Feminism - Corporeality, Materialism, and Beyond [Working Title]
This chapter is a sociological rendition of the body-mind issue explored within the context of fe... more This chapter is a sociological rendition of the body-mind issue explored within the context of feminism and agency. Being central to the entire ecology of the feminist claims, bringing the body back into the discursive field allows the appreciation of hitherto emerging insights from the ranks of feminist scholars, notably in the area of new materiality. Problematizing the classical divide between the body and the mind as distinct yet nested spheres of one’s social being pegs the discussion in the language of performance and demonstrability, thus highlighting the agency intrinsic to the body and its movements as a material facticity.
Farmers Gene Banks and Crop Breeding: Economic Analyses of Diversity in Wheat Maize and Rice, 1998
There is growing interest in on-farm conservation as a complementary strategy for conserving rice... more There is growing interest in on-farm conservation as a complementary strategy for conserving rice genetiq resources (Balakrishna, 1996; Bellon, Pham, and Jackson, 1997; Vaughan and Chang, 1992). On-farm conservation has been defined as farmers’ continued cultivation and management of a diverse set of crop populations in the agroecosystems where the crop has evolved (Bellon, Pham, and Jackson, 1997). Compared to conservation in gene banks, on-farm conservation is dynamic, because the varieties that farmers manage continue to evolve in response to selection pressures. On-farm conservation also emphasizes the role of farmers in two ways.
ABSTRACT In the last six years, there has been an emergence of food retail establishments that cl... more ABSTRACT In the last six years, there has been an emergence of food retail establishments that claim to advocate and practice locavorism in Manila, capital of the Philippines. Based on three years of field research and new media analysis, we observed that the Manila adaptation of locavorism has striking similarities to and notable differences from its Western cognates, manifesting as complex amalgamations of local-global discourses and materialities. We examine this articulation as an “assemblage” that manifests as hybridities, a product of the combination of Filipino and Western discursive elements and material practices, and as “awkward constructions”, a combination of disengaged consumers, haphazard combinations of local and imported ingredients, and exclusionary consumer spaces. In this distinctive formation, culinary bricoleurs – restaurant owners and chefs – “make do”, rearrange and experiment with a variety of discursive and material components available from the local and the global to create a largely fragmented and messy local food enterprise. We attribute the contingence of this assemblage to the colonial history and post-colonial conditions of the Philippines, where associated power dynamics have shaped locavorism subjects as they negotiate the continued influence of Western culinary culture and navigate the competitive world of food business.
The article contends that neither theory-building nor theorizing is an exclusive means of underst... more The article contends that neither theory-building nor theorizing is an exclusive means of understanding the social in Philippine sociological discourse. Pagdadalumat as a homegrown reflexive inquiry proves to be more proficient and powerful an approach in making sense of the foundational principles of the discipline. Henceforth, the article examines the two implicated issues of doing pagdadalumat in the production of sociological knowledge in the Philippines viz. (i) the concept of kapwa as manifestation of the nexus of the Self and Other (ii) and the epistemological affordances of pagdadalumat versus the rigid evidence-seeking temperament of scientif ic inquiry. At the end, an outline of a sociological model of pagdadalumat is presented—pakiramdaman—anchored on an indigenous communicative practice (pakikipagtalastasan) using four (4) Filipino social constructs—lapit, galang, hiya, lusot—and their corresponding indicators—relasyon, kapwa, sitwasyon, kahihinatnan.
Sociological imagination is an open invitation to theorize from the stories we tell about ourselv... more Sociological imagination is an open invitation to theorize from the stories we tell about ourselves and others. More than self-expression, the sociological ethos of auto/biographical narration is to extend the reality of a solipsistic and exclusive existence into a common and public experience. In order to achieve this, the narrator must convert biographies into scribed realities. The narrating process, however, has unique epistemic anchorage (memory-based) and stylistic requirement (literary) that encage lived lives in a fictional genre, giving this mode of writing a unique interpretive lens that projects new visions of the social. Consequently for theorizing purposes, auto/biographies are meaning-claims that should no longer be read exclusively in terms of their dramatic and documentary values, but more in terms of their theoretical affordances. This paper explores the implications and utility of fictionalized auto/biographical narratives in expanding the ambit of sociological the...
The Philippine Agricultural Scientist, May 11, 2011
Using a complementation of field research and critical review of literature, this paper invigorat... more Using a complementation of field research and critical review of literature, this paper invigorates the concept of gender by examining its linkage with the crop biodiversity conservation praxis explored within the context of rice production. It contends that men and women farmers, with their divergent roles and knowledge bases, contribute to sustainable crop conservation. However, global agriculture disrupted these linkages by pursuing conservation approaches that are gender insensitive. Complementation of the ex situ (genebank) and in situ (on-farm) conservation practices does not address the problem. Rather it begs methodological and ethical questions that have significant policy implications not just on gender-interfaced rice conservation practices at the community level but also for the sustainability of the overall rice conservation initiatives. This essay focuses on the genebank approach.
2015 International Conference on Humanoid, Nanotechnology, Information Technology,Communication and Control, Environment and Management (HNICEM), 2015
This paper presents the development of a speech-controlled human-computer interface (SR-HCI) as a... more This paper presents the development of a speech-controlled human-computer interface (SR-HCI) as a subsystem of the audio-visual breast self-examination guidance system. This aims to better control the system during computer-guided breast self-examination (BSE) performance and allows for user indications of possible tumor locations by dictating it to the system through the speech recognition feature. Speech database for English and Hiligaynon languages are gathered and trained for this application. The speech recognition architecture includes Mel frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCCs) for speech feature extraction, artificial neural network (ANN) for training and classification, and genetic algorithm for optimization. The authors performed tests in the speech recognition system and present the outcomes.
Sociological imagination is an open invitation to theorize from the stories we tell about ourselv... more Sociological imagination is an open invitation to theorize from the stories we tell about ourselves and others. More than self-expression, the sociological ethos of auto/biographical narration is to extend the reality of a solipsistic and exclusive existence into a common and public experience. In order to achieve this, the narrator must convert biographies into scribed realities. The narrating process, however, has unique epistemic anchorage (memory-based) and stylistic requirement (literary) that encage lived lives in a fictional genre, giving this mode of writing a unique interpretive lens that projects new visions of the social. Consequently for theorizing purposes, auto/biographies are meaning-claims that should no longer be read exclusively in terms of their dramatic and documentary values, but more in terms of their theoretical affordances. This paper explores the implications and utility of fictionalized auto/biographical narratives in expanding the ambit of sociological theorizing.
It is fair to say that, although the ability to generalize on the basis of the author’s evidence ... more It is fair to say that, although the ability to generalize on the basis of the author’s evidence is somewhat limited, the author’s elaboration of the notion of the ‘local’ in a settler society is an honest attempt to come to terms with a notion that has, by and large, remained relatively unexplored in British postcolonial societies. Moreover, the author successfully avoids the predictable trap of reducing ‘localism’ to racism. That enables him to successfully explore the connections between the two. Still, his juxtaposition between Anglo-Celtic ‘locals’ and Australian Aborigines fails to take into account other European or Asian immigrants and their descendants. Are these ‘locals’ or not? The author should be praised for the intellectual honesty and integrity that is clearly evident in the text. The book offers undeniable evidence of the author’s intellectual craftsmanship and scholarship. In terms of offering a general theoretical statement or conclusions and ideas that would be portable across cultural contexts, this book contains some insights but no coherent or overreaching theoretical perspective. Obviously, for the Australian context, its value is considerable; it brilliantly illuminates the micro-universe of the (typically viewed as unproblematic) Australian white autochthony. It moreover offers an insider’s view onto that world, illustrated through a masterful and authoritative narrative stemming from the author’s autobiographical journal entries. This is a highly recommended text for people interested in Australia’s notions of white autochthony, localism and the mundane and nuanced ways such notions are inscribed into people’s self-image. Moving beyond Australia, though, the book’s value rests mainly in its exploratory nature and the fact that it is one of the very few studies that have explicitly sought to problematize the local through empirical research. In many ways, it is an invitation for future scholars and researchers to explore new scholarly avenues as well as politically charged territories of meaning construction.
The article presents an empirical understanding of the sacred among the Filipino youth from a mul... more The article presents an empirical understanding of the sacred among the Filipino youth from a multicultural and multifaith context. A multistage item development in Manila and Mindanao was undertaken to prepare a Likert scale meant to explore the empirical dimensions of the construct ‘sacred’. Exploratory factor analysis was utilized to identify the underlying factor structure. The results reveal a four-factor structure: religious, valued, ethical and communal. Filipino youths’ notions veered away from the traditional sacred–profane continuum by introducing a personal–religious dynamic. The results underscore the affinity of the religious dimensions (divine and communal) to Filipino youths’ personal appreciation (ethical and valued) of the sacred.
Humanities Diliman: A Philippine Journal of Humanities, 2017
The affordance of sociology implicates not only the “functionality” (Fil. gamit) element, but emb... more The affordance of sociology implicates not only the “functionality” (Fil. gamit) element, but embraces the dimension of “relevance” (Fil. katuturan ). Henceforth, the germaneness of sociology as a discipline in exploring Philippine social realities and in making sense of the Filipino actions and interactions can no longer be gauged in terms of casual invocation/legitimation of its (Western) discursive trappings. The usefulness of sociology can only be realized if it is used as a perspective and such requires a reflective stance on the whole praxis of appropriating the practices, protocols, and principles of the Eurocentric sociology. As a corollary issue, the paper investigates the ambivalence that characterized the disciplinal identity of sociology—an identity simultaneously forged by the literary and scientif ic traditions during the Industrial Revolution period. Filipino sociologists, however, can exploit this ambivalent identity to launch a sociology that is both faithful to the...
Two situations characterize the state of environmental investigations in the Philippines: (i) the... more Two situations characterize the state of environmental investigations in the Philippines: (i) the epistemic dominance of the ‘natural sciences’ perspective and (ii) the paucity of local resources (which advocate the use of) or which actually employed qualitative methodologies in framing environmental issues and challenges. As to the latter, the few that are available either have utilized the traditional social sciences methodologies e.g., survey and interviews as used in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and similar endeavors or innovated by attempting to hybrid several approaches. More disconcerting is the observation that this dearth of literature has had very little understanding as to the epistemological underpinnings of qualitative approaches in general. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to address these situations by demonstrating that environmental issues are, in fact, socially constructed issues and to highlight the utility and relevance of a qualitative approach...
Feminism - Corporeality, Materialism, and Beyond [Working Title]
This chapter is a sociological rendition of the body-mind issue explored within the context of fe... more This chapter is a sociological rendition of the body-mind issue explored within the context of feminism and agency. Being central to the entire ecology of the feminist claims, bringing the body back into the discursive field allows the appreciation of hitherto emerging insights from the ranks of feminist scholars, notably in the area of new materiality. Problematizing the classical divide between the body and the mind as distinct yet nested spheres of one’s social being pegs the discussion in the language of performance and demonstrability, thus highlighting the agency intrinsic to the body and its movements as a material facticity.
Farmers Gene Banks and Crop Breeding: Economic Analyses of Diversity in Wheat Maize and Rice, 1998
There is growing interest in on-farm conservation as a complementary strategy for conserving rice... more There is growing interest in on-farm conservation as a complementary strategy for conserving rice genetiq resources (Balakrishna, 1996; Bellon, Pham, and Jackson, 1997; Vaughan and Chang, 1992). On-farm conservation has been defined as farmers’ continued cultivation and management of a diverse set of crop populations in the agroecosystems where the crop has evolved (Bellon, Pham, and Jackson, 1997). Compared to conservation in gene banks, on-farm conservation is dynamic, because the varieties that farmers manage continue to evolve in response to selection pressures. On-farm conservation also emphasizes the role of farmers in two ways.
ABSTRACT In the last six years, there has been an emergence of food retail establishments that cl... more ABSTRACT In the last six years, there has been an emergence of food retail establishments that claim to advocate and practice locavorism in Manila, capital of the Philippines. Based on three years of field research and new media analysis, we observed that the Manila adaptation of locavorism has striking similarities to and notable differences from its Western cognates, manifesting as complex amalgamations of local-global discourses and materialities. We examine this articulation as an “assemblage” that manifests as hybridities, a product of the combination of Filipino and Western discursive elements and material practices, and as “awkward constructions”, a combination of disengaged consumers, haphazard combinations of local and imported ingredients, and exclusionary consumer spaces. In this distinctive formation, culinary bricoleurs – restaurant owners and chefs – “make do”, rearrange and experiment with a variety of discursive and material components available from the local and the global to create a largely fragmented and messy local food enterprise. We attribute the contingence of this assemblage to the colonial history and post-colonial conditions of the Philippines, where associated power dynamics have shaped locavorism subjects as they negotiate the continued influence of Western culinary culture and navigate the competitive world of food business.
The article contends that neither theory-building nor theorizing is an exclusive means of underst... more The article contends that neither theory-building nor theorizing is an exclusive means of understanding the social in Philippine sociological discourse. Pagdadalumat as a homegrown reflexive inquiry proves to be more proficient and powerful an approach in making sense of the foundational principles of the discipline. Henceforth, the article examines the two implicated issues of doing pagdadalumat in the production of sociological knowledge in the Philippines viz. (i) the concept of kapwa as manifestation of the nexus of the Self and Other (ii) and the epistemological affordances of pagdadalumat versus the rigid evidence-seeking temperament of scientif ic inquiry. At the end, an outline of a sociological model of pagdadalumat is presented—pakiramdaman—anchored on an indigenous communicative practice (pakikipagtalastasan) using four (4) Filipino social constructs—lapit, galang, hiya, lusot—and their corresponding indicators—relasyon, kapwa, sitwasyon, kahihinatnan.
Sociological imagination is an open invitation to theorize from the stories we tell about ourselv... more Sociological imagination is an open invitation to theorize from the stories we tell about ourselves and others. More than self-expression, the sociological ethos of auto/biographical narration is to extend the reality of a solipsistic and exclusive existence into a common and public experience. In order to achieve this, the narrator must convert biographies into scribed realities. The narrating process, however, has unique epistemic anchorage (memory-based) and stylistic requirement (literary) that encage lived lives in a fictional genre, giving this mode of writing a unique interpretive lens that projects new visions of the social. Consequently for theorizing purposes, auto/biographies are meaning-claims that should no longer be read exclusively in terms of their dramatic and documentary values, but more in terms of their theoretical affordances. This paper explores the implications and utility of fictionalized auto/biographical narratives in expanding the ambit of sociological the...
The Philippine Agricultural Scientist, May 11, 2011
Using a complementation of field research and critical review of literature, this paper invigorat... more Using a complementation of field research and critical review of literature, this paper invigorates the concept of gender by examining its linkage with the crop biodiversity conservation praxis explored within the context of rice production. It contends that men and women farmers, with their divergent roles and knowledge bases, contribute to sustainable crop conservation. However, global agriculture disrupted these linkages by pursuing conservation approaches that are gender insensitive. Complementation of the ex situ (genebank) and in situ (on-farm) conservation practices does not address the problem. Rather it begs methodological and ethical questions that have significant policy implications not just on gender-interfaced rice conservation practices at the community level but also for the sustainability of the overall rice conservation initiatives. This essay focuses on the genebank approach.
2015 International Conference on Humanoid, Nanotechnology, Information Technology,Communication and Control, Environment and Management (HNICEM), 2015
This paper presents the development of a speech-controlled human-computer interface (SR-HCI) as a... more This paper presents the development of a speech-controlled human-computer interface (SR-HCI) as a subsystem of the audio-visual breast self-examination guidance system. This aims to better control the system during computer-guided breast self-examination (BSE) performance and allows for user indications of possible tumor locations by dictating it to the system through the speech recognition feature. Speech database for English and Hiligaynon languages are gathered and trained for this application. The speech recognition architecture includes Mel frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCCs) for speech feature extraction, artificial neural network (ANN) for training and classification, and genetic algorithm for optimization. The authors performed tests in the speech recognition system and present the outcomes.
Sociological imagination is an open invitation to theorize from the stories we tell about ourselv... more Sociological imagination is an open invitation to theorize from the stories we tell about ourselves and others. More than self-expression, the sociological ethos of auto/biographical narration is to extend the reality of a solipsistic and exclusive existence into a common and public experience. In order to achieve this, the narrator must convert biographies into scribed realities. The narrating process, however, has unique epistemic anchorage (memory-based) and stylistic requirement (literary) that encage lived lives in a fictional genre, giving this mode of writing a unique interpretive lens that projects new visions of the social. Consequently for theorizing purposes, auto/biographies are meaning-claims that should no longer be read exclusively in terms of their dramatic and documentary values, but more in terms of their theoretical affordances. This paper explores the implications and utility of fictionalized auto/biographical narratives in expanding the ambit of sociological theorizing.
It is fair to say that, although the ability to generalize on the basis of the author’s evidence ... more It is fair to say that, although the ability to generalize on the basis of the author’s evidence is somewhat limited, the author’s elaboration of the notion of the ‘local’ in a settler society is an honest attempt to come to terms with a notion that has, by and large, remained relatively unexplored in British postcolonial societies. Moreover, the author successfully avoids the predictable trap of reducing ‘localism’ to racism. That enables him to successfully explore the connections between the two. Still, his juxtaposition between Anglo-Celtic ‘locals’ and Australian Aborigines fails to take into account other European or Asian immigrants and their descendants. Are these ‘locals’ or not? The author should be praised for the intellectual honesty and integrity that is clearly evident in the text. The book offers undeniable evidence of the author’s intellectual craftsmanship and scholarship. In terms of offering a general theoretical statement or conclusions and ideas that would be portable across cultural contexts, this book contains some insights but no coherent or overreaching theoretical perspective. Obviously, for the Australian context, its value is considerable; it brilliantly illuminates the micro-universe of the (typically viewed as unproblematic) Australian white autochthony. It moreover offers an insider’s view onto that world, illustrated through a masterful and authoritative narrative stemming from the author’s autobiographical journal entries. This is a highly recommended text for people interested in Australia’s notions of white autochthony, localism and the mundane and nuanced ways such notions are inscribed into people’s self-image. Moving beyond Australia, though, the book’s value rests mainly in its exploratory nature and the fact that it is one of the very few studies that have explicitly sought to problematize the local through empirical research. In many ways, it is an invitation for future scholars and researchers to explore new scholarly avenues as well as politically charged territories of meaning construction.
The article presents an empirical understanding of the sacred among the Filipino youth from a mul... more The article presents an empirical understanding of the sacred among the Filipino youth from a multicultural and multifaith context. A multistage item development in Manila and Mindanao was undertaken to prepare a Likert scale meant to explore the empirical dimensions of the construct ‘sacred’. Exploratory factor analysis was utilized to identify the underlying factor structure. The results reveal a four-factor structure: religious, valued, ethical and communal. Filipino youths’ notions veered away from the traditional sacred–profane continuum by introducing a personal–religious dynamic. The results underscore the affinity of the religious dimensions (divine and communal) to Filipino youths’ personal appreciation (ethical and valued) of the sacred.
Humanities Diliman: A Philippine Journal of Humanities, 2017
The affordance of sociology implicates not only the “functionality” (Fil. gamit) element, but emb... more The affordance of sociology implicates not only the “functionality” (Fil. gamit) element, but embraces the dimension of “relevance” (Fil. katuturan ). Henceforth, the germaneness of sociology as a discipline in exploring Philippine social realities and in making sense of the Filipino actions and interactions can no longer be gauged in terms of casual invocation/legitimation of its (Western) discursive trappings. The usefulness of sociology can only be realized if it is used as a perspective and such requires a reflective stance on the whole praxis of appropriating the practices, protocols, and principles of the Eurocentric sociology. As a corollary issue, the paper investigates the ambivalence that characterized the disciplinal identity of sociology—an identity simultaneously forged by the literary and scientif ic traditions during the Industrial Revolution period. Filipino sociologists, however, can exploit this ambivalent identity to launch a sociology that is both faithful to the...
Two situations characterize the state of environmental investigations in the Philippines: (i) the... more Two situations characterize the state of environmental investigations in the Philippines: (i) the epistemic dominance of the ‘natural sciences’ perspective and (ii) the paucity of local resources (which advocate the use of) or which actually employed qualitative methodologies in framing environmental issues and challenges. As to the latter, the few that are available either have utilized the traditional social sciences methodologies e.g., survey and interviews as used in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and similar endeavors or innovated by attempting to hybrid several approaches. More disconcerting is the observation that this dearth of literature has had very little understanding as to the epistemological underpinnings of qualitative approaches in general. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to address these situations by demonstrating that environmental issues are, in fact, socially constructed issues and to highlight the utility and relevance of a qualitative approach...
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Papers by Dennis Erasga