EVERYDAY POLITICS IN THE PHILIPPINES Class and Status Relations in a Central Luzon Village

KERKVLIET, BENEDICT J. TRIA

ISBN 10: 0520069870 / ISBN 13: 9780520069879

Published by UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, BERKELEY, CA,, 1990

About this Item

CLEAN COPY. Seller Inventory # 013596

Bibliographic Details

Title: EVERYDAY POLITICS IN THE PHILIPPINES Class ...

Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, BERKELEY, CA,

Publication Date: 1990

Binding: PAPERBACK

Condition: VG

Edition: 1ST

About this title

Synopsis:

In this rich and probing study, an experienced ethnographer examines the everyday politics of a rice farming village in central Luzon. Contending that the faction and patron-client relationships emphasized by conventional studies of Philippine politics turn out to be only one small part of political life, Kerkvliet offers a highly nuanced and fascinating portrait of political relationships among villagers. The world he portrays is complex and multifaceted: in a period of flux, relations of status and class shift as traditional roles give way to new social identities. Kerkvliet demonstrates how disputes about claims to land or controversies around wages lie at the heart of political life regardless of whether they manifest themselves in the usual "political arenas."

Kerkvliet shows how everyday politics gives evidence of contending beliefs about what is just and who has rights to particular resources. Furthermore, relationships between people in different class and status positions are far less harmonious than they might appear on the surface. Embedded in this contentious interaction are divergent ideas about how resources should be distributed—the privileged emphasize values supported by capitalism, while the poor press for rights to satisfy basic needs and for human dignity.

Everyday Politics in the Philippines is a comprehensive and masterful study that revises our notions of political life in rural areas of the Third World. It is a distinguished work of scholarship that will appeal to a broad range of social scientists.

About the Author:

Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, author of The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (University of California Press, 1977), and co-editor of Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance in Southeast Asia (1986).