Postmodernism and Coarse Nationalism” and
held at Meiji Gakuin University in Japan, Ileto offered a trenchant critique of the unsympathetic and jaundiced views
manifested by his own intellectual mentors at Cornell and in area studies scholarship toward Philippine/Asian
nationalist discourses and politics. By examining the institutional and disciplinal struggles being waged over the
historiography of Philippine/Asian nationalism, and the “nationalist historiography” of the kind being produced by
the likes of Teodoro Agoncillo and Ileto in a largely autobiographical account, provided an analysis of nationalism in
general and of its Philippine variant/s in particular, that supplemented, if not altogether superseded, dominant
prognoses of Philippine nationalism like Steinberg's. In this presentation, I compare and critique Steinberg's and Ileto's
assessments of their common object, and provide both a historicizing and (following Ileto's lead) sociologizing
evaluation of their differing investments in historical knowledge-production about the vexed problematic of historical
and contemporary Philippine nationalism/s. I argue that Steinberg's and Ileto's respectively differing relationships to
the subject anticipate, if not provide the germinal formulations for much of the debates and critiques concerning
Philippine nationalist projects in our own time.
Revisiting Renato Constantino as Historian
Yoshiko Nagano
Kanagawa University
Renato Constantino (1919-1999), one of the most well-known critical historians of the Philippines, vigorously wrote
various historical commentaries that provoked debates among conventional historians for over two decades since the
1960s. After his death, however, few serious studies of his works have been attempted with the sustained attention
that they deserve, save for the efforts in the recent publication of his autobiography (2001). This paper evaluates the
significance of Constantino’s historical writings at a time – since the Cold War, when Constantino was writing actively
– of rapid historical changes, including globalization in recent decades. It goes beyond curt dismissals of his
historiography as either obsolete or problematic, given its presumably nationalist bias. It re-examines the major
writings of Constantino and finds their enduring significance in light of the discussions of colonial modernity in Asia
(which have become prevalent, particularly in Korean colonial history). I argue that Constantino may be seen,
positively, as one of the key predecessors in such discussions of colonial modernity, with the particular attention he
paid to the distinctive historical phenomena of social transformations in Philippine society under the Spanish,
American, and Japanese colonial regimes.
Session 12E
THE FILIPINO WOMAN IN PHILIPPINE TRAVEL WRITING, POETRY,
ROMANCE NOVELS AND FILM
The presentations will focus on the Filipina as both artist and subject in four genres: travel writing, poetry, romance
novels, and film. These explorations will hopefully be useful contributions to the wide-ranging discussion of the
ICOPHIL Conference’s theme, in particular the re-imagining of Community and Scholarship.
Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo’s “Travel and Transgression: Identity and Community in the Travel Writing of Filipino
Women” will examine the work of two contemporary Filipina writers who are using the relatively new (for the
Philippines) genre of literary travel writing to explore and articulate new concepts of identity and community.
Ailil Alvarez’s “Cadences of the Soul: Exploring the Lyrical Articulation of the Sacred by three female poets” will
probe the necessity of articulating these writers’ approach to the holy—as well as its relevance in today’s global,
postmodern space.
Dawn Marie Nicole Marfil’s “Fleshing Out Desire: Female Desire in Philippine Popular Literature” will explore the
nuances of articulating female desire in four best-selling books from two dominant publishers of romance books in
the Philippines, which cater to different reading markets.
Joyce L. Arriola’s “The Woman’s Film and the Prevalent Type of Filipino Cinematic Adaptation in the 1950s”
examines how female representation and romance plots had been dialectically invoked within the so-called “prevalent”
type of cinematic adaptation produced at the height of what has always been touted as the Golden Age of Filipino
cinema, and the repercussions of such an invoking today.
Travel and Transgression: Identity and Community in the Travel Writing of Filipino Women
Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo
Travel writing is not yet a well-established literary genre in the Philippines. Although one or two magazines carried
the occasional travel essays in English in the mid-60s, it was only in 1991 that a book consisting entirely of travel
essays by a single author was published. Today, a few more have been published, but hardly any critical attention is
paid to them. One source of this neglect might be that Philippine criticism lacks the framework and the language for
the analysis of travel writing itself. My paper will propose a possible framework and suggest questions that the critic
might ask when interrogating travel literature (particularly travel literature by women). I shall examine two examples
of travel literature written by Filipinas using the suggested framework. I shall approach both from the perspective of
the practitioner, i.e. a writer of travel literature, and, of the critic.
Cadence of the Soul: Exploring the Lyrical Articulation of the Sacred by Three Female Poets
Ma. Ailil B. Alvarez
This paper seeks to probe and posit a theory of the sacred as reflected in contemporary women’s poetry, focusing on
select works of prominent Filipino poets dealing with the subject – Marjorie Evasco, Dinah Roma, and Rebecca
Añonuevo. Through comparative analysis, paying close attention to the writers’ choice of imagery and their linguistic
craftsmanship, it is hoped that the shape of the spirituality of the female persona will be adequately explored, and the
reasons for the necessity of articulating her approach to the holy – as well as its relevance in today’s global, postmodern
space – will be revealed. In effect, this paper is an attempt to illustrate the enduring power of poetry and how this form
of literary utterance becomes the most fitting vehicle to affirm the necessity of faith.
Fleshing Out Desire: Female Desire in Philippine Popular Literature
Dawn Marie Nicole L. Marfil
This paper aims to explore the nuances of articulating female desire in four bestselling books from two companies
dominating the sales of romance books in the Philippines – Summit and Precious Hearts. While catering to different
reading markets, their popularity in their own niches spells a collective preoccupation with love and by extension,
desire. With the idea of love decidedly being formulaic to meet the demands of the market it thrives on, it is desire
that hovers, slinks around the perimeter of the packed daydreams that these stories offer. This paper hopes to reveal
how authors of popular literature have written on a Filipino woman who desires or if she has been written on at all.
The Woman’s Film and the Prevalent Type of Filipino Cinematic Adaptation in the 1950s
Joyce L. Arriola
The exposure of Filipino filmmakers to the Hollywood genre called the “woman’s film” led to a spate of productions
that featured heroines and storylines that somehow helped solidify a local version of the romance genre in the 1950s.
While it drew heavily from the Hollywood template, it also invoked the Spanish colonial theatrical form by infusing
musical and comedic elements. Although there had been stories written directly for the screen, a number of films in
the 50s were adaptations of komiks stories (comic series) published in Liwayway magazine. Said productions revealed
a close resemblance to the woman’s film genre. This practice of generic re-articulation raises a number of concerns
pertaining to gender and popular studies, namely: (1) the embedding of the image of the woman within the bourgeoisie
ethos; (2) the female characters’ subtle co-optation in maintaining the status quo; (3) the deployment of traditional
concept of womanhood via the romantic comedy genre and the sub-genre known as the marriage plot; and (4) the
transmediation route (from komiks to film) becoming an agency to “vernacularize” what has been purported to be a
borrowed form . In view of these concerns, the paper examines how female representation and romance plots have
been dialectically invoked within the so-called “prevalent” type of cinematic adaptation produced at the height of what
has always been touted as the Golden Age of Filipino cinema.
Session 12F
TRACK II PEACEBUILDING FOR SUSTAINABLE PEACE IN MINDANAO
This panel will attempt to discuss some unresolved and emerging issues in Mindanao, notably the question of
promoting peace through mechanisms and challenges in Track II Peace Process. This is the level below the formal
peace negotiations between the government and Moro liberation fronts. Here, sectors of civil society like the academe,
NGOs and LGUs, even gender roles play out significantly in conflict mitigation and peacebuilding. The panelists will
present cases of parallel peacebuilding efforts in Mindanao while the legal aspects are tackled in Track I Peacebuilding
through negotiation (that is, peace process between the Moro Islamic Liberation and the Philippine government to
reach a successful agreement).
Land Conflict Mitigation towards Sustainable Peace: The Central Mindanao Experience at the turn of the
Twenty-first Century
Faina C. Abaya-Ulindang
Mindanao State University Marawi City
The narrative of the peace process in Mindanao may experience a breakthrough in the twenty-first century. Mindanao
watchers posit a situation of global jihadist movement begging for intensified military effort against terrorist groups.
Others argue for a better approach to stamp out injustice, where land dispossession is central because land is not only
a resource but also a territory that identifies the Moro people as a nation.
This study focuses on land conflict mitigation as it happened in Barangay Lumbac, Kolambugan, Lanao del Norte and
in five barangays of Midsayap, collectively known as NaTuLaRan Mu (Nabalawag, Tugal, Lower Giad, Rangaban
Nes and Mudseng), dubbed by historian Eric Hobsbawn (1994) as the"age of extremes". This was the period of “AllOut-War” by Erap Estrada and the MOA-AD fiasco during the time of Gloria Arroyo.
Many violent incidents in Central Mindanao are rooted in land disputes. Kauswagan, Kolambugan and Midsayap
demonstrate well-known cases of such disputes between settlers and natives. The intervention of CSOs and LGUs
through their conflict mitigation mechanisms has fortunately succeeded. Presently, efforts are made to sustain the
initial gains. With this backdrop, this study seeks to answer the following: (1) Why is the issue on land ownership
central to Mindanao conflict?; (2) What was the role played by the top-bottom institutional governance (vertical) and
on-the-ground dynamics (horizontal) in mitigating land conflicts?; and (3) What lessons in peacemaking could be
derived from these cases of land conflicts? In conclusion, this paper suggests ways to achieve sustainable peace
through land conflict mitigation inclusive of all stakeholders in the peace process.
Negotiating Gender Roles in Conflict Affected Areas in Muslim Mindanao: Challenges and Possibilities
Rufa C. Guiam
Mindanao State University - General Santos
Gender dynamics are complicated in any context, but the complexity of such dynamism is intensified in environments
and communities where internecine vertical and horizontal conflicts are an almost daily reality. Imbedded in these
dynamics are gender roles or assignments of social location that show varied and complicated expectations, especially
among women. In a context changed drastically due to armed conflict, certain requisites remain constant. Women
are still expected to be the caregivers and nurturers of all members of the family even if they have to negotiate public
spaces as productive members of society. At first glance, such a situation might lead us to conclude that women have
at last been empowered to navigate in hallowed spaces formerly relegated to men and that they have at least become
recognized for their economic contributions. But as the presentation shows, this can deceive us into accepting a
conceptual blinker: while women have become productive members of society in contexts where the men are absent
(due to war and its effects), they are still dictated upon by society to perform their “expected” nurturing roles. Such a
situation places an enormous burden on women, and adds to their sources of stress.
Obscuring these dynamics in any peace process can present a problematic in post-conflict peacemaking efforts. The
last part of the paper argues for a deconstruction of the status quo ante of gender relations before the armed conflict
period and for Track 2 agencies like the academe to contribute to a “reconstruction” of embedded gender relations
that can pave the way for a more inclusive and fair gender and peaceful future.
Empowering the Youth as Peacemakers in Mindanao: Lessons from a Social Experiment
Federico V. Magdalena
University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Peace in Mindanao has been the subject of national conversation during the past four decades. The current peace
process involving the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government is yet to set up a Bangsamoro
governing entity through legislation that has stalled after the Mamasapano incident in early 2015. Meanwhile, efforts
are under way to make it happen through civil society groups, including those from universities, which are called upon
to play roles for dialogues and initiatives that promote nonviolence and peacemaking. This paper draws lessons from
an experience in inter-university partnership between Hawaii and Mindanao to inculcate peace education through the
history curriculum as a modest contribution to peacemaking. The initiative is supported by the United States Institute
of Peace to train 45 teachers and reach out to about 8,500 students from Mindanao State University during 2013-15.
Conducted as a quasi-experiment, the project team tested the idea that the ‘enriched curriculum’ would produce values
and behaviors conducive to peaceful intergroup relations among undergraduate students. Results from the pretest/post-test survey will be presented to highlight some gains in turning the youth into bridges of cross-cultural
understanding and peacemaking among Muslims, Christians, and Lumads. Positive changes in five attitudinal and
behavioral measures will be discussed as evidence supporting the “social experiment.” This project may serve as a
template for wider academic application and provide broad support to the Mindanao peace process, but also needs to
be fertilized by favorable social and political structures to promote enduring peace in the region.
Normalization in the Bangsamoro: Challenges and Prospects
Mark Anthony J. Torres
Post-conflict scenarios in the Bangsamoro present a number of challenges especially in attaining human security in
one of the most impoverished parts of the Philippines. These include the presence of horizontal conflicts such as clan
feuds or rido, intra-religious discords, and other identity-based skirmishes. There are also private armed groups that
lurk in many of the towns that are not easy to dismantle. These, coupled with the proliferation of loose firearms and
the prevalence of shadow economies, contribute to the high incidence of violent incidents in the region. There are,
however, a number of imperative actions that stakeholders can do to help keep the process of normalization moving.
These include more people-to-people initiatives, psychosocial interventions, early-warning early-response systems,
and socio-economic packages. Activities that address the needs and legitimate grievances of people living in conflictaffected areas, combatants or civilians, must also be given significant attention. The author will discuss these issues
in this paper in aid of the negotiation between the Philippine Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF).

Abstracts - Silliman University

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