Filipino culture and Filipino politics: A preliminary anthropological view

Abstract

Dr. Sibley was a Fulbright professor of anthropology who did some field work in Barrio Ma-ayo, Negros Occidental (1954-1955). He was an associate professor of anthropology at Washington State University, Pullman, Washington.

It is a distinct pleasure and privilege to be invited to talk to you today. In the more than ten years in which I have been involved in research about the Philippines, here and in the United States, I have had too little opportunity to meet people at your level of Philippine society. Your group the professionals, businessmen, and educators is one which is both the result of, and a prime mover in the social changes taking place in the Philippines today.

It is my hope that my long involvement in Philippine research, including more than two years’ intensive field studies, will allow me to speak more meaningfully about Philippine culture and society than some of my fellow foreigners who are too inclined to write books and articles about the country after a stay of a week or a month. I join you in your dislike for their frequent inaccuracy and superficiality. It is also my hope to take advantage of being an outsider for often outsiders see things in a new light because they have not grown up with them. Just as Americans take most of American culture for granted without much thought, so Filipinos are likely to remain unaware of some of the interrelations among parts of their own society and culture.