Wasting Time: Anthropology of the Hometown

Presented at the American Anthropological Association Meetings 2017, Washington, D.C., for the panel Writing Home: Unpacking Experiences of Distance and Displacement.   My fieldsite and hometown, Nabua, is nestled in the central riverine basin of the Bicol Peninsula in the southeast of Luzon Island, Philippines. Nabua’s moniker is linked to the historical events of 1901, when, …

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Annotation: Schneider, Arnd. 2008. Three Modes of Experimentation with Art and Ethnography

Schneider, Arnd. 2008. Three Modes of Experimentation with Art and Ethnography. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14(1): 171–194. The article discusses three film projects which combine art and ethnographic methods: Michael Oppitz's work in the Himalayas called Shamans of the Blind Country (1978-81), which uses French structuralist forms of commentary and subtitles; Juan Downey's …

Annotation: Jocano, F. Landa. 1998. Filipino Social Organization

Jocano, F. Landa. 1998. Filipino Social Organization: Traditional Kinship and Family Organization. Manila: Punlad Research House. Using functionalist arguments, the book argues that the family is the Filipino's “social universe,” and that it is the source of Filipino's activities – from economic support, social status, religion, psychological assistance, to care and security in old age …

Annotation: Rony, Fatimah Tobing. 1996. The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle

Rony, Fatimah Tobing. 1996. The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle. Durham: Duke University Press. The experience of the "third eye" refers to the experience of seeing the Self through the objectifying lens of "Ethnographic" film. With the third eye, one sees the Self pictured as a "landscape, a museum display, an ethnographic spectacle" …

Annotation: Ginsburg, Faye. 1995. The Parallax Effect

Ginsburg, Faye. 1995. The Parallax Effect: The Impact of Aboriginal Media on Ethnographic Film. Visual Anthropology Review, 11(2): 64–76. Ethnographic filmmakers are no longer in the same position as in the 1970s, when they were behind the camera filming the indigenous communities as their object. In these times of burgeoning indigenous media, the point is …

Annotation: Fajardo, Kale, B. 2011. Filipino Crosscurrents

Fajardo, Kale, B. 2011. Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. As 90% of the world's goods and commodities are transported by ship, and with the Philippines being the world's top supplier of shipping labor (providing 20% of the 1.2 million seamen working in international shipping), there is no …

Covar, Prospero. 1998. Larangan

Covar, Prospero. 1998. Larangan: Seminal Essays on Philippine Culture, Manila: Sampaguita Press. Pilipinolohiya (Chapter 4) is the systematic study of the Filipino psyche, and of Philippine culture and society. The Filipino, Covar writes, is like a banga (vessel), and s/he has: labas (exteriority), loob (interiority), and lalim (depth). Using structural functionalism and concepts from indigenous …

Annotation: de Jesus, Melinda (ed). 2005. Pinay Power

de Jesus, Melinda (ed). 2005. Pinay Power: Theorizing the Filipina/American Experience. New York: Routledge. In this collection of essays by Filipino American peminists, Peminism “signifies the assertion of a specifically Filipina American subjectivity, one that radically repudiates white feminist hegemony as it incorporates the Filipino American oppositional politics” (de Jesus, 5). Peminist theorizing requires the …

Annotation: Kondo, Dorinne K. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace

Kondo, Dorinne K. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. As Kondo writes, “What and how I write is no mere academic exercise; for me it matters, and matters deeply” (302). Using a first-person account, what she refers to as “inevitable locatedness” (303), Kondo …

Annotation: Lansing, Stephen. 1990. The Decolonization of Ethnographic Film

Lansing, Stephen. 1990. The Decolonization of Ethnographic Film. Visual Anthropology Review 6:13-15, 81. As the author writes, anthropology’s positivist approach, and the idea that anthropology is almost a branch of natural history is “probably gone for good,” and has become “replaced with a more equivocal picture of a scholar who becomes engaged with the people …