Book Launch/Talk: Tales of the Post-Plantation

The UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies, the UP Third World Studies Center, and the Ateneo de Manila University Press present

A Book Talk on Tales of the Post-Plantation: Unlikely Protagonists of Modern Philippine Banana History with the book's author, Robin Thiers. 

When: November 26, 2024, 10:00 AM to 12:00 NN

Where: Pilar Herrera Hall, Palma Hall, University of the Philippines Diliman

This event serves as the official Philippine launch of Tales of the Post-Plantation, recently awarded the John C. Kaw Prize for Best Book on History at the 42nd National Book Awards. The program will feature discussants Dr. Patricio Abinales and Dr. Karl Friedrik Poblador. 

View details and register here: bit.ly/banana112624 

About the Book: 

Since the late 1960s, the hinterland of the southern Philippine city of Davao has been the epicenter of commercial production and export of Cavendish bananas in Asia. Against a backdrop of elite interests pushing a paradigm of banana-plantation modernity, Robin Thiers opts to tell this sto
ry through the tales of more unlikely protagonists: small-scale farmers, a fungus, and the banana itself. Drawing on original fieldwork and transdisciplinary empirical and theoretical literature, he pushes us to imagine plantations as more-than-human assemblages, both underpinning and subverting the imaginaries of capitalist discipline and anthropocentric control. Destabilizing the epistemic and ontological foundations of the modern plantation, this book is first and foremost an invitation: could we imagine a post-plantation?

About the Author: 

Robin Thiers holds a PhD in Political Sciences from the University of Ghent (Belgium), where he worked at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies. He obtained an MSc in Globalisation and Development from SOAS University of London (UK) and an MSc in Comparative and International Politics from the University of Leuven (Belgium).

Exposing the Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos

UPDATE: The online version of the exhibit may be accessed here.

Exposing the Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos 

An Exhibit

23-27 September 2024
Palma Hall Lobby
UP College of Social Sciences and Philosophy
UP Diliman

In authoritarian propaganda, photographs are a means to misdirect and obfuscate, glossy layers of lies that render the oppressors and plunderers objects of obeisance and desire, of envy and amiability, rather than of resistance and contempt. 

The Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos was a publication of the National Media Production Center (NMPC). The sole task of NMPC then was to “be responsible for the preparation, production, and dissemination of mass media materials for the Office of the President/Prime Minister.” The Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos is an undated booklet, though based on its content, it could not have been published later then 1981. It was likely included in packets containing other publications ghostwritten by intellectuals for Ferdinand E. Marcos which were intended for an international audience and Malacañang guests. Excluding the cover, it is a slim 16-page full-color publication set at letter size (8x11 inches). In it are eleven photographs of Marcos and his family at the height of his authoritarian rule. 

This was masterful propaganda, rendering the dictator into dad, the autocrat as family man; all care and companionship, the tyrant as a loving father. The trick was to never widen the vista from the familial. The one looking at Ferdinand Marcos, at his supposed private presence, was then imbued with a sense of intimacy, of being part of his family. The portrait of the dictator and his family became an inviting rather than a stultifying presence. 

It is this circumscribed and deceptive view that must be widened through historical inquiry so as to situate Marcos and his family within the abject reality of the nation they have oppressed and plundered. As Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s 107th birth anniversary was celebrated again this September as well as the 52nd year since he declared martial law—both while another Marcos is ensconced in Malacañang—it is the intent of the Marcos Regime Research (MRR) of Third World Studies Center (TWSC) to strip away the conjured benevolence of The Private Face of Ferdinand E. Marcos, exposing the power of propaganda that made the Marcos dictatorship a desirable facade of power rather than a prison where one’s humanity was denied. The means to do so come mostly from materials that the Marcoses themselves have kept in Malacañang, which eventually ended up as part of the digitized archive of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). The remnants of their private dealings while luxuriating in the power that they have taken by force from the people through martial law is the other private face of the Marcoses that the PCGG files and other materials expose. This collection of historical materials should be considered public documents. What the Marcoses kept away from the public in their long years in power are the very ones that the MRR program utilizes to critique and expose the guarded private realm where the Marcoses plotted with and supported one another, surrounded by cronies and sycophants, to exercise their almost unbounded privilege in siphoning state resources into their own private, familial repositories. 

Here then are the supposed snapshots of the Marcoses' private lives, made more complete with receipts, letters, and court judgements among others, all proof that when it comes to the Marcoses, the private is publicly funded.

Call for Papers for Kasarinlan: Special Issue on Costs

 Call for Papers: 

Special Issue of Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies on Costs

There are crises behind and ahead of us. Almost behind us is the Covid-19 pandemic; amid us are wars in Palestine and Ukraine; and in store for us, locally, is the 2025 midterm elections where democracy in the Philippines is put to test. For the forthcoming special issue of Kasarinlan, we invite scholars to look at these and similar crises at home and abroad and find out the conditions, resources, and ideas required to live through and move along them. We seek papers that study the actors charged with determining these costs and how costs are undermined through various means of manipulation or distortion. In less-than-ideal situations, we ask, what does it take to accomplish, to have, and to become? In other words, what are the social and personal costs involved in, say, conducting business, governing peoples, averting disasters, producing knowledge, staying alive? Kasarinlan invites submissions that articulate these costs, contextualize them, lay bare their histories, and explain how they are constructed. We are especially interested in contributions that understand and negotiate worth and value beyond the vocabulary of economics.

We welcome contributions that address the following or similar lines of inquiry related to costs:

• How do societies and cultures assign value and reckon with loss?
• What are the economic, social, and personal costs of acquiring goods and services in different crisis contexts?
• What are the costs of ensuring peace, quality education, affordable healthcare, sustainable environment, and good government, among others, in troubled times?
• How are opportunity costs and costs of non-acquisition or loss handled in various crises?
• What are the psychological and emotional toll of living through crises, and what are the costs of setting up and maintaining the support systems necessary to address them?
• How do conflicting media coverage and communication strategies influence public perception and response to crises? What role does accurate information play in managing costs?
• How can innovation and technological solutions be leveraged effectively to address costs in crises?
• Who bears the burden of these costs, and is the burden equitably distributed?
• When does shared cost become a shared sacrifice for the greater good?

Kasarinlan particularly encourages contributions that provide interdisciplinary perspectives, drawing from the fields of medicine, law, environmental science, management, and the arts. Reviews of recent books (published within the last five years) related to the theme on costs are also welcome.

Interested contributors must submit a draft article (6,000 but not more than 8,000 words) with an abstract (not more than 300 words) and six keywords. Reviews should be between 1,500 to 2,000 words. English-language manuscripts must strictly follow the Chicago Manual of Style, while submissions in Filipino should follow the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino Manwal sa Masinop na Pagsulat. For the full author guidelines, please see this link. Submissions to this special issue are accepted from July 1, 2024 until December 31, 2024. 

All inquiries concerning the submission of articles should be addressed to: 

The Editor
Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies
Third World Studies Center
Lower Ground Floor, Palma Hall
College of Social Sciences and Philosophy
University of the Philippines Diliman
Quezon City 1101, Philippines
P.O. Box 210
Telephone:    (Direct Line via PLDT) +63 2 8920 5428
                      (UP Trunkline)+63 2 8981 8500 ext. 2488

Email: kasarinlan.updiliman@up.edu.ph

All submissions should be sent as .doc or .docx via email to kasarinlan.updiliman@up.edu.ph.