Nation, Self, and Citizenship
By: RandolF S. David
A Comprehensive Outline
© 2015
Introduction (Randolf David)
Part 1: Nationhood
Introduction (Josephine Dionisio)
1. Situating the Filipino Nation
A. The Nation and Its Past
Why We Remember
Kalayaan, Vol. 1, No. 1
Dogtown: Memories of the 1904 World’s Fair
Remembering Martial Law
Looking Back at Edsa
The Centennial that Was
B. The Nation in the New World Order
Who’s Afraid of Globalization
Globalization Blues
Home is Where Our People Are
Maid in Hong Kong
The NPA of London
Spirituality and the OCW
Nationalism in a Global Age
C. The Nation in the Postmodern Condition
Conversation for Sale
Shadow Work
Necessary Interruption
Postmodern Bandits
Postmodern
2. Affinities and Identities
A. Race and Identities
Aetas
Bugnay Revisited
Moros and Zapatistas
Solidarity Amid Difference
Language, Nationalism, and Identity
Globalization and National Identity
B. Gender
Mothers
Terms of Survival
Karen
Through Women’s Eyes
C. Class
Surveying Squatters
Justice and the Poor
The Public Career of Mang Pandoy
Life and Death in a Mountain of Garbage
Understanding Poverty
On Being Pro-poor
3. Institutions in Flux
A. Family
Mrs. Maniago’s Family
When Siblings Meet
The Remoteness of Fathers
The Sexualization of Children
Our Children All
B. Education
The Future of University Education
The Infrastructure of Learning
Investing in a Public University
Literacy and the “Pinoy”
When Parents Graduate
Desiderata for Graduate Life
C. Religion
Religion and the Constitution
Sex, Money, and the Catholic Church
Money and the Monastic Life
Money and the Monastic Life
Split-level Spirituality
Agoo: Who Needs Miracles?
Food Abstinence: Leviticus and Marvin Harris
D. Politics
The Powerless Public
Why We Elect Bad Leaders?
What is a “Trapo”?
The Irrational in Politics
People Power and the Law
The Issue is Corruption
Our Love for Democracy
E. Economics
Policy Debates
Public Lands, Private Uses
Public Interest and Private Agendas
The Contradictions of APEC
Issues in Seattle
Back to Basics
F. Mass Media
Life as Television
Politics in the Age of TV
Newspapers as a Public Trust
Simulating the Presidency
Dog Eaters
Society of the Spectacle
Part II: Selfhood
Introduction: The Constitution of the Self (Gerry Lanuza)
1. The Constitution of the Self and Identity
The Self as Project
Of Bloody Men and Metaphors
A Chance at Rebirth
Summing Up a Life
Fathers and Sons
Confessions of a Fratman
The Dark Threads of Human Behavior
2. Self Identity and Collective Memory
The Return of the Tisay
Lola Juanita’s Catharsis
Immigrants from the Past
Geography and Memory
Memories on Lahar Land
Self-Respect and National Pride
3. Institutional Embodiment of the Self
Thoughts on Father’s Day
The Functions of Fraternity
Prisons
Life in a Medicalized Society
4. Self-Identity in Postmodernity
E-mail and Memory
Virtual Pain, Virtual Love
Vernacular Gifts
Part III: Social Responsibility and Personal Autonomy
Introduction: The Poet-Citizen (Arnold Alamon)
1. Hopes for a Better Society
Crisis and the Collective Conscience
A Cultural Malaise
Sources of Moral Vigor
The Nation in Our Imagination
Politics as a Vocation
For Evil to Triumph
Remoralizing Public Service
Moral Progress and the Death Penalty
Charter Change and Moral Imagination
A Transformative Politics
What Makes People Power Possible
2. The Search for Personal Autonomy
The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives
Their Own Private “Milenyo”
The Art of Sleep
Things Numinous
Work and Leisure
Love’s Normal Chaos
The Right to Die
Rizal and the Art of Living
The Art of Widowhood
3. Challenge of Citizenship
A Lesson from Oseola
The Spirit of Citizenship
The Wallet Test
Asian Values and Global Standards
The Ethics of a Face
The Bigger Picture
Ten Virtues of a New World
Letter of a Granddaughter
Epilogue: Modernity and the Filipino (Randolf S. David)
Summary
Introduction (Randolf David)
Randolf David’s (2002[EA1] ) “Nation, Self, and Citizenship” is offered as an introduction to Philippine sociology using mostly sociological (popular), and sometimes, philosophical (theoretical) vocabulary. The book is a collection of newspaper articles that appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer that spanned seven years. Additionally, David’s essays were grouped based on society’s three evolving perspectives: nationhood, selfhood, and citizenship. For David, “[t]he Filipino nation is unfinished business” and that the moral precedence of a nation is above individual fulfillment. As such, the modern Filipino’s quest for autonomy and meaning in society is at the same time the aspiration of a growing nation.
In David’s introduction, he quoted C. Wright Mill’s concerning “the sociological imagination” as the ability to see social reality from historical, societal, and biographical perspectives (coordinates). With social imagination, a person perceives his personal circumstances relative to society’s evolving structural features given its indiscernible destiny (telos). At the biographical (personal autonomy and individual perfection) and societal (citizenship and social responsibility) coordinates, instead of individuals talking about other people, they should refer to their own biographies (selfhood) as ongoing achievements. Individuals should view their selfhood as a “life-long project” of “building, negotiating, and asserting a self” in relation to society (such as, families, communities, Filipino nation, and the world) (David, 2002, p. xi). At a historical coordinate, selfhood and nationhood should view their past, present contingencies, and strivings for a better future.
Gerardo Lanuza, Josephine Dionisio, and Arnold Alamon, David’s co-authors and colleagues at UP, introduced each of the three chapters.
Part 1: Nationhood
Introduction (Josephine Dionisio)
- Why Filipino? Invent ways of achieving the Filipino nation and motivat the next generation to put up a collage of a more hopeful filipino nation
- No one is born nationalist
- A child identifies first with one’s family
- Nation learned at school through symbols (e.g., national tree) and rituals (e.g., national anthem)
- Nation as part of one’s memory
- More permeable traditional territorial boundaries (e.g., large-scale migration)
- Filipinos’ change of citizenship while still identifying with their own Filipino identity
- [EA2]
- Questionable Filipino identity (by those at the Muslim Mindanao region, for instance)
- Who is a Filipino?
- Are citizens of the Philippines versus naturalized citizens of other countries
- Wearing traditional Filipino attires (e.g., barong)
- Social relations, beliefs and practices (e.g., pakikisama, ningas cogon)
- Some Filipino students’ lack of resemblance with their stated Filipino identity
- The Filipino nation as a continuing work of creation for individual happiness and not as an end or destiny in itself
1. Situating the Filipino Nation
- Reexamination of Philippine history
- Assessment of Philippine nation’s coordinates in a postmodern societal context and in a globalized world environment
- Revaluing Filipino virtues and meanings
A. The Nation and Its Past
- Historicity of the Filipino nation’s unfinished business of forging a collective identity
- Successive rounds of colonization
- Shared history, common language, or cultural heritage are accidental, but not necessarily permanent significant or essential, factors to national integration
- Challenges confronting the Philippines as an independent nation
- Rethink history from a futuristic perspective
- History as a reflective writing and rewriting activity to achieve nationhood
Why We Remember
- Revisiting the Philippine from a “critical history” (Nietzsche)
- Critical history dares Filipino to be brave (not resentful and desperate) and reclaim our lives as individuals and as a nation despite Philippines’ painful and shameful past
- History as a tool to write and rewrite a memory of ways to achieve nationhood
Kalayaan, Vol. 1, No. 1
- Narrative of Filipino nationalism’s glorious history not compelling enough to sustain acts of spirited citizenship or national heroism on daily basis
- Print media in native language as a tool for a national identity
- Filipino nation was born out of an “imagined community” because each member has an image of the community (Anderson, 1991, p. 6)
- [EA3]
- Filipino nationalism manifested through rallies in booting out authoritarianism and incompetent government
- Spirited citizenship is only harnessed when Filipinos enjoy the rewards through small acts of consciousness
Dogtown: Memories of the 1904 World’s Fair
Remembering Martial Law
- Use history as guide to the present by re-describing its historical milestone (p. 7)
- Assert our interest and cut the umbilical cord that linked our soul to our former colonizers (p.7)
Looking Back at Edsa
- A usable and instructive past will not leave Filipinos disgusted or demoralized about their future
- Clear vantage point to the road to the future (p. 7)
- The Filipino nation as a continuing work of creation for individual happiness and not as an end or destiny in itself
The Centennial that Was
- Revisiting Philippine history from a “usable past” (Renato Constantino)
- Solve present problems to learn to accept the contingencies of the past and existence as a nation (pp. 6-7)
- Look not for a Filipino identity based on cultural heritage or ethnic origin, but “invent one” borne out of mediated interaction or emotional attachment (David, 2002, p. 7)
- Weak sense of nationalism due to vague sense of national identity and not compelling “national imaginary”
- Unsure not of who Filipinos are, but for who they want to become
- Filipinos must weave a different narrative for the nation
B. The Nation in the New World Order
Who’s Afraid of Globalization
- Globalization as a catalyst of modernization and diversity (hybridization, fusion of diverse cultures) (8)
- [EA4]
- Globalization as globalism (such as corporations killing off competitions) that limits our choices[EA5] (8)
- State has to exercise creative and effective governance, such as solving social problems to improve quality of life (8)
- Assert a proud Filipino image and identity against the regimentation of the new world order (8)
- Project of nationhood or national identity using the aspirations and sensibilities of people as loyal citizens in a globalized setting
Globalization Blues
- Negative consequences of strong sense of nationalism (such as, common language, ethnicity, and religion) leading to chauvinism, race riots, xenophobia, etc.
- Postmodernism challenges people to doubt and rethink their most indisputable belief and unwavering commitments (e.g., adapt concepts and laws about privacy and ownership)
Home is Where Our People Are
Maid in Hong Kong
- Renouncing one’s Filipino citizenship has become an obsession rather than a source of shame (14)
- Abject poverty leaves countless Filipinos to do menial works abroad
The NPA of London
- Cultural hybridity is tied with culinary pastische
- Postmodern selves are “protean,” “saturated,” or “pluralized” selves because they assume multiple and continuously shifting identities in a foreign land.
Spirituality and the OCW
Nationalism in a Global Age
- Concept of nation emerged as a result of the radical transformation of Europe into a modern society in the late 1800s (10)
- Improved transportation and communication systems
- Spread of commerce and industry
- Establishment of secular education system with standardized curriculum and common language of instruction
- Homogeneity and uniformity (e.g., mass training for division of labor)
- Homogeneity’s euphemism is nation-building
- Nationalism is “the organization of human groups into large, centrally educated, culturally homogenous units” (Gellner).
- [EA6] (p. 6)
- [EA7]
C. The Nation in the Postmodern Condition
Conversation for Sale
- Cyberspace and high tech devices provided seemingly unlimited opportunities for personal emancipation
- Increasing virtuality and mediatedness increased “worsening alienation, unbearable loneliness, and maddening numbness” (9)
Shadow Work
- Modern society’s obsession for speed as individuals helplessly race through time but daily routines becoming more oppressive due to the disorienting pace of modern life (9)
- Need warmth and compassion through human companionship or face-to-face interaction (10)
Necessary Interruption
- Solidarity based on national imaginary respectful of differences and yet mindful of common sufferings (10)
- No room for nationalist fundamentalism but cosmopolitanism because we are citizens of the cosmos in a global age (10)
Postmodern Bandits
Postmodern
2. Affinities and Identities
- Identifying with a nation has been likened to two lovers that demands unconditional loyalty to each other, which is a myth that justified violent suppressions of other affinities and identities (e.g., as mass murder, ultra-nationalism, self-sacrifice for nationalism’s sake)
- Reflection on the contingency of Philippine solidarity
- Nationalism is only one among many expressions of social solidarity
- Other sources of Philippine identities
- Reconceived Filipino affinities and identities (based on race, ethnicity, gender, class)
- Solidarity based on national identity is weak
- Euphoria of people power insufficient inspiration for successive government administrations to forge a great Filipino nation as the heroes envisioned
- Unresolved conflict in Mindanao threatens to rip the Philippine nation apart
- Collective hatred or abhorrence of war by tolerating, respecting and protecting affinities and identities based on race, gender, ethnicity, and class
- Nationhood, not as an end, but a continuing process of broadening the limits of our imagined community
- Nationhood as an expression of socio-emotional bond, whereas statehood is a form of legal-political identification
- States should welcome multiple nationalisms among its individual citizens
- A nation based on respect for difference and celebration of diversity
A. Race and Ethnicity
- Tolerance and pragmatism
- Ethnic groups’ right to choose, assert, and enrich their own culture and identity to chart their own development as a people (13)
Aetas
- Re-examine our institutions and practices that coercively relegate large groups of people into the margins of our national life
Bugnay Revisited
- Land titling is culturally alien to peoples of Cordilleras since they view themselves as stewards and not as land owners, thus, robbing them of their lands and becomes landless farmers. Their ancestral lands were converted into industrial and commercial uses
- Formal education is equally efficient in undermining cultures
- Differences do not need to be always be irreconcilable and self-determination can also be realized without secession
Moros and Zapatistas
Solidarity Amid Difference
Language, Nationalism, and Identity
- Filipino nation is, in part, an invention of European-educated Filipino intellectuals or iliustrados (our Filipino heroes)
- Aspired for an identity other than subjects of Catholicism or Spain
- [EA8]
Globalization and National Identity
B. Gender
- Individual happiness and fulfillment from male-dominated perspectives
- A woman’s worth rest on her private parts (e.g., virginity)
- Insistent ignorance about women’s plight in the context of oppression and violence
- Women as idle housewives, rather than as contributors to mundane things
- Overlooked women’s potentials as human beings with other capabilities
Mothers
- Mothers teaching their children to hold women’s right in high esteem
- Foolish premise that “mothering” is the sole responsibility of women
- Motherhood as an option and not as a destiny
- Motherhood as a challenge for both men and women
Terms of Survival
Karen
- Rape “as an offense against chastity, rather than as an act of violence against persons; a private crime, rather than as an injury against the entire community” (p. ___).
Through Women’s Eyes
C. Class
Surveying Squatters
Justice and the Poor
The Public Career of Mang Pandoy
- Failure of successive government administrations to ensure sustained productive and meaningful employment caused a ubiquity of poverty and worsening inequality
- Many migrants from rural to urban areas (e.g., Manila) ended up being squatters in city fringes without decent living and secure employment
- A state without coherent plan and deliberate attempt to develop a manufacturing and industrial sector
- Cities as mere service centers for foreign companies where jobs are limited , temporary, and unstable
- A state should tirelessly pursue inventive ways to improve quality of lives to prevent large-scale secession and emigration
- Nationhood as an unending project of creation of Filipino people who collectively pursue the fulfillment of their individual happiness
- Nationhood requires the constant reinvention of our institutions
Life and Death in a Mountain of Garbage
Understanding Poverty
On Being Pro-poor
3. Institutions in Flux
- Reviews the challenges experienced by various social institutions’ many changes
- Challenge of reinventing our institutions as a justification to the continuous existence of a Filipino nation
- Finding out: Why Filipino?
A. Family
- The family as a vital institution to reinvent the nation (e.g., retelling stories to co-members of the family)
Mrs. Maniago’s Family
When Siblings Meet
The Remoteness of Fathers
The Sexualization of Children
Our Children All
B. Education
- Educational institutions to reorient themselves to arrest the “spread of knowingness among our youth, or the cynicism caused by the deluge of information that technology brings,” such as by enlarging their horizons and exploring utopias for self-reflection without postponing individual happiness (16)
- Education as part of the pursuit of enjoyment in discovery and adventure
- Educational institutions to induce the youth’s passion for learning and creativity
- Education as liberation from powerlessness (through the creation of a literate workforce with more meaningful contribution to the practical solutions of the nation’s problems)
- Education as a tool for empowerment and democratization concretized in people’s daily lives
- Democracy as a tool for creating a better nation
The Future of University Education
The Infrastructure of Learning
Investing in a Public University
Literacy and the “Pinoy”
When Parents Graduate
Desiderata for Graduate Life
C. Religion
Religion and the Constitution
Sex, Money, and the Catholic Church
- Make the church accountable to the laws of man and his society
- Question the lavishness of some priests’ lifestyles
- The Church must not be allowed to impose its beliefs to those who adhere to pluralistic principles and practices
- Religious differences should not be allowed to turn into political conflict
- The Church must be careful not to use the clout of its institution to justify the politics of its leaders
Money and the Monastic Life
- “[T]he value of the contemplative life lies in its witness value [….] to the silent quest for perfection” (20)
Split-level Spirituality
- Learn to distinguish authentic and non-authentic religious expressions
- “Religion [is] what a person does with her solitude” (William James) (19)
Agoo: Who Needs Miracles?
- “”[T]o have faith is to believe in God’s word and to entrust your life to Him” (19)
Food Abstinence: Leviticus and Marvin Harris
D. Politics
The Powerless Public
- Demand from the government more accountability to Filipinos and not content ourselves with our private coping mechanisms for government ineptness
- The need for rational plan for urban development and not chaotic use of urban land areas, irrational consumerism, and uneven distribution of necessities for human living condition
- Hand-in-hand in rebuilding our political institutions as an imperative to overhauling our economic institutions
Why We Elect Bad Leaders?
What is a “Trapo”?
The Irrational in Politics
People Power and the Law
- Filipinos were lucky to have stumbled upon PP as a means for correcting major dysfunctional consequences of borrowed institutions
The Issue is Corruption
Our Love for Democracy
E. Economics
Policy Debates
Public Lands, Private Uses
- Exposes the vast tracts of public lands that the state owns
Public Interest and Private Agendas
- Both government and private sectors should deliver the task of development (such as, collective vision of a developed nation, optimal use of limited resources for all)
The Contradictions of APEC
- The ineptness of government should not be an easy excuse for indiscriminate privatization
- The state needs to strengthen itself against privatization as espoused by supranational formations (e.g., APEC) due to unregulated globalization
- The new nation must teach private corporations the value of social service and compel them to be more accountable to the public
Issues in Seattle
Back to Basics
- Evaluate alternative developmental plans for the agricultural sectors in rural land areas to alleviate poverty (18)
F. Mass Media
- Mass communication as a purveyor of a community’s collective memory (p. 7)
Life as Television
- Mass media as a very powerful and influential in public discourse in the age of modern communications technology
- Competition for sponsors and media’s penchant for sensationalist journalism and showbiz extravaganzas that promote callousness and pettiness
- Balanced or objective reporting as a euphemism for safe reporting
Politics in the Age of TV
- Politicians consciously act like showbiz personas to woo their voters
Newspapers as a Public Trust
- Politicians consciously act like showbiz personas to woo their voters
- Media needs to be made conscious of their public responsibility (such as, providing viewers with carefully thought-out and sensitive presentations
- Media people should resist propagating stereotypical images that breed prejudices or banking on shock value
- Media should refocus on the task of nationhood and rewrite a fitting narrative for the Filipino nation
Simulating the Presidency
- Impression management refers to media people who are crazy by the power at their disposal and show business who confidently run for public office without the necessary credentials
Dog Eaters
Society of the Spectacle
Part II: Selfhood
Introduction: The Constitution of the Self (Gerry Lanuza)
- Individuals make up a society and nation
- The self is a social construct
- Sections 1 to 3 highlight the active character of the self in weaving its own distinctive narrative and style
- One’s selfhood is possible only in a society that is modern and where religious theological traditions are gradually being replaced by scientific and rational calculations
- Intimate personal affiliations are replaced by exceedingly impersonal associations brought about by urbanized way of life (Simmel,1971) (192)
- Delocationization of the self unleashed the entire modern quest for self-authenticity
- The self, released from time-honored traditions and communal attachments, faces infinite possibilities
- The self is a “thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places.”
- The Rousseauean problem on self-authenticity (that is, as a newfound freedom) threatened by tyrannical control of modern society
- Alienation, as Marxists call it, is a term for the estrangement of the producer from its product (or the separation of the self from its own objective creation)
1. The Constitution of the Self and Identity
- The self is like a narrative that is aesthetically created (under Nietzsche’s aesthetic approach), which is dependent on social narratives embedded in tradition
- The self is the sum of all its effects – the individual’s actions, thoughts, and feelings
- The self is a product of modern discourse that is socially and historically conditioned (Foucault, 1970)
- “[T]he self is turned into a text, a complex narrative accomplishment suffused with discourses. It is a text written and rewritten from moment to moment according to the demands of a multitude of social contexts” (Burr, 1999)
- The self is “digitized” in the cyberspace (Green, 1997)
The Self as Project
Of Bloody Men and Metaphors
A Chance at Rebirth
Summing Up a Life
Fathers and Sons
Confessions of a Fratman
The Dark Threads of Human Behavior
2. Self Identity and Collective Memory
- Individual narratives are necessarily implicated in the historical narratives and traditions of different communities of the nation
The Return of the Tisay
Lola Juanita’s Catharsis
Immigrants from the Past
Geography and Memory
Memories on Lahar Land
Self-Respect and National Pride
3. Institutional Embodiment of the Self
- One’s narrative is fashioned by institutional narratives and constraints
Thoughts on Father’s Day
The Functions of Fraternity
Prisons
Life in a Medicalized Society
- Modern society heralds both infinite possibilities for self-cultivation, while it also simultaneously prefigures self-dehumanization
4. Self-Identity in Postmodernity
- Transformation of love and intimacy in the age of virtual reality and cyberspace (that is, unsettling of the self and identity in postmodern society)
E-mail and Memory
Virtual Pain, Virtual Love
- Tamaguchi-like character (that is, insulated real feelings) of post-modernity
Vernacular Gifts
Part III: Social Responsibility and Personal Autonomy
Introduction: The Poet-Citizen (Arnold Alamon)
1. Hopes for a Better Society
Crisis and the Collective Conscience
A Cultural Malaise
Sources of Moral Vigor
The Nation in Our Imagination
Politics as a Vocation
For Evil to Triumph
Re-Moralizing Public Service
Moral Progress and the Death Penalty
Charter Change and Moral Imagination
A Transformative Politics
What Makes People Power Possible
2. The Search for Personal Autonomy
The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives
Their Own Private “Milenyo”
The Art of Sleep
Things Numinous
Work and Leisure
Love’s Normal Chaos
- “Various love motives are now the legitimizing formulae of domination”
The Right to Die
Rizal and the Art of Living
The Art of Widowhood
3. Challenge of Citizenship
A Lesson from Oseola
The Spirit of Citizenship
The Wallet Test
Asian Values and Global Standards
The Ethics of a Face
The Bigger Picture
Ten Virtues of a New World
Letter of a Granddaughter
Epilogue: Modernity and the Filipino (Randolf S. David)
Reference
David, Randolf S. Nation, Self, and Citizenship: An Invitation to Philippine Sociology. Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 2002.
Essay [EA1]topics current those times but still appeal to those who study the past
[EA2]Only one way of being a spirited citizen
[EA3]…but by???
[EA4]Not so
[EA5]How come?
[EA6]“Ask not what you country can do for you…” Still a Filipino, only has to look for a better livelihood abroad to live a life of socio-economic decency
[EA7]Really?
[EA8]“Filipino” from the root word King “Philip.” If the so-called Filipinos want to have a true identity, the label “Filipino” should also be changed because it only reminds us of being subjects of a former colonial empire – Spain.
