Philippine Popular Culture PDF

Philippine popular culture is a Filipino social construction; understanding its forms and dynamics will offer insights into Philippine society and culture. “Much about a society and the personalities of those residing in it can be learned by a systematic study of the literature and popular culture...

Philippine popular culture is a Filipino social construction; understanding its forms and dynamics will offer insights into Philippine society and culture. “Much about a society and the personalities of those residing in it can be learned by a systematic study of the literature and popular culture produced and consumed by that society.” -- Leo Lowenthal, 1961 (as cited by Abad, R., 1991) As a subject, Philippine Popular Culture should discuss “new forms in art. Music, and literature arising from opportunities and demands of mass audiences, markets, and mass media, and their social, economic, and political contexts” (CMO No. 20, s. 2013).At the end of this course, the students are expected to affirm their appreciation of the classic forms of culture as well as discover, discuss, and develop trends in Philippine culture brought about by various internal and external influences. WHAT IS CULTURE? Raymond Williams (1983) calls culture ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’. Williams suggests three broad definitions. First, culture can be used to refer to ‘a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development’. We could, for example, speak about the cultural development of Western Europe and be referring only to intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic factors – great philosophers, great artists and great poets. This would be a perfectly understandable formulation. A second use of the word ‘culture’ might be to suggest ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group’. Using this definition, if we speak of the cultural development of Western Europe, we will have in mind not just intellectual and aesthetic factors, but the development of, for example, literacy, holidays, sport, religious festivals. Finally, Williams suggests that culture can be used to refer to ‘the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity’. In other words, culture here means the texts and practices whose principal function is to signify, to produce or to be the occasion to produce meaning. Culture in this third definition is synonymous with what structuralists and post- structuralists call signifying practices. Using this definition, we would probably think of examples such as poetry, the novel, ballet, opera, and fine art. To speak of popular culture usually means to mobilize the second and third meanings of the word ‘culture’. The second meaning – culture as a particular way of life – would allow us to speak of such practices as the seaside holiday, the celebration of Christmas, and youth subcultures, as examples of culture. These are usually referred to as lived cultures or practices. The third meaning – culture as signifying practices – would allow us to speak of soap opera, pop music, and comics, as examples of culture. These are usually referred to as texts. WHAT IS IDEOLOGY? Ideology is a crucial concept in the study of popular culture. Graeme Turner (2003) calls it ‘the most important conceptual category in cultural studies.’ Like culture, ideology has many competing meanings. An understanding of this concept is often complicated by the fact that in much cultural analysis the concept is used interchangeably with culture itself, and especially popular culture. The fact that ideology has been used to refer to the same conceptual terrain as culture and popular culture makes it an important term in any understanding of the nature of popular culture. What follows is a brief discussion of just five of the many ways of understanding ideology. We will consider only those meanings that have a bearing on the study of popular culture. First, ideology can refer to a systematic body of ideas articulated by a particular group of people. For example, we could speak of ‘professional ideology’ to refer to the ideas that inform the practices of particular professional groups. We could also speak of the ‘ideology of the Labor Party’. Here we would be referring to the collection of political, economic, and social ideas that inform the aspirations and activities of the party. A second definition suggests a certain masking, distortion, or concealment. Ideology is used here to indicate how some texts and practices present distorted images of reality. They produce what is sometimes called ‘false consciousness’. Such distortions, it is argued, work in the interests of the powerful against the interests of the powerless. Using this definition, we might speak of capitalist ideology. What would be intimated by this usage would be the way in which ideology conceals the reality of domination from those in power: the dominant class do not see themselves as exploiters or oppressors. And, perhaps more importantly, the way in which ideology conceals the reality of subordination from those who are powerless: the subordinate classes do not see themselves as oppressed or exploited. It is argued that they are the superstructural ‘reflections’ or ‘expressions’ of the power relations of the economic base of society. We can also use ideology in this general sense to refer to power relations outside those of class. For instance, feminists speak of the power of patriarchal ideology, and how it operates to conceal, mask and distort gender relations in our society. A third definition of ideology (closely related to, and in some ways dependent on, the second definition) uses the term to refer to ‘ideological forms.’ This usage is intended to draw attention to the way in which texts (television fiction, pop songs, novels, feature films, etc.) always present a particular image of the world. This definition depends on a notion of society as conflictual rather than consensual, structured around inequality, exploitation, and oppression. Texts are said to take sides, consciously or unconsciously, in this conflict. The German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1978) summarizes the point: “Good or bad, a play always includes an image of the world.... There is no play and no theatrical performance which does not in some way affect the dispositions and conceptions of the audience.” A fourth definition of ideology is one associated with the early work of the French cultural theorist Roland Barthes. Barthes (2009) argues that ideology (or ‘myth’ as Barthes himself calls it) operates mainly at the level of connotations, the secondary, often unconscious, meanings that texts and practices carry, or can be made to carry. For Barthes, this would be a classic example of the operations of ideology, the attempt to make universal and legitimate what is in fact partial and particular; an attempt to pass off that which is cultural (i.e. humanly made) as something which is natural (i.e. just existing). Similarly, it could be argued that in British society white, masculine, heterosexual, middle class, are unmarked in the sense that they are the ‘normal’, the ‘natural’, the ‘universal’, from which other ways of being are an inferior variation on an original. This is made clear in such formulations as a female pop singer, a black journalist, a working-class writer, a gay comedian. In each instance the first term is used to qualify the second as a deviation from the ‘universal’ categories of pop singer, journalist, writer and comedian. A fifth definition is one that was very influential in the 1970s and early 1980s. It is the definition of ideology developed by the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. Althusser’s (2009) main contention is to see ideology not simply as a body of ideas, but as a material practice. What he means by this is that ideology is encountered in the practices of everyday life and not simply in certain ideas about everyday life. Principally, what Althusser has in mind is the way in which certain rituals and customs have the effect of binding us to the social order: a social order that is marked by enormous inequalities of wealth, status, and power. Using this definition, we could describe the celebration of Christmas as an example of ideological practices. POPULAR CULTURE There are various ways to define popular culture. An obvious starting point in any attempt to define popular culture is to say that popular culture is simply culture that is widely favored or well-liked by many people. And, undoubtedly, such a quantitative index would meet the approval of many people. Such counting would undoubtedly tell us a great deal. Examples: We could examine sales of books, sales of CDs and DVDs. We could also examine attendance records at concerts, sporting events and festivals. We could also scrutinize market research figures on audience preferences for different television programs A second way of defining popular culture is that it is the culture that is left over after we have decided what is high culture. Popular culture, in this definition, is a residual category, there to accommodate texts and practices that fail to meet the required standards to qualify as high culture. In other words, it is a definition of popular culture as inferior culture. What the culture/popular culture test might include is a range of value judgements on a text or practice. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984) argues that cultural distinctions of this kind are often used to support class distinctions. Taste is a deeply ideological category: it functions as a marker of ‘class’ (using the term in a double sense to mean both a social economic category and the suggestion of a particular level of quality). In other words, what started as popular cinema is now the preserve of academics and film clubs. A third way of defining popular culture is as ‘mass culture’. This draws heavily on the previous definition. The first point, those who refer to popular culture as mass culture want to establish is that popular culture is a hopelessly commercial culture. It is mass-produced for mass consumption. Its audience is a mass of non-discriminating consumers. The culture itself is formulaic, manipulative (to the political right or left, depending on who is doing the analysis). A fourth definition contends that popular culture is the culture that originates from ‘the people’. It takes issue with any approach that suggests that it is something imposed on ‘the people’ from above. According to this definition, the term should be used only to indicate an ‘authentic’ culture of ‘the people’. This is popular culture as folk culture: a culture of the people for the people. One problem with this approach is the question of who qualifies for inclusion in the category ‘the people’. Another problem with it is that it evades the ‘commercial’ nature of much of the resources from which popular culture is made. No matter how much we might insist on this definition, the fact remains that people do not spontaneously produce culture from raw materials of their own making. Whatever popular culture is, what is certain is that its raw materials are those which are commercially provided. A fifth definition of popular culture is one that draws on the political analysis of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, particularly on his development of the concept of hegemony. Those using this approach see popular culture as a site of struggle between the ‘resistance’ of subordinate groups and the forces of ‘incorporation’ operating in the interests of dominant groups. Popular culture in this usage is not the imposed culture of the mass culture theorists, nor is it an emerging from below, spontaneously oppositional culture of ‘the people’ – it is a terrain of exchange and negotiation between the two: a terrain, as already stated, marked by resistance and incorporation. The texts and practices of popular culture move within what Gramsci (1971) calls a ‘compromise equilibrium’– a balance that is mostly weighted in the interests of the powerful. For instance, the seaside holiday began as an aristocratic event and within a hundred years it had become an example of popular culture. In general terms, those looking at popular culture from the perspective of hegemony theory tend to see it as a terrain of ideological struggle between dominant and subordinate classes, dominant and subordinate cultures. A sixth definition of popular culture is one informed by recent thinking around the debate on postmodernism. The main point to insist on here is the claim that postmodern culture is a culture that no longer recognizes the distinction between high and popular culture. As we shall see, for some this is a reason to celebrate an end to an elitism constructed on arbitrary distinctions of culture; for others it is a reason to despair at the final victory of commerce over culture. An example of the supposed interpenetration of commerce and culture (the postmodern blurring of the distinction between ‘authentic’ and ‘commercial’ culture) can be found in the relationship between television commercials and pop music. For example, there is a growing list of artists who have had hit records as a result of their songs appearing in television commercials. Finally, what all these definitions have in common is the insistence that whatever else popular culture is, it is definitely a culture that only emerged following industrialization and urbanization. The anxieties engendered by the new cultural space were directly responsible for the emergence of the ‘culture and civilization’ approach to popular culture. The argument, which underpins this particular periodization of popular culture, is that the experience of industrialization and urbanization changed fundamentally the cultural relations within the landscape of popular culture. FORMS OF POPULAR CULTURE The most common forms of popular culture are movies, music, television, video games, sports, entertainment news, fashion, and various forms of social media. CULTURAL CONVERGENCE Cultural convergence has two different aspects. One is that content flows across several kinds of platforms. For example, novels that become television series or movies (Dexter or To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before); manga, webtoons, graphic novels, or comics that become movies or series (Love Alarm or The Black Panther); even amusement park rides that become film franchises (Pirates of the Caribbean). And then there’s Harry Potter who exists in books, films, toys, amusement park rides, candy bars, and more! Another aspect of cultural convergence is participatory culture or fan culture. Participatory fans are on the forefront of blending all the different elements of our shared culture and often doing it across national boundaries. GLOBAL CONVERGENCE Global convergence is the process of geographically distant cultures influencing one another despite the geographic obstacles that separate them. The advantage of global convergence is worldwide access to a wealth of cultural influence. Its downside can be the threat of cultural imperialism. Cultural imperialism is the way that developing countries are “attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating center of the system (Schiller, 1969). CONSUMING AND RESISTING POPULAR CULTURE To maintain or reshape our identities, we both resist popular culture, and actively consume it. If a social group participates forms of pop culture, individuals often feel that they should participate as well. On the other hand, if a social group has concerns about pop culture, individuals will often refuse to engage with that form as well. Popular culture is constantly evolving and is unique to the time and place in which it occurs. Societal influences and institutions merge and diverge to appeal to a broad cross-section of people within a culture. Whether you embrace it or resist it, popular culture serves important cultural functions. Those functions are connected to cultural identities both personal and national. Pop culture is also an economic force that influences how we get information about, and understand, other cultural groups. HISTORY OF POPULAR CULTURE IN THE PHILIPPINES Popular culture, according to National Artist for literature Bienvenido Lumbera in his book Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature, Theatre and Popular Culture (1984, as cited in Garchitorena, n.d.), is highly different from the folk culture and nationalist culture of the Filipinos. In a nutshell, folk culture is the way of living in a place in a specific time and portrays the practices of a certain people, and on how they cope to survive with nature. Nationalist culture is the culture created through colonial resistance with the collective of a people on a given place and time. These two are different from popular culture which can be traced even in the period of Hispanization of the Philippines. According to Lumbera, popular culture in the Philippines was created and used by the Spaniards to the native Filipinos or Indios via plays and literature to get the heart of the natives and win it. The colonial origins of popular culture found in the Philippines can be traced by looking at salient developments in Philippine literature. The first permanent Spanish settlement began replacing the native culture with a Christian and European tradition. The children of the native elite under the tutelage of missionaries became a core group of intelligentsia called 'ladinos', as they became instrumental "in bringing into the vernacular, literary forms that were to be vehicles for the "pacification" of the natives". Popular culture as introduced by the Spanish was "popular" to the extent that it was a "watering-down of Spanish-European culture for the purpose of winning the general populace over to the 'ideology' of the colonial regime." Popular culture at the time was created by colonial authorities, with the aid of the local intelligentsia, to promote the interests of the Church and the State. However, once the native intelligentsia saw the effects of popular culture and knew how to work its way as propaganda, they soon used the Spanish weapon against them. In the 19th century, through the Propaganda Movement, the native intelligentsia used the same forms of popular culture to "undermine the power of the abusive friars and rally the populace to put an end to colonial rule". The advent of American colonialism brought, the properly so-called, popular culture to the Philippines. The liberal policy regarding the printing press, soon through radio, television and film, increased the circulation of popular culture forms. Not only through these forms but also in new media then, such as films. Hollywood films had a near-monopoly in the Philippine market especially in the absence of European movies due to World War I. Early on, the local intelligentsia has the same apprehensions over mass media as they called it commercialization, or vulgarization of art. According to Lumbera, the local intelligentsia noticed that "Popular literature as a commodity intended for a mass market was seen to pose a threat to serious artistic work, because the writers accommodated his art to the demands of the publishers and editors who were more interested in sales rather than aesthetics." More so, "...popular culture is not created by the populace... rather, it is culture created either by the ruling elite or by members of the intelligentsia in the employ of that elite, for the consumption of the populace."; it is "'packaged' entertainment or art intended for the profit of rulers, be they colonial administrators or native bureaucrats and businessmen." To see it in Lumbera's lens, "Popular culture is power, and whoever wields it to manipulate minds is likely to find its literary and technological machinery turned against him when the minds it has manipulated discover its potency as a political weapon." A stable definition of "popular culture" in the Philippine context must be reached. More than the choice of topics that can be included under popular culture study, this also involves defining boundaries or overlaps with respect to other relatively established fields of inquiry (for example, mass communications, drama, literature) in terms of theory, methods, and concerns. There is a need for critical review and integration of all the related literature, to define the problems of and possibilities for future research. Since popular culture in the Philippines was brought about mainly by the entry from the United States of mass media into a culture already heavily American in orientation because of the colonial experience, discussion of popular culture should consider the following and related issues: a) Commodified culture and consumerism, exemplified in the generation of false needs through advertisements and the exposure to an alien lifestyle through forms of popular culture; b) Westernized taste and consciousness, or cultural imperialism and cultural satellization, through imported films, television shows, publications, and popular songs; c) The mystification of Philippine social realities and the pacification of any feelings against current reality by means of the legitimization of economic and political structures not only through the content of TV, radio, film, and comics stories, but also through slogans, government advertising, programming, and the like. The audience, the populus, that makes culture popular rather than elite should be identified in the concrete Philippine context. What is the popular writer's concept of his public? How is his, or the industry's idea of what "sells" formulated? Is there a feedback mechanism? Considering the size of his audience, the popular writer is definitely a significant intellectual. Since the Pilipino writer generally writes for the popular magazines, is he then also a "serious" writer? How is the popular writer then linked to the literary tradition? To what socioeconomic status does he belong, and how is this differentiated from that of his audience? From that of other writers? Does this have bearing on the "popularity" of his work? "Popular culture is power," and since it is not created by the people who "consume" it, who does, and to what purpose? Is it for profit? or for development? or in manipulation? The preceding survey has shown that much of the work done to date on popular culture has been survey work: the history of the field, its current state, its significance in Philippine life, perhaps an evaluation. In these fields - film, radio, television, comics, magazines, - it is now necessary to start narrow-field, in-depth studies. An underlying aesthetic may be determined; the link to tradition; the Filipino quality in the form or an aspect of it; how it functions as a cultural indicator. A few other fields not mentioned here have already been explored by one or two individuals: popular arts, namely the ceramic and crocheted objects that the low-budget housewife buys with which to decorate her home; popular languages, like swardspeak, Taglish, the young slang; popular religiosity, (e.g. the Sto. Niño, the icons hanging in jeepneys, the rites and rituals in Quiapo); food habits; disco culture. But how about the language of gesture, popular architectural taste, sports, graffiti, and that tremendously rich expanse, the pop icon? What Filipino pop icons are there besides the jeepney, and what effect do they have on the community's understanding of itself? Popular culture as a form of discourse serves as a potent force for persuasion and value-building and for the perception of consciousness. In the Philippines today, as we have seen, it is largely available to the urban population in Metro Manila, the primate city, and in the urban centers of education, planning and work, In the rural areas, ethnic culture dominates among the tribal groups; folk culture among the rest. The latter, however, because of rural electrification and the transistor radio, are starting to be touched as well by popular culture. In the small, Third World, developing nation that is the Philippines, in which the majority are the poor, the mass, the populus, popular culture is indeed power, and therefore demands systematic and purposeful attention. ultural identity evolves with historical development. Sometimes the evolution is so slow that the cultural identity of a community is identified as virtually the same as that of centuries ago. This is usually the case for primitive ethnic or tribal identities. In another case, the evolution is fast compared with the first case such that the cultural identity of a community contains many foreign cultural elements although it is still identified with many important ethnic cultural traits. In the third scenario, the evolution is much faster than the second case such that the cultural identity of the group assumes most of the foreign cultural traits, usually those brought about by Westernization. In the last scenario, the evolution is fastest such that the cultural identity of the community is very similar to the Western cultural identity although slight vestiges of its ethnic or racial origin may still be noticeable. The Philippine case belongs to the fourth scenario and the purpose of the paper is to philosophically explain how such a scenario comes about. Certainly, the current usage of the term “cultural identity” is contextual and will have different meanings in different contexts. This is especially true when one migrates to another country and, depending upon the context, he or she will be culturally identified as of ethnic, racial, national, etc., identity. This paper will argue that Filipino cultural identity is still something in the making within the greater purview of the Western culture—a positive cultural identity which Filipinos can be proud of and which foreigners can affirm in a favorable light. Introduction History, on one hand, is defined as the study of the records of the past. This includes written records, archeological artifacts, ruins, and even traditions and literature orally transmitted from generation to generation. Cultural identity, on the other hand, is that aspect or aspects of a culture that a people are proud to identify themselves with and which foreigners usually mention with awe or admiration. “Cultural identity” connotes something positive, admirable, and enduring. It also connotes an ethnic or a racial underpinning. The Ibanag culture is ethnic while the Ibanag as a Filipino (Malay race) is racial. In ordinary everyday speech, however, “ethnic” and “racial” are sometimes used interchangeably. A nation generally consists of different tribes, and so there is a tribal cultural identity and a national cultural identity. It is possible in a war-torn country, as in a civil war, or in a postcolonial nation that there are only tribal cultural identities without a national cultural identity. And each tribe may want secession or complete independence. They would not want to avail themselves of a national citizenship. Cultural traits are aspects of culture and, at least, one or a group of these may serve as a benchmark for cultural identity for as long as the people can positively identify themselves with that benchmark and generally foreigners recognize it. The Japanese sumo wrestling is one example. A negative cultural trait or tradition, as in a tradition of corruption, could not serve as the identifying mark for cultural identity acceptable by the people concerned even if foreigners would keep on mentioning it. This paper will examine the role that history plays in the molding of a people’s cultural identity. In particular it will sketchily trace the evolution of the Filipino national culture and identify aspects of culture that would explain the present state of the Filipino culture. History and Culture The term culture may be defined broadly as the sum total of what a tribe or group of people produced (material or nonmaterial), is producing, and will probably be producing in the future. What they produce—consciously or unconsciously— could be tools, clothing, cooking utensils, weaponry, technologies, unexpected outcomes, mores, or codes as in religion, and the like. And they will continue producing these things, probably with more improved efficiency, design or style, and finesse. The “make” can be distinctly identified—generally speaking—with their tribe or their period in history. If they discontinue producing, (e.g., a particular tool), it is probably because it is replaced with tools of much improved efficiency. The criterion of utility is one consideration here. The former tool has outlived its usefulness. Edward Tylor (1974) looks at culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (italics supplied). My emphasis is on the human production or creation of culture. Production connotes an interiority, (i.e., coming from within the subject himself or herself), that reflects a lived experience. Albert Dondeyne (1964) talks of historicity as emanating from humans, and—to my mind—so is culturicity. Aspects of culture can be acquired, but once acquired they are adapted, reconstituted to fit the existing cultural terrain (either of the individual or the group), or reproduced. Cultural outcomes as in habits, norms plus sanctions, and customs are sometimes unexpectedly, unintentionally, or unconsciously produced. They are noticed as patterns or ways of thinking or behaving much later in life. From time to time they are evaluated, reevaluated, reproduced, reinforced, discarded, modified, or replaced. In other cases, when these outcomes are determined by some goals or purposes, they are consciously produced. Charles Taylor thinks of culture as a “public place” or a “common [social] space” by which an individual is situated or born into, and by which he or she grows in political association with others through a shared communication vocabulary. While the person grows with culture, culture likewise grows with him or her. A national culture is one that towers over and above the minority cultures (multiculturalism) that aspire to become a part of the national culture by first availing their members of “cultural citizenship” by gradually assimilating their individual cultures to the culture-at-large. If we reflect on the life of our ancient ancestors, it is unimaginable to think that their collective memory is not essentially or virtually the same as their cultural history, although much of these may have been forgotten or buried deep in the unconscious. Their culture is distinctively the collective repository of all things: political, social, artistic, linguistic, educational, economic, religious, mythical, legal, moral, and so on. UNESCO (2002) stresses this collectivity of culture as a “set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features of society.” It includes “art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.” It is only very much later that these divisions of culture are given individual emphasis by social scientists and by humanists. And more often we forget that they are parts or features of a people’s culture. Nothing goes beyond culture, as culture over time is history. Culture and Civilization We all know that civilization grows out of culture. That is why we can say that while we can have culture without civilization, we cannot have civilization without culture. The word culture etymologically means “to cultivate” while civilization originally means “citizen” (from civitas), which suggests urbanization or city life with a strong political organization and bureaucracy. The former reflects the process of refinement while the latter reflects the partial or completed process of organized refinement. The refined person is a civilized person. He or she is usually referred to as a “cultured person.” Culture in this regard, that is, “high culture” is usually taken as equivalent to civilization. Below the civilized culture is mass culture, or what is sometimes referred to as “primitive culture,” “barbaric culture,” “low culture,” “uncultured,” “without culture,” or the like. No doubt social scientists think in terms of their specializations. Even among anthropologists they tend to focus on their respective fields. Leslie White (1949) invented the word “symbolate” to refer to a cultural object that comes about from the act of symbolization, such as a work of art, a tool, a moral code, etc. It is argued that culture comes about simultaneously with symbols, for humans have the capacity to use symbols (a type of sign), the capacity to invent or acquire a type of language. Noam Chomsky (1975) argues that every human being has an innate “language acquisition device.” Julian Huxley (1957) classified the social world into “mentifacts” (ideological or belief subsystem), “socifacts” (social relationships and practices, or the sociological subsystem), and “artifacts” (material objects and their use, or the technological subsystem). Archaeologists are diggers of past cultures and can only generally uncover the material remains of a culture while cultural anthropologists focus on the nonmaterial or symbolic aspect of culture. Quite recently, an attempt is made in postmodernism to level off high and low cultures. The pragmatist John Dewey (1960) started it all by arguing that we should not limit art and its appreciation to art museums and art galleries. We can find art in everyday life; in the quality of experience we enjoy. There is art when we see a person with a beautiful face walking by, or one who is exquisitely dressed up, or the elegant clothes in tribal festivals. We find art in a basketball player who gracefully shoots a ball at the ring, or in a nicely decorated cooked food, or in a superb workmanship by a car technician. Mike Featherstone (1991) describes the leveling off process—the elevation of mass, tribal, and popular (“pop”) culture to an equal footing with high culture—as a postmodernist feature of our present civilization. Cultural Identity There is a political or an ideological underpinning in the notion of “cultural identity.” An ideology is a set of values and beliefs that propels an individual or a group of people into action. An identity, ideologically speaking, connotes a feeling of oneness, an emotional acceptance of a totality or, at least, of features within a given totality that one is proud of, an internal or psychological desire to project this totality or its features to others with exuberance, and the anticipation that others will recognize and accept it (totality) or them (features) with respect. Cultural identity is an evolving thing—sometimes slow, sometimes fast. Usually the dominant tribe of a nation will assume the national cultural identity. In other cases, if there are two or more tribes whose cultures are congruous, then they assume an identity using a national name other than the names of their individual tribes, a name that is historically influenced or determined. It is possible that a civilized nation will evolve into a post-nation. Postcolonial nations of Asia are toying with the idea of a regional identity while the nations of Europe are gradually being transformed into post-nations, or they are evolving into a newly emerging regional identity called the European Union (EU). The European Union has a common monetary exchange and has generally transcended national boundaries in terms of commercial and labor concerns. Its corporations are transnational: they do business everywhere. An EU citizen can travel, purchase items, and work anywhere in the Union without a passport or a working permit. Eventually, the EU will assume a regional cultural identity. Unfortunately, some nations—usually postcolonial ones or those nation- states that were once colonies—are still struggling to evolve a cultural identity which they can be proud of, an identity that is not just racial or ethnic but one that lies above ethnicity. The Philippine Situation Four Groups of Filipinos In the Philippine situation, there are many tribes and in the hinterlands we can still find tribal identities—small groups of people wearing their tribal clothes and doing their tribal ways. They are Filipinos in the “cultural citizenship” sense, that is, their national identity is defined in terms of the provisions of the constitution: namely, they are native inhabitants (born here with indigenous parents) of the country. For many of them, their cultural citizenship does not mean anything at all (the Aetas, for example). They know that their ancestors have been living in this country several centuries ago. We can also find a second group of tribes in the Philippines whose cultural identities have been touched by modernization (which in this context is the same as Westernization) in a minimal way. Some of them sent their children to school and they are generally aware of their cultural citizenship. They go to urban areas in either tribal or modern clothes but when they go home, they wear their tribal attire. They identify themselves more as a tribe rather than as a Filipino. A third group of tribes are those that are more modernized compared to the second group. They send their children to school and when they visit the urban areas, especially the big cities, they wear modern clothes and adapt to the ways of modernity. Their identity is defined in terms of their religious persuasion. Some of the educated attend parties and dance in disco houses. They generally identify themselves as Filipinos. But when they go home to their native places, they adjust themselves again to their native or religious ways. There are sectors in this group that spurn being called Filipinos and prefer a different label such as “Moro” or something else. The last group of tribes is the highly modernized (Westernized). They are the largest group consisting of various tribes such as the Tagalog, Bisayan, Ilokano, Kapampangan, and others. Their common perspective is outward or global rather than inward or national. The nationalists or the inward-looking Filipinos in this group are a minority. Renato Constantino (1966) identified them in the article, “The Filipinos in the Philippines,” as the genuine Filipinos. The nationalists are proud of their cultural citizenship and their cultural heritage. They want the country to become a first world in the coming centuries. They want the country to be industrialized and later super-industrialized. They want to see light and heavy industries churning out cars, tractors, airplanes, ships, rockets, and the like. They want political parties with broad programs of government on how to make the country industrialized or super-industrialized and not a crop of political parties and leaders whose main concern is to be in power or to grab power to serve their own selfish interests or pretend to work for the national interests where their idea of “national interests” is vague or misdirected. They reject any group whose economic perspective is provincial despite the advent of the Third Wave civilization, whose outlook is limited to only agricultural and small and-medium- scale industrial development and modernization, and whose labor scenario is to train the workforce into global “hewers of wood and water,” into a “nation of nannies,” or into a nation of second- or third-class workers. They want to build institutions that run into decades but whose fruits are of great significance to nation building. But they are a minority. The Making of a Cultural Identity “Damaged Culture” The present cultural situation has been described as the result of a “damaged culture” (Fallows 1987) where there is lack of nationalism and where what is public is viewed in low esteem, without much national pride. The argument is that the indigenous cultures of the mainstream tribes have been supplanted with Christian and Western values brought about by Spanish and American colonialism. Spain fostered docility and inferiority among the natives while America introduced consumerism and the global educational outlook. Both Spain and America supplanted the native cultures with the combined cultures of Christianity, capitalism, and liberal democracy. Christianity was imposed among the natives and accepted with reluctance, that is, it was blended with native religious and superstitious beliefs such that the resulting Catholic religious version is theandric ontonomy (Mercado 2004), a blend of the sacred and the profane, a compromise between acculturation and inculturation. The Chinese and Spanish mestizos (together with foreign transnational corporations) whose Philippine nationalistic sentiment is generally suspect, basically control capitalism in the Philippines. It is said, for example, that the brochures one read at the planes of the Philippine Airlines (controlled by the Chinese Filipino Lucio Tan) do not promote the many Philippine tourist spots and products while other Asian airlines promote theirs. A Philippine Airlines brochure, for example, had the Malaysian Petronas Twin Towers at its cover. The native political system, the barangay, was of different ideological persuasions, two of which were fully documented: the autocratic and the democratic. The autocratic, of course, was authoritarian or despotic while the democratic had a jury judicial system and a consultative legislative system. The datu or chieftain always consulted the elders. Spanish colonialism practiced the autocratic system while American colonialism trained the Filipinos in the democratic system. However, the liberal democracy that developed was the presidential—not the parliamentary—system, and the Filipino version of it always became a clash, instead of a partnership, between the executive and legislative branches of government. The consequences were inefficiency in the passage of vital laws, delays in the approval of the annual budget that likewise delay the needed financial increases in the delivery of basic services, nontransparent accountability of executive officials through the legislative system in terms of financial expenditures on certain projects (thereby fostering accusations of alleged corruption), and the apparent political opposition’s penchant attitude for legislative inquiries not in aid of legislation but in aid of government destabilization (during the time of the Arroyo administration). The net result of all these is the slow pace of national development. Right now, a number of people appear to favor the shift from the presidential to the parliamentary system. In fact, many of them believe that the main culprit why the Philippines lag behind its Asian neighbors in economic development is the slow-responsive presidential political system. They want distinct political programs such as a labor party that fights for labor rights as against a party that favors the rich or other sectors of society. CONCLUSION While culture develops in history and history feeds on culture for its development, some individuals and groups move faster in cultural and historical development while others lag behind in various stages of growth. This is not only true among persons and tribes but also among nations or states. Filipino nationalists and patriots describe the Philippines as a nation without a soul, a cultural shipwreck that does not know where it is going. It is said to be a “damaged culture,” with nothing much to be proud of historically as a nation. Its Christianity is sacrilegiously adulterated (see Gripaldo 2005c), its declaration of independence short-lived, its political leaders apparently directionless (their goals are at cross- purposes with each other such that the net effect was to cancel out), and its culture largely draped with colonial and crab mentalities. At this point in time, the Filipino people should not think of what the Filipino nation or its political leaders can do for them, but of what they as ordinary citizens can do for their nation. Some ordinary citizens are better situated than others, and while their political leaders may still be wondering what is wrong with them, these better-situated citizens can take the lead in pursuing a grand vision for their country through civil societies. The task of these societies should be to restore hope among the hopeless, provide the means for them to develop a sense of human dignity, and to take pride in their own produce, on their own effort toward cultural development and nation-building.