Introduction

To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for … those who may look like the keepers of our past, but who may really be the guides to our future. (Arundhati Roy)

This special issue of South East Asia Research was driven by two things. The first was a need to memorialize an extraordinarily vibrant Annual Philippine Studies Conference on the Philippine Cordillera, which, while held two years ago, continues to have an impact on relationships among local Igorot diaspora, academic institutions in the Philippines and SOAS. The second impetus for this issue was more heuristic. Taking its cue from the South East Asia Research editorial board’s renewed vision of seeking to engage with ‘positive and collaborative engagements with “Otherness” and difference’ (Harrison 2019), this narrativization of the process, product and afterlife of this special issue, is an attempt to work out recalibrated theoretical and methodological approaches in South East Asian Studies research from the West (Huat et al. 2019, 33, 45; Jackson 2019; Harrison and Helgesen 2019). Aware of the Eurocentric biases of what is now called New Area Studies (Guillermo 2020 critiquing Houben 2017) and the increasing (and perhaps inexorable) trend towards South East Asian Studies by and for South East Asians, the impetus for the production of this special issue situates itself in situ – working with what it has available for its use: a discursive and inscriptive space that is open to the value of difference, a South East Asian diaspora that is redefining the production and reception of Area Studies research, and a porous geo-spatial label whose stated purpose in its enterprise of knowledge production is to generate agency and affect.

Situating the conference

While not technically a set of conference proceedings, the articles in this special issue are based on papers presented at the Annual Philippine Studies Conference held at SOAS in July of 2018. The Conference was organized by Philippine Studies at SOAS (PSS), officially established in 2017 through an externally funded seed grant. This non-degree granting entity, under the Centre of South East Asian Studies at SOAS, is an interdisciplinary forum for Philippine-related teaching, research and cultural production in the UK. It functions as a resource and networking hub. Seeing its role as a research gateway, it has, for example, taken the rich repository of objects of knowledge in UK institutions (archives and overseas collections of Philippine material culture) and provided free access to these materials through digital humanities projects.¹ Inspired by Jose Rizal’s nimble and practical ways to ‘understand’ the Philippines through a combination of emic and etic perspectives (i.e. by both valuing yet annotating Morga, or using the mechanisms of Western forms of knowledge legitimization, like writing for publications or creating a taxonomic presence of Philippine flora and fauna in display institutions, and yet questioning their categories of classification and valuation), PSS works to open these archives and create avenues for sourcing and inscribing annotative knowledge from cultural originators in the Philippines. With a diverse series of lectures, workshops and cultural events, it has been able to engage with the student and general Filipino population in the UK, considered the largest from among South East Asians, with over 200,000 in number and counting (FCO 2014).

Occupying space

That SOAS would host an Annual Philippine Studies Conference, is almost an anomaly. The fraught relation of the Philippines in the study of South East Asia at SOAS is relatively well known (Furnivall 1956; Hall 1973; Hau 2020). It is virtually unmentioned in the tomes of official school histories: a passing footnote (Brown 2016, 151) and a brief sidebar on the Ifor B Powell collection of Philippine materials (Arnold et al. 2003, 136). But there it was, in the middle of the sweltering summer of 2018, the Philippine Cordillera Conference occupied a third of the lower ground floor of the SOAS Main building. The hallway leading up to the Khalili Lecture Theatre was lined with tables and panels, packed tightly against the walls and filled with Cordillera inspired paintings, objects, photographs, even six tattooed plaster maquettes from the different ethno-linguistic groups of the Cordilleras and hand carried by the Director of the Museo Kordilyera in Baguio City, Philippines. There was Candy Gourlay’s book table crowded with children leafing through Bone Talk, just off the press, telling a gripping coming-of-age story of a Bontoc boy while skilfully interweaving a critique of American colonialism (the book was launched at the Conference and was later shortlisted for both the Costa Book Awards and the CILIP Carnegie Medal). There was Ili, a collection of photographs by Tommy Hafalla, a well-respected artist/ethnographer and itinerant community elder based in Benguet. The hefty photography book was published by MAPA books, an independent publishing house based in the UK and run by a migrant Filipina who used to live in Benguet. The Conference was able to bring Tommy Hafalla to his London book launch, and he led animated discussions about what the lingling-o signified to the village elders of Sagada, or why a bulul is not actually a ‘rice god’. And then there were the members of Igorot-UK, an umbrella group of immigrant Filipinos from the Cordillera region (for an introduction to this organization, see Ruth Tindaan’s article in this volume). They set up a well-stocked display table of flyers and posters, and festooned the walls with photos of their many activities. The secretariat brought the organization’s stock of ‘ethnographic objects’, really a sizeable collection of well-used everyday and ritual objects, some dating from before the 1950s, and whose material significance and provenance sat comfortably in the hands of the organization’s collective ownership. The items were captioned and co-curated with the organizers of the Conference for an exhibit of Igorot Material Culture at the Khalili Lecture Theatre’s glass wall. On the last day, members of Igorot-UK presented a sixteen-person dance ensemble and performed on the steps of SOAS, preceded by a ritual drinking of home-brewed rice wine (tapuey), passing cups around the audience before beginning the sounding of the gangsa (see Figure 1). In total, the Conference gathered twenty speakers and seven artists and filmmakers, more than half of whom were born and lived in the Philippine Cordillera, and the rest with deep-rooted relationships to its languages and cultures.

Figure 1. Members of Igorot-UK, performing at the steps of SOAS during the Annual Philippine Studies Conference in the Cordillera, June 2018. Photo by Vixienne Marie Calulut.

The six articles in this special issue can only be representative of the range of content that was delivered at the Conference.² The articles also represent the commitment of the editorial board ‘to become more supportive of authors from the “areas” themselves’ (Harrison 2019) and engage in the tedious process of taking conference papers and working through the paucity of available peer reviewers, the tensions between the value of very particular localized ethnography and the creation of ‘general’ theoretical applicability, the much feared descriptive rather than analytical binaries, and even revision deadlines that involved tropical storms and the lack of electricity for days on end.

The Conference call for papers was interested in the ways in which literary and cultural texts mediated the Philippine Cordillera region and how these underpinned issues of cultural ownership, commodification and appropriation. How has the region and its peoples been represented in history? How has the slippage in the use of geographic regions for individual ethno-linguistic provinces or pan-regional terms, like the term Igorot or the Ygollotes (Scott 1962), functioned to stand in for imagined spaces used to construct an understanding of a people’s sense of selfhood and belonging? How have these representations contributed to an approximation of an evolving Filipino national culture or the transnational identities of the mobile Igorot Diaspora?

The articles in this issue answer these questions in varying but interconnected ways. Museo Kordilyera’s director Analyn Salvador-Amores, in ‘Re-examining Igorot representation: issues of commodification and cultural appropriation’, examines the nuances of representing the Igorot through case studies proceeding from her fieldwork. She narrates the often contrasting responses of Ifugao elders when they are shown the much maligned photos of the Igorots by Dean Worcester, or the ‘consensual appropriation’ she defines in her interactions with the famed tattoo artist Whang-ud, or even the surprising reactions to her own curatorial practices in mounting exhibits at the Museo Kordilyera. In each case, she puts forward a ‘lived’ recalibration of the issues of representation and cultural appropriation through actual interactions with the Igorot. Richard G. Scheerer’s ‘“Headhunters under the Stars and Stripes”: revisiting colonial historiography’ also revisits the ambivalences found in the work of Dean Worcester, this time through several articles Worcester wrote. Triangulating with data from his own grandfather’s work, Otto Von Scheerer, with textual and inter-textual analysis, Scheerer analyses ‘Headhunters Under the Stars and Stripes’, published in 1908 by the New York Times. He explores the representation of the Cordilleras as an autonomous region and its implications on Philippine national independence from the Americans. B Lynne Milgram, in ‘Fashioning frontiers in artisanal trade: social entrepreneurship and textile production in the Philippine Cordillera’, investigates the material representation of local cultural identity in textile manufacture and design in the provinces of Ifugao and Benguet. Writing with rich ethnographic detail, Milgram explores the ways local artisans navigate the tensions between the work of social entrepreneurs, market demands, and the ideas of ‘static authenticity’ and indigenous identity.

Taking a more linguistic angle, Sergei Borisovich Klimenko and Jennifer Josef explore very particular linguistic data, and introduce to their respective discursive fields of study more expansive yet nuanced understandings of localized socio-cultural phenomena. Klimenko, with a BA thesis on ‘Accusativity and ergativity in Tagalog’ from Saint-Petersburg State University, and a PhD thesis studying ‘The voice category in Philippine languages’, is fluent in Tagalog and Ilocano. He presents available evidence of an extinct hudhud chanted in the rare Itkak isolect which has not been documented before. In ‘The Minamagkit: A case study in vernacular self-representation in Bontoc gender identities’, Jennifer Josef examines a self-designating term and introduces a way of seeing the interconnectedness of localized histories and geographies in the construction of gender identities.

Lastly, this special issue comes full circle with Ruth Tindaan’s ‘Recreating Igorot identity in diaspora’. This case study looks at instances of contemporary constructions of identity through visual representations of indigenous Igorot migrants from the Cordillera now residing in the UK. The article is a compelling narrative of the history and social practices of a local community organization that has learned to embody performative practices of agency and self-actualization. Presenting her paper to an audience composed mostly of the very people she speaks of in the article, there was in that one synchronous moment, ‘a real connection between the restorative value and emancipatory potential of migrants’ attempts for self-remaking in diaspora’. The stifled giggles of self-recognition from the projected Facebook posts, or the claiming of authorship for this or that poster was truly one of the affective highlights of the entire event. And now this, the inscription of their stories of agency and affective representation in the pages of a special issue on the Philippine Cordillera. Despite the many accusations of co-optation and falling for the ruses of Eurocentric, hegemonic discourses of power in the neoliberal system of the international academy, there seemed to be no greater justification for Area Studies in the West than a proud Filipino migrant who self-designates as Igorot.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Digital Filipiniana may be accessed at https://digital.soas.ac.uk/r_phl. Google analytics reports show that the majority of Digital Filipiniana users come from the Philippines (email correspondence with Erich Kesse, October 2018).

2 See https://www.soas.ac.uk/cseas/events/file132012.pdf for a programme and list of abstracts.