Remembering love: Memory work of orphaned children in the Philippine drug war

2020 ◽  
pp. 146801732097291
Author(s):  
Mira Alexis Ofreneo ◽  
Nico Canoy ◽  
Luz Maria Martinez ◽  
Pacita Fortin ◽  
Merlie Mendoza ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Drug War ◽  
Orphaned Children ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
Social Provisions

Summary The “war on drugs” in the Philippines has left a generation of Filipino orphaned children in deep grief and social disarray. Using feminist memory work as critical methodology and intervention design, this study examines accounts of 56 orphaned children and how they exercise agency embedded in the collective remembering of a traumatic past (i.e. rooted in painful memories of tokhang or community police operations) and to identify social structures that marginalize their present and future lifeworld. Findings Findings show three overarching themes namely: (1) reclaiming stripped agency in the loss and injustice of the past, (2) holding on to crippled agency in the sadness and insecurity of the present, and (3) carrying on with agency to hope for healing and justice in a reimagined future. Applications Insights and recommendations to critical praxis of social work in light of an ongoing drug war are further discussed which include strengthening civil societies and intersectoral collaborations, integrating specific social provisions for tokhang survivors in the creation of a national orphan policy, and using digital memorialization. Guided by enacting ethics and politics of caring for and with the marginalized, social workers working alongside expanded communities of care are called to remember love despite traumatic pains and to restore homes for orphaned children in the midst of state insecurity.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE GRANDMOTHERS OF PLAZA DE MAYO'S MNEMONIC FRAMING*

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-492
Author(s):  
Nicole Iturriaga
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Emerging Technologies ◽  
Military Regime ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
State Terror ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Framing Strategies ◽  
Political Landscapes

This article illustrates how human rights activists are negotiating post-authoritarian situations via framing strategies that counter the state's narrative of the past, puts state terror on full display, and aids activists in achieving their goals. In this article, I analyze the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo as a successful mnemonic-memory movement that advanced an alternative collective memory of Argentina's last military regime (1976–1983). I specifically focus on their use of memory work and the evolution of their framing approach. I demonstrate how their framing and frame bridging (rights of families, depoliticized science) was an emergent process that materialized across time and alongside emerging technologies, culminating in their overarching “right to identity” frame. Moreover, I analyze how the Grandmothers used these frames to navigate changing political landscapes and obstacles, and to attack social structures maintaining impunity for the regime's crimes. I ultimately argue that these actions, alongside their extensive memory work, have provided them a loud and powerful voice over the collective memory of Argentina's violent past.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Russell Crandall
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Domestic Policy ◽  
World War ◽  
Drug War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Cost

This chapter presents a comprehensive reckoning of one of America's longest-standing, most controversial, and least successful efforts in foreign and domestic policy. It focuses on the history, impact, and logic behind America's war on drugs. It also considers the entirety of the evidence amid a deeply polarized and highly selective discourse of the policies, controversies, failures, and successes on the war on drugs of the past several years. The chapter talks about the cost of the drug war that reached more than a trillion taxpayer dollars, which is roughly ten times the price tag of the Gulf War or three times that of World War I. It emphasizes how drugs produced domestically and abroad continue to proliferate despite decades of effort to eradicate them.

Ambiguous fear in the war on drugs: A reconfiguration of social and moral orders in the Philippines

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
Anna Bræmer Warburg ◽  
Steffen Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The State ◽  
Drug War ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Discourses

This article explores the social and moral implications of Duterte's war on drugs in a poor, urban neighbourhood in Manila, the Philippines. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, surveys, and human rights interventions, the article sheds light on policing practices, social relations, and moral discourses by examining central perspectives of the state police implementing the drug war, of local policing actors engaging with informal policing structures, and of residents dealing with everyday insecurities. It argues that the drug war has produced a climate of ambiguous fear on the ground, which has reconfigured and destabilised social relations between residents and the state as well as among residents. Furthermore, this has led to a number of subordinate moral discourses — centred on social justice, family, and religion — with divergent perceptions on the drug war and the extent to which violence is deemed legitimate.

scholarly journals Rafael Lerma’s Photojournalistic Take on the Duterte Administration’s Drug War: A Counter-Barthesian Semiological Study

Plaridel ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-110
Author(s):  
Feorillo A. Demeterio III,
Keyword(s):  
Early Phase ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The State ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Drug War ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Iconic Image ◽  
National Police

Rafael Lerma is an award-winning and outspoken Filipino photojournalist who works for the broadsheet The Philippine Daily Inquirer. When President Rodrigo Duterte took office on 01 July 2016 and started to implement his campaign promise to mount a thorough war on drugs, Lerma became one of the photojournalists who consistently documented the grisly track of the said war. His most iconic image—that of a dead pedicab driver being cradled by his grief-stricken widow—did not escape the rambling speech of the President himself during the latter’s first State of the Nation Address. This paper culls 25 of Lerma’s most famous images related to the Duterte administration’s drug war. From these 25 images, six recurrent sociocultural icons have been identified: 1) poverty; 2) the dehumanization/demonization of the casualties; 3) religion; 4) the weakness of governance in the Philippines; 5) Operation Plan Tokhang conducted by the Philippine National Police; and 6) the state and the nation. By subjecting these visual sociocultural icons to an inverted version of the semiology of the early phase of the French philosopher and cultural critic Roland Barthes, the researcher textually explores Lerma’s take on the said war. Furthermore, this paper theoretically tests the capacity of Barthes’ semiology to tackle not only ideological discourses that are tucked beneath some sociocultural icons but more so counter-ideological discourses that are launched by the less privileged sectors of society.

scholarly journals Collusion or collision? The war on drugs in the Philippines

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco J. Lara, Jr ◽  
Nikki Philline C. De la Rosa
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Shadow Economy ◽  
Public Support ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Illegal Drug ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
Drug War ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
Violent Extremism

The spiral of State-led violence against the illegal drug trade in Southeast Asia did not end nor disrupt this shadow economy and its complex links to state and non-state actors as well as the newly emerging violent extremism. The evidence in fact shows that the violent response to the problem has only fuelled more economic, political, and security concerns. The case is the same in the Philippines where an indiscriminate and violent war on drugs has not lived up to its promises. Yet why is there continued public support for the anti-drug war despite its failures, and from among those that are often victimized by its violence? This paper takes an economic sociology approach to the problem of illegal drugs and turns the spotlight on the threats to embedded social networks posed by this deadly enterprise. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence and case studies of a province and city recognized as a hotbed in the government’s anti-drug war, the study will show how collusion and collision are alternate realities and means of adapting to an illicit enterprise that is bound to many social and economic arrangements, including those brought about by violent extremism.

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

Democracy in a Time of Misery

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Curato
Keyword(s):  
Field Research ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Gallup Poll ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Value

Misery rarely features in conversations about democracy. And yet, in the past decades, global audiences are increasingly confronted with spectacles of human pain. The world is more stressed, worried, and sad today than we have ever seen it, a Gallup poll finds. Does democracy stand a chance in a time of widespread suffering? Drawing on three years of field research among communities affected by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, this book offers ethnographic portraits of how collective suffering, trauma, and dispossession enlivens democratic action. It argues that emotional forms of communication create publics that assert voice and visibility at a time when attention is the scarcest resource, whilst also creating hierarchies of misery among suffering communities. Democracy in a Time of Misery investigates the ethical and political value of democracy in the most trying of times and reimagines how the virtues of deliberative practice can be valued in the context of widespread suffering.

scholarly journals Persistent shallow magnetic inclination in the past 5 million years and implications for regional tectonics in the Philippines

2021 ◽  
pp. 100048
Author(s):  
Decibel V. Faustino-Eslava ◽  
Hidetoshi Shibuya ◽  
Carla B. Dimalanta ◽  
Graciano P. Yumul ◽  
Jonathan T. Macuroy
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
The Past ◽  
Magnetic Inclination ◽  
Regional Tectonics
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