#gideon lasco

[arkipelagic]

The threat of crime and violence, both actual and perceived, has lingered in our societal imagination, perpetuated by "moral panics" over, for instance, the kidnapping scares and dramatic rape cases of the 1990s and the constant hyping up of drugs as an exceptional, existential threat to the country. In places like Davao City where leaders have appealed to people's sense of fear and their felt need for protection against crime (in other words, penal populism), checkpoints serve to dramatize a sense of safety. And, of course, homeowners associations also look for the sense of security, especially with reports of theft and other crimes.

Thus, the appeal of "gated communities" plus the fact that for many Filipinos, they remain an important symbol not just of one's status but of success in one's career.

• • •

Perhaps what's unique is the pervasiveness of this phenomenon in our country. Even with the threat of school shootings in the US, campuses have remained open—you can easily walk into Harvard Yard and even enter its buildings. In contrast, in Ateneo de Manila University, visitors have to book an appointment in advance and even within the same campus, one needs additional authorization to go to other buildings. Numerous gates and checkpoints abound elsewhere, making valid IDs essential-and further exclusionary (see "Our fetish for valid IDs," 07/22/22).

Now, I do not seek to downplay the need for security, nor to dismiss the trauma over past events that led to such responses. Indeed, violence is an everyday reality for many Filipinos, and while empathy for others is always in short supply—think of Jemboy Baltazar—the impulse to protect one's family and community is ever present and fully understandable. From an organizational standpoint, there is a cost in opening up in the public; University of the Philippine Los Baños' Vice Chancellor Roberto Cereno, for instance, laments the amount of trash they have to deal with after each weekend.

• • •

The downside of gated communities is that they engender a sense of mistrust, perpetuating the "othering" of people who do not belong to our imagined communities. Already unreachable to many Filipinos, private universities become even more distant, and in the process of locking people out, they also lock people in, limiting the perspectives of their students and faculty; making them not just out of reach but out of touch. As Low warned, "adding walls, gates, and guards produces a landscape that encodes class relations and residential… segregation more permanently in the built environment."

by Gideon Lasco

[womanlalaboy]

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If you feel reduced for being a Filipino, especially these days, try reading The Philippines Is Not A Small Country by Gideon Lasco. You just might regain that Filipino pride along with widening your perspective. Nonetheless, this is a good read.

[leng-m]

I managed to read 4 books on Filipino culture and history in 2023! Here we have

The Philippines is not a Small Country by Gideon Lasco

Chulalongkorn's Elephants by Ambeth Ocampo

Babaylan Sing Back by Grace Nono

Asian Place, Filipino Nation by Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz

All of these are excellent books, and I highly suggest the first three. The last one was bogged down with academic jargon, but still informative.

I keep a bibliography on my website of all the resources I've read on Filipino history/culture in case anyone's interested!

[nateconnolly]

That Margaret Mead quote is completely fake. It was invented by the Christian missionary Paul Brand.

Oh, I know! The very first reblog of that Mead post is me linking the Gideon Lasco article debunking the attribution of that alleged quote.

I didn't include that on the original post because I try to draw a line between poetry and the poet's own commentary. Incidentally, I don't endorse the claim that compassion is the first sign of civilization, regardless of who did or did not say it.

[lavendarsblue]

Only with a sense of history can history be the judge that is immune to the seduction of power and the eroding influence of time’s passage. And herein lies our comfort: For as long as we bear the memories of injustice, the hope of a fair verdict remains.

Gideon Lasco, Memory as Resistance

[diwangpalaboy]

DS 123 (1st)

Matching type 1. kamalayan 2. ethno-wisdom 3. “communities were connected, not separated, by water” 4. land-oriented mindset 5. saribuhay 6. Gideon Lasco 7. Ted Esguerra 8. Benjamin Mangubat (retired DSS faculty) 9. material/objective condition 10. #anthro a. biodiversity b. economic base c. makatao d. historian and an advocate of maritime consciousness e. consciousness f. emergency physician g. William Henry Scott (former DSS faculty) h. medical anthropologist i. tacit knowledge j. continental orientation

[accuratepicuresofanthropologists]

Gideon Lasco has a new piece over at Sapiens on what dog breeds say about racial hierarchies and colonialism in the Philippines. It has a picture of him with his dog! I love pictures of anthropologists with dogs!

[jerardeusebio]

What a joy to finally start reading this gift of a book. Thank you, Gideon Lasco, for your essays which, to me, have always held exhilarating and infectious love for our country.

THE PHILIPPINES IS NOT A SMALL COUNTRY is available via Ateneo De Manila University Press.

[quiet-fern]

Tagged by @ampiyas to post my reading list for 2021. Coincidentally, I was able to come up with my own 2021 challenge with 21 prompts just this week :>

I’m so shy and still new to this side of Tumblr haha but I love all the mutuals I met this year 💖

Tagging @panaceaphantastica @neurotic-nymph @elderf1ower @brujasdelmar @moonlitpool if you wanna ~

Here goes!! Feel free to reblog or suggest titles under the prompts. For next year, I want to read more women or POC authors! Same goal with @ampiyas, I also have to read more from my country ! PM me if you wanna read a book together!!

💌 READING LIST 2021 💌

Hayao Miyazaki Recommendation (Childrens YA)

- Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

- 20000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Magic Realism

- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

- House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

Latin American Author

- Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector

- Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros

Russian Author

- Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

- Complete Collection of Poetry of Anna Akhmatova

Poetry Collection of an Author I Already Like

- Duino Elegies by Rainer Rilke

- Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverman

Essay Collection by A Woman

- A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

- Plainwater by Anne Carson

Diary of Woman POC and/or LGBTQ+

- Diary of Frida Kahlo

- First journal of Anaïs Nin

Contemporary Fiction by A Woman

- Little Weirds by Jenny Slate

- Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo

Philippines Social Issue

- The Philippines is Not A Small Country by Gideon Lasco

- Stories of Struggle: Experiences of Land Reform in Negros, Philippines by Sarah Wright

Philippines History and Culture

- Isabelo’s Archive by Resil Mojares

- Culture and History by Nick Joaquin

Indigenous Peoples or First Nations History

- As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker

- An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Africa History

- Still looking for books on this!

Food Colonization

- Still looking for books on this!

Connection to Nature

- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer

- The Overstory by Michael Powers

Climate Change

- The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

- Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

Graphic Novel

- Maus (all volumes) by Art Spiegelman

- Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Essays on Art or Design

- In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki

- Design As Art by Bruno Munari

Essays on Food

- You And I Eat the Same by Chris Ying

- Foundations of Flavor by Rene Redzepi

Creativity Instructional

- Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

- Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver

Book About New York

- The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead

- Don’t Be A Tourist in New York by Vanessa Grail

Horror written by a woman

- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

- Haunting on Hill House by Shirley Jackson

[medica-pseudoacademica]

In AIM Global’s [a MLM group’s] training sessions, marketing techniques and principles of do-it-yourself entrepreneurship are mixed with metabolic messages, in which C24/7 [AIM Global’s product] promises “round-the-clock cellular health.” “Be your product” is an important principle of AIM Global’s sales strategy. “The best drug pusher,” states one of the AIM Global’s trainers in an ode to the power of personal testimony, “is a drug user.” In their sales talks, trainers introduce distributors who give personal testimonies. Twenty-eight-year-old Jess, a security guard, tells the audience how he surmounts his customers’ reluctance by telling them that he, too, was skeptical about MLM, having signed up only after he and his wife used C24/7 to enhance their fertility. He tells them that they had been married for eight years and had not yet conceived when a friend told them about C24/7, and after four months, his wife was pregnant. Another trainer, Erick, says the DHA in the product is good for the brain and that his family has personally experienced its wonders: his daughter, aged two, can already read and speak phrases in English.

- Anita Hardon, Ian Anthony B. Davatos, and Gideon Lasco, “Be your product: On youth, multilevel marketing, and nutritional cure-alls in Puerto Princesa, Philippines” in American Ethnologist 46(4): November 2019 (link)

[byalung]

Karen Davila at Arnold Clavio,  nagkakainitan sa isyu sa press freedom

Ni NITZ MIRALLES

Karen DavilaDAHIL sa nangyayari sa Rappler, magkakaisyu pa yata sina Karen Davila ng ABS-CBN at Arnold Clavio ng GMA-7.  (more…)

[huttson-blog]

Beyond Fuji: three challenging hikes in Japan, and how to prepare for them — ABS-CBN

Read more at ABS-CBN

— Gideon Lasco: Serious climbers can look forward to a packed itinerary in Japan. Our climbing expert — who has climbed 25 of Japan’s 100 Famous Mountains — lists down three recommendations to check out as well as helpful reminders before booking your trip

July 6, 2019

[leng-m]

Beset by these questions in the Old City, where the streets have seen much blood throughout centuries, one's mind can wander from a cynicism over the human condition to a hope in God's sovereignty and justice. Regardless of one's peregrinations, however, one lesson is clear: only with a proper sense of history can a nation move from the tragedies of its past and pursue a better future.

"We are who we are because we remember," our guide told us.

"Alas," I should have told him, "we are who we are because we forget."

—The Philippines is not a Small Country, Gideon Lasco

[diwangpalaboy]

DS 123 reading and study task - updated

F Landa Jocano https://upd.edu.ph/~updinfo/oct13/articles/F_Landa_Jocano.html

Ambeth Ocampo https://peoplepill.com/people/ambeth-ocampo/

Michael Tan https://upd.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Michael-L.-Tan-CV.pdf

Gideon Lasco https://www.gideonlasco.com/p/about-me.html

Jayeel Cornelio https://ateneo.edu/ls/soss/development-studies/faculty/cornelio-jayeel-s

Ramon Guillermo https://www.up.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/R-Guillermo-updated.pdf

Alice Guillermo https://www.rappler.com/life-and-style/arts-and-culture/208453-art-critic-alice-guillermo-dies

Rolando Tolentino https://filminstitute.upd.edu.ph/rolando-b-tolentino/

[phgq]

Palace rejects study tagging Duterte as 'medical populist'

#PHnews: Palace rejects study tagging Duterte as 'medical populist'

MANILA – Malacañang on Wednesday rejected a study which attributed the “medical populist” leadership style of President Rodrigo Duterte for the country’s alleged failure to suppress the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry said Duterte and members of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) have been guided by “science” and “hard data” in the government’s fight against the deadly virus.

“The President, together with the members of the Inter-Agency Task Force, has met the challenges of Covid-19 head-on, with science and hard data guiding the Chief Executive’s decisions and actions, contrary to the ‘medical populism’ leadership style issue raised by some quarters,” he said in a statement.

Roque said “concrete interventions” to slow down the Covid-19 infection rate have also been put in place.

“The Duterte Administration has put in place concrete interventions to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, which includes ramping up the country’s testing capacity, enhancing contact tracing efforts, and scaling up of local health system capacity, especially for community isolation and critical care,” he said.

He also pointed out that a “whole-of government” and “whole-of-society” approaches are implemented to manage the health crisis.

“The national government’s approach is whole-of-government and whole-of-society, where every sector from public health to economics has been consulted, to ensure that the adverse impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is addressed in our National Action Plan,” he added.

Lancet Covid-19 Commission, which also named Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and US President Donald Trump, earlier ranked the Philippines 66th out of 91 countries in terms of controlling the transmission of the virus, because of Duterte's "medical populist" style of leadership.

The study, released in time for the 75th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly, drew from the study of medical anthropologist Gideon Lasco.

It described political leaders resorted to “simplifying the pandemic by downplaying its impacts or touting easy solutions or treatments, spectacularizing their responses to crisis, forging divisions between the ‘people’ and dangerous ‘others,’ and making knowledge claims to support the above.”

"All countries should combat decisions based on rumor-mongering and misinformation. Leaders should desist from expressing personal viewpoints that are at odds with science," the commission said.

According to the study, a country was able to suppress the transmission of the virus if there were five or fewer cases per million pollution per day in August, those with “low” transmission are countries with 10 or fewer new cases per million population per day, and those with “moderate transmission” are nations with 10 to 50 new infections per million per day.

The Philippines falls under the “moderate” category with 37.5 new daily cases per million population in August.

As of Wednesday, Covid-19 cases in the country rose to 294,591, of which 5,091 are deaths and 231,373 are recoveries. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Palace rejects study tagging Duterte as 'medical populist'." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1116429 (accessed September 24, 2020 at 03:54AM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Palace rejects study tagging Duterte as 'medical populist'." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1116429 (archived).

[popbee]

強生下架美白產品，引起日本人的關注！追求白皙膚色是對是錯？

反種族主義的聲音在美國尚未停息，醫療製藥巨頭強生公司（Johnson & Johnson）決定停產美白產品，包括 Neutrogena 的 Fine Fairness 以及 Clean & Clear 的 Clear Fairness，都會從亞洲和中東市場下架。強生解釋，此舉是為了提倡健康膚色就是美麗，此外它旗下的 Band-Aid 亦推出了適合不同膚色的膠布，以顯示重視種族平等的改革決心。

美白＝想變成白人？日本人的疑慮

強生的做法引起了廣泛關注，《紐約時報》引述種族正義倡導組織 Race Forward 的研究副總裁 Dominique Apollon 的話，表示強生公司停止出售美白產品、引入深膚色膠布的決定有著積極影響，早就應該要這樣做。然而另一邊廂卻有著不同的聲音：據 WWD Japan 報道，下架美白產品令日本人十分疑惑，在社交媒體 SNS 上議論不斷。他們對這種極端的做法提出質疑：難道「亞洲人想要美白」就等於「想變成白人」？也有人指出，日本自江戶時代以來，美白化妝品一直發展蓬勃，更有「一白遮三醜」的類似說法。《源氏物語》之類的古典文學作品也讚揚白皙之美，日本男女都採用米粉以至鉛等物質，追求光潔無瑕的皮膚，這種審美觀亦深植於中華社會之中，相信大家亦不陌生。

下架美白產品的意義

在日本、韓國以至香港、台灣，美白產品通常都標榜減退斑點和暗沉，可是在歐美或是印度等地，美白卻有「漂白皮膚」的含意，甚至在非洲捲起了倡議「白就是美」的觀念，因此被視為冒犯了天生膚色棕黑的人。據估計，到 2024 年，全球皮膚美白市場預計將達到 312 億美元。品牌極力渲染美白的重要，甚至帶來嚴重的後果。

菲律賓大學人類學系的高級講師 Gideon Lasco 就曾分享過，當地人認為皮膚美白是一項投資，能帶來晉升或更好的工作機會。除了臉部外，更有針對身體各部位如：手、腋下以至私處的美白產品。過於沉溺於美白上，不僅為他們造成經濟負擔，更有可能危害身體健康，例如很多美白產品含有水銀（汞），雖然世界衛生組織就已表明水銀會損害腎臟，但是無礙人們購買這些護膚品。甚至有馬尼拉的父母為嬰兒注射抗氧化物質穀胱甘肽，令他們看上去「更可愛」。

有人指出，美白霜只是殖民主義的產物，強化了白人的優越感，因為皮膚白過往代表著不必勞動的富裕階層。強生公司下架美白系列，不管是出於企業責任，還只是在大勢所趨下爭取形象，似乎都有助菲律賓國家的人們擺脫美白文化的綁架。而站在日本人的角度，覺得強生認為矯枉過正，正正反映了這種文化差異。

我們還應該美白嗎？

隨著時尚媒體倡議多元化審美，長雀斑的女生亦一樣被視為有個性，甚至連臉上的痘痕也不值得遮遮掩掩，像是 Zara 之前曾起用滿臉雀班的模特拍照，Olay 宣佈不再為廣告照修圖，都可見時尚美妝界開始強調潔白無瑕以外的美態。

現在我們說到美白，比起追求白皙的膚色，可能更在乎的是均勻、透亮的皮膚。台灣化妝品原料供應商 Corum 的市場經理 Lisa Lien 就指出，亞洲市場對美白護膚產品的需求有增無減，除了因為亞洲女生崇尚乾淨而容光煥發的肌膚外，亦出於對紫外線傷害的深徹了解。

在社交媒體主導的世代，我們活在鋪天蓋地的廣告裏，很難不受到潛而默化的影響，將「淨白」、「白滑」等詞語與美劃上等號。但我們亦越來越有能力分辨，自己到底追求的是純粹皮膚白，還是肌膚從內而外的健康狀態。最理想的社會，正是有著多元化的審美，能讓每個人都選擇自己心目中的美，而不是用任何一種美去壓倒另一種，或抱持高姿態來批判其他選擇。筆者認為，我們應該對媒體塑造的標準保持警惕，走在變美、變白的路上，也毋須過分在意他人的評價，才不會活於焦慮之中。你們又怎麼看？

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