20 OCTOBER 2000
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Philippinists in the Netherlands
The Dutch network of scholars in the field of Philippine Society and Culture Studies met on 20 October 2000, under the auspices of the Amsterdam Branch Office of the IIAS. The meeting was devoted to the presentation of current research by three overseas guests, viz. Gregory Bankoff, Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon-Bautista, and Raul Pertierra.
* By OTTO VAN DEN MUIJZENBERG
Gregory Bankoff (History, University of Auckland) is temporarily attached to the Disaster Studies unit in the department of Sociology of Rural Development, Wageningen University. He followed up on his earlier presentation of his broad, long-term investigation of natural hazards in the Philippines. This topic forces him to follow an interdisciplinary approach, which he strongly recommends. Even if the improving registration of earthquakes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, droughts and other hazards is taken into account, the frequency of these phenomena appears to have increased over time. Damage is also greater than before, partly because of the frequency and intensity of the disasters and partly because there are more people affected by them. Population growth has actually contributed to such hazards as landslides and floods. A lively discussion on the difficult question of the cultural repercussions of the hazardous environment on Philippine culture and the Filipino psyche followed.
Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon-Bautista (Sociology, University of the Philippines at Diliman) is currently Professorial Fellow of the IIAS Amsterdam Branch Office. She is writing a book on the transformation of the Philippine middle class, while she is also engaged in a study of Philippine development discourse. In her presentation of her ongoing work with regard to the Philippine middle class, she focused on the manifestation of an increasing proportion of urbanites in Metropolitan Manila who consider themselves 'middle class'. The presentation dealt with the difficulties of definition experienced by the researcher in her work, which is part of a five-country comparative investigation in Southeast Asia. The Philippine contribution to that survey is based on a stratified, directed sample survey in the metropolitan area. Making a distinction between new middle class, old middle class, and marginal middle class, Bautista revealed a generally upward intergenerational mobility among the more than 600 middle class respondents interviewed. Due in part to a changing occupational structure, and often facilitated by higher educational attainment than that of the parents' generation, such mobility mostly appears to have a limited span. Commonly sustained by a double income the normative lifestyle of the middle classes comprises a single, detached home, cars, and a spread of consumer durables, but relatively limited investments and valuables, and few expenses from cultural activities. Income levels constrain the lifestyle. In accordance with expectations, family centricity and involvement in church activities appear to be characteristic, while high levels of support for environmental and human rights movements could also be noted, particularly among the new middle class. A paradoxical finding was the self perception of the middle class respondents as being in the vanguard of democracy whereas, at the same time, a remarkable proportion supported fairly authoritarian forms of governing, including limitations to freedom of speech.
Raul Pertierra (Anthropology, University of New South Wales, Ateneo de Manila University and University of the Philippines) has been a regular visitor to the Netherlands since the early 1980s. His lecture dealt with the question of whether foreigners can contribute meaningfully to insight into Philippine culture and society. This problem was highlighted by Zeus Salazar's plea for an authentic Pilipinolohyia by Filipinos as against Philippine Studies by foreign students. The main thrust of Pertierra's paper was the need for nation states, as opposed to other forms of political organization, to generate knowledge about themselves. This may result in a close nexus between national sovereignty, national consciousness, and national scholarship. The nature of scholarship, however, is also international and non-parochial, and as such leads to a fundamental contradiction with the position that one has to be Filipino and share Filipino domain assumptions to understand Philippine society, culture, and politics.
As usual in the meetings of the Philippinist network in the Netherlands, the other participants briefly shared their present preoccupations and discussed possible contributions in the form of papers and panels to the forthcoming Fourth European Philippine Studies Conference to be held in Madrid, Spain, 10-11 September 2001. The Seventh IPSC will be held in the Netherlands in 2004.
Information about the conference:
E-mail: muysot@euronet.nl
Otto van den Muijzenberg, is attached to the University of Amsterdam and to the Centre for Asian Studies in Amsterdam (CASA).
E-mail: vandenmuijzenberg@pscw.uva.nl