Annotation: San Juan, Epifanio. 2000. After Postcolonialism: Remapping Philippines-US Confrontations

San Juan, Epifanio. 2000. After Postcolonialism: Remapping Philippines-United States Confrontations. Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Essentialists view the Filipino habitus as a “hybrid, syncretic, and variegated creation.” Instead, San Juan argues that the Filipino society is a “historical-political construction.” It is a product of mercantilism, imperialism and monopoly capitalism (2). Taking a Marxist …

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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 …

Annotation: Mahler, Sarah J. and Patricia R. Pessar. (2001). Gendered Geographies of Power

Mahler, Sarah J. and Patricia R. Pessar. (2001). Gendered Geographies of Power: Analyzing Gender Across Transnational Spaces. Identities, 7(4):441-459  The authors expand on Doreen Massey's concept of “power geometry” to conceptualize gender as a process that “yields a praxis-oriented perspective wherein gender identities, relations and ideologies are fluid, not fixed” (442). The authors develop a …

Annotation: Margold, Jane A. 1995. Narratives of Masculinity and Transnational Migration

Margold, Jane A. 1995. Narratives of Masculinity and Transnational Migration: Filipino Workers in the Middle East. Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz (eds), Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia, 274-298. Margold interviews Ilocano labourers working in the Arab Gulf States (permanent or temporary returnees) to investigate how labour migration affects …

Annotations: Clifford, James. 1994. Diasporas

Clifford, James. 1994. Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology, 9(3):302-338 Clifford suggests to be wary of using ideal types that describe “diaspora,” as “societies may wax and wane in diasporism, depending on changing possibilities – obstacles, openings, antagonisms, and connections – in their host countries and transnationally” (306). Diaspora involves dwelling, maintaining communities, (having) collective homes away from …

Annotation: Barber, Pauline G. 2000. Agency in Philippine Women’s Labour Migration

Barber, Pauline G. 2000. Agency in Philippine Women's Labour Migration and Provisional Diaspora. Women's Studies International Forum, 3(4):399-411. Analyzing three cases of Filipina domestic workers in Canada, Barber argues that while women acquire cultural capital through migration, they remain subject to symbolic violence 1) in their workplace and 2) through “conventions” of Philippine femininity. Barber …

Wolbert, Barbara. 2001. The Visual Production of Locality

Wolbert, Barbara. 2001. The Visual Production of Locality: Turkish Family Pictures, Migration and the Creation of Virtual Neighborhood. Visual Anthropology Review, 17(1):21-35. Looking at the photographs of the migrant Costum family (of Turkish origin) from the 70s, Wolbert follows Appadurai in suggesting that photographs contain “local knowledge.” Photographs taken by Ilyas (the first migrant to …

Annotation: McKay, Deidre. 2005. Reading Remittance Landscapes

McKay, Deidre. 2005. Reading Remittance Landscapes: Female Migration and Agricultural Transition in the Philippines. Danish Journal of Geography, 105(1):89-99. In Haliap, a small village situated within the famous rice terraces in Northern Philippines, the shift from subsistence to commercial agriculture is both a cause and a result of women's migration. Mckay suggests that since the …

Annotation: Faier, Lieba. 2009. Intimate Encounters

Faier, Lieba. 2009. Intimate Encounters: Filipina Women and the Remaking of Rural Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Faier's research on Filipina oyomesan (brides) in Japan is a contribution to a feminist scholarship that studies global capitalism through the investigation of its “multiple and contested nature through a messy and socially constructed process” (20). The …

Annotation: Constable, Nicole. 1999. At Home but Not at Home

Constable, Nicole. 1999. At Home but Not at Home: Filipina Narratives of Ambivalent Returns. Cultural Anthropology 14(2):203-228. Constable argues that Filipino women's notions of Hong Kong and the Philippines as “home” are gendered in several ways. Borrowing from Said (1984), Constable illustrates that the lives and decisions of paid domestic workers are being complicated by …