This thesis is a meditation on liberatory futures for colonized pasts. It begins with a history of the imperial relationship between the US and the Philippines and how coloniality took root in the lives of Filipinos. The second chapter explores the critique of imperialism offered in post/colonial cultural productions by Manuel Ocampo and his location within the museum, as a constitutive site of modernity. The third chapter explores the project of de-coloniality and the role of ritual and imagination.

abstract: This project examines the decision of American policymakers to deny the Amerasians of Vietnam--the offspring of American fathers and Vietnamese mothers born as a result of the Vietnam War--American citizenship in the 1982 Amerasian Immigration Act and the 1987 Amerasian Homecoming Act. It investigates why policymakers deemed a population unfit for the responsibilities of American society, despite the fact that they had American fathers. The examination draws upon numerous archival collections of the key policymakers, humanitarians and non-governmental organizations involved in each piece of legislation. Additionally, archival and published documents from the U.S. government and military, popular media, and veteran's organizations, are important. Since many of those involved in the legislation are still living, oral history interviews are also a critical piece of the methodology. The dissertation argues that the exclusion of citizenship was a component of bigger issues: international relationships in a Cold War era, America's defeat in the Vietnam War, and a history in the United States of racialized exclusionary immigration and citizenship policies against people of Asian descent. It exposes the contradictory approach of policymakers unable to reconcile the Amerasian mixture of race and nation with US law. Consequently, policymakers simultaneously employed an inclusionary discourse that deemed the Amerasians worthy of American attention, guidance and humanitarian aid, and implemented exclusionary policies that designated them unfit for the responsibilities of American citizenship. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2015

Whale-watching provides economic opportunities worldwide and particularly proliferates in developing countries, such as the Philippines. The sustainability of whale-watching is increasingly debated as these activities also negatively impact cetaceans through changes in behavior, communication, habitat use, morbidity, mortality, and life-history parameters. This study evaluated the total annual cost, revenue, and profit of whale-watching operators in Bais, Philippines, and predicted the changes in the population for spinner dolphin Stenella longirostris with varying levels of whale-watching effort. Total revenue was 3,805,077 PHP ($92,478 USD) while total cost was 5,649,094 PHP ($137,294 USD) with a discount rate of ten percent. The total annual profit of whale-watching in Bais was – 1,844,017 PHP (– $44,817 USD). On average, each operator in Bais lost 160,350 PHP ($3,897 USD) per year from whale-watching. Through time, the spinner dolphin population decreased as it was exposed to more vessels, causing effort to increase, and thus decreased profit for operators. Under current whale-watching effort, the spinner dolphin population was predicted to decrease by 94 percent in 25 years. If Bais reduced effort in their operations to only three vessels whale-watching per day, the spinner dolphin population increased to 80 percent of its initial population size. This was the first study to predict the spinner dolphin population and estimate the total annual profit from whale-watching in Bais, Philippines. It provided data to locals for efficient, profitable, and sustainable decisions in whale-watching operations.

Abstract The research examines the U.S. approach to the independence of the Philippines and its stages at the end of the 1920's and in the early 1930's. The Philippines belonged to the United States from 1898 to 1946. The relationship between the two countries was quite controversial from the very beginning. Many of the different phases and factors resulted in the U.S. Congress passing a law in March 1934, which guaranteed full independence to the Philippines after a ten-year transition period. The birth of the law which led to Philippine independence was a complex political process, with a number of variables influencing the attitudes and the solution. These factors accounting for the formation of the solution changed as time progressed. One of the key variables in terms of the Act of Independence began when the Great Depression began in 1929, which affected especially agricultural producers. As the Philippines was administratively a part of the federal government, in these circles it was seen that only independence could be the solution to close the archipelago outside of the domestic market. In fact, the sugar and coconut imports from the Philippines were not a real competitor to the federal farmers. In addition to the domestic farmers the Cuban sugar producers, who were headed by U.S. investors, felt that Philippine duty-free import was challenging their share of the federal market. They were of the opinion that the independence of the Philippines could guarantee them better market positions in the federal sugar market, and strove to promote the Independence Act as soon as possible. As a result of the worsening unemployment situation Filipino migrant workers started competing for scarce jobs. As a part of the United States Filipinos had free immigration rights. In particular, on the west coast and in the employees' organizations, independence was seen as the easiest way to limit immigration. In addition to the economic cycle other significant factors were the changes in foreign policy, and in particular the rise of Japan as a powerful superpower in the Far East. The federal government and the majority of the Congress represented opposing views of the independence issue. The Congress was able to show strength in this confrontation. The main sources of the material consist of the U.S. government documents, the Congress document collections, foreign relations document collections, memoirs and other documents. / Tiivistelmä Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan Yhdysvaltain suhtautumista Filippiinien itsenäistymiseen ja siihen liittyneisiin vaiheisiin 1920 -luvun lopulla ja 1930-luvun alkupuoliskolla. Filippiinit kuuluivat Yhdysvalloille vuosina 1898–1946. Maiden välinen suhde oli hyvin kiistanalainen alusta alkaen. Monien eri vaiheiden ja tekijöiden seurauksena Yhdysvaltain kongressi hyväksyi maaliskuussa 1934 lain, joka takasi Filippiineille täyden itsenäisyyden kymmenen vuoden siirtymäajan jälkeen. Filippiinien itsenäistymiseen johtaneen lain synty oli monimutkainen poliittinen prosessi, jossa oli useita suhtautumiseen ja ratkaisuun vaikuttaneita muuttujia. Näiden tekijöiden osuus ratkaisun muodostumiseen muuttui ajan edetessä. Yksi keskeisimmistä muuttujista itsenäisyyslain suhteen oli vuonna 1929 Yhdysvalloissa alkanut suuri lamakausi, josta kärsivät erityisesti maataloustuottajat. Koska Filippiinit oli hallinnollisesti osa liittovaltiota, näissä piireissä nähtiin, että ainoastaan itsenäisyys voisi saattaa saariston sisämarkkinoiden ulkopuolelle. Filippiineiltä tuotava sokeri ja kookosöljy eivät olleet todelliset kilpailijat liittovaltion viljelijöille. Kotimaan viljelijäväestön lisäksi Kuuban sokerintuotantoon investoineet amerikkalaiset sijoittajapiirit kokivat Filippiinien tullivapaan tuonnin vievän heiltä markkinoita. He katsoivat, että Filippiinien itsenäisyys takaisi paremmat markkina-asemat liittovaltion sokerimarkkinoilla ja pyrkivät edistämään itsenäisyyslain mahdollisimman pikaista säätämistä. Alati pahenevan työttömyyden seurauksen filippiiniläiset siirtotyöläiset kilpailivat hupenevista työpaikoista. Filippiiniläisille oli taattu vapaa maahanmuutto-oikeus. Etenkin länsirannikolla ja työntekijäjärjestöissä saarten itsenäistyminen nähtiin olevan helpoin tie maahanmuuton rajoittamiseen. Taloudellisten suhdanteiden ohella muita merkittäviä tekijöitä olivat muutokset ulkopolitiikassa ja etenkin Japanin nousu voimakkaaksi suurvallaksi Kaukoidässä. Liittovaltion hallinto ja kongressin enemmistö edustivat vastakkaisia näkemyssuuntia itsenäisyyskysymyksessä. Kongressi pystyi osoittamaan voimansa tässä vastakkainasettelussa. Tutkimuksen keskeisin lähdeaineisto koostuu Yhdysvaltain hallinnon asiakirjoista, kongressin asiakirjakokoelmista, ulkoaisainhallinnon asiakirjakokoelmista, muistelmista sekä lähdeteoksista.

The Republic of the Philippines is an example country when it comes to gender equality within education. However, this trend does not persist when it comes to female labor market participation. Current research shows that a mere 53,4% of all Filipinas are currently employed in the labor market against 81% of their male counterparts, indicating a wide engendered gap. This study investigates why so few of the highly educated female population find gainful employment by studying the perspectives of university graduate students in the rural province of Antique through the use of a wide range, quantitative survey across three universities, and 9 qualitative in-depth interviews. By using Nussbaum and Sen’s capability approach, an inventory of both known and new barriers is made, which are organized in the following categories: barriers on the supply side of the labor market, barriers on the demand side of the labor market, and other barriers. Revealing those barriers that have not been researched before contributes to the existing body of knowledge on impediments that hinder graduating Antiqueñas to enter the labor market. The hindrances as described and discussed in this thesis can be used to improve gender sensitive policies that have the ability to expand freedoms, capabilities, and functioning for Antiqueñas, but also for Filipinas in general, since the barriers; lack of good and productive vacancies, (early) motherhood, a wide gender wage gap, unpaid family work, patriarchic views on traditional female roles, and a divide in male and female jobs are all barriers that hinder Filipinas on a national level.

There is much said about how to support a client as a social worker. Much is based on the country's politics, structure, organization, norms, but also on the values, knowledge, and responsiveness of social workers. When a country is exposed to poverty, social work takes a certain kind of shape and direction based on several viewpoints. The world has its eyes on developing countries with many poverty reduction recommendations, but how do social workers, living and working in a country with high poverty, express their reality?                       This study aims to, in a Philippine context, examine professional social workers perception of poverty and identify their approach to poverty alleviation and clients living in poverty. A qualitative study, with eight semi-structured interviews was hold plus one group interview including two respondents. All respondents were professional social workers that worked with poverty reduction in various ways. The thematic analysis was made with the framework of Human Development and Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach theory. The result shows that the efforts to reduce poverty in the Philippines require long-term thinking where respondents' mostly have the task of changing communities and clients' values. The respondents’ perceptions of poverty is that it is a condition that can be changed as long as the individual living in poverty makes active choices. The conclusions show that the major approach the respondents have, is to work with clients potentials and mindset by aware them to see what they actually can do for themselves. Almost all of the respondents use their own background as a motivator to support clients out of poverty and they approach their clients with patience, attention, belonging, and love, which can lead to minimizing obstacles that may be in the way of increasing the well-being of clients. On the other hand, the results show that it is the individual's responsibility to change his or her situation and a common perception among the respondents' is that education is the key to reduce poverty.

The global incidence of dengue has increase 30-fold over the past 50 years in the western or Asian Pacific, this region is also a contemporary epicenter for resource extraction and ecological destabilization. Dengue is addition to yellow fever, chikungunya and most recently zika virus, are transmitted by the mosquito vector Aedes aegypti- a domesticated mosquito adept at breeding in artificial household containers and within homes. The history of the domestication and global distribution of Aedes aegypti is intrinsically linked to European expansion into and among tropical worlds. Contemporary population genetics research suggest the westward expansion of the mosquito vector beginning with trans-Atlantic Slave Trade moving to the Americas and then making a jump across the Pacific, which I argue occurred first within the Philippines and then spread eastward through the greater Indian Ocean. I argue that Spanish and American colonization facilitated the biological invasion of Ae. aegypti and dengue in the Philippines and created the conditions for contemporary epidemics. The discourse within the dominant voices of public health, CDC and WHO, omit this history as well as down play the significance of land use and deforestation while focusing predominantly upon dengue’s prevention and control. This omission is an act of erasure and a means of furthering western imperialism through paternalistic interventions. Mosquito-borne disease epidemics are unintended consequences of past human action and if public health discourse continues to frame epidemics as random and unfortunate events, we risk missing key patterns and continuing to perpetuate the circumstances of disease and adaptation.

No description available.

In this dissertation, I foreground local elders’ epistemology and ontology embedded in sea rituals and traditional fishing methods in a typhoon-battered community in the Philippines. I do this through the practice of applied theatre to explore agency, relationality, and creativity in the aftermath of a disaster. By locating this dissertation within the intercultural, interdisciplinary, and intersectional applied theatre, I mobilize local disaster narratives by using auto-ethnography, Practice-as-Research, and Participatory Action Research towards the co-creation of local/transnational community-based-theatre performances. These applied theatre performances underscore the solidarity and collective creativity of community members, elders, local government officials, local artists in the Philippines and diasporic Filipinos in Canada. The dissertation engages in personal narrative inquiry, reflective memoir, oral stories, ritual performances, collective creations, archives, and in reclaimed objects to address the existing colonial mode of theorizing theatre and organized post-disaster recovery programs in a local island community decimated by Super Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan). Cognizant of the complex networks of post-disaster reconstruction, recovery, and planning in local and international spheres of development work, I formulate an applied theatre performance method as a post-disaster mitigative approach stemming from the specter of Super Typhoon Yolanda and other disastrous events wrought by climate crises. This collective and emancipative method emerges from an affective, hybrid, and cross-cultural mode of inquiry to tackle climate change and bring Indigenous ways of knowing into the center of the climate change conversation. I use this method in co-creating performances on local climate crises that critically examines coloniality and cultural misappropriation in an intercultural milieu. I discuss Indigenous ecological epistemology against the backdrop of climate change processes through autoethnographic inquiry and multi-narrative discourse on agentic, performative, and collective performance creations. I argue that Indigenizing the performance method mobilizes a decolonial theatre that broadens, equalizes, and diversifies the climate change dialogue. Informed by the vernacular concepts of affective and intersubjective criticality (Abat), relational collaboration (Pakiki-pagpulso, Pakiki-pagkapwa, Pagmamalasakit), and shared improvisation (Pintigan), this performance method deploys emancipative subjectivities and considers possible futures. By using applied theatre as a practice of post-disaster recovery, I channel its artistic practice and tools in engaging the local and transnational communities in collective acts of re-centering marginalized narratives and peripheralized bodies of knowledge. Stemming from the wounding memories of disasters, traumatic stories of a super typhoon, and political disjuncture, my collaborators and I mobilized communities, deployed diverse voices, and engaged with non-human subjectivities in sites with histories of environmental destruction and colonization both in local and diasporic communities. Driven by principles of decolonial theatre and emancipated dramaturgy, I aim to offer an ethical inquiry and practice of applied theatre that tackles climate crises in sites with a long history of disasters. These performance principles valorize the Indigenization of theatre’s capacity for social, political, and cultural intervention to re-future climate crises. Finally, this dissertation emphasizes the persistence of Indigenous knowledge, social relationality, and local creativity beyond the incursion of modernity and colonialism. / Graduate

The rise of global challenges, such as climate change, is pushing global governance to evolve. In result thereof, the traditionally state-centric diplomatic sphere is experiencing an increasing number of non-state actors entering the arena. Geoffrey Wiseman (1999) describes this phenomenon as the shift from traditionally bilateral and multilateral diplomacy to polylateral diplomacy. This study looks at how non-state actors can be fitted in frontline diplomacy in relation to sustainable development. By means of a qualitative, inductive case study of the Dutch embassy in the Philippines, it looks at how state actors perceive this non-state actor inclusion by means of data triangulation: a document analysis, semi-structured interviews and participant-observation. In particular, it zooms in on a specific example of multi-stakeholder partnership, which Sustainable Development Goals 17.16 and 17.17 hail as a tool for sustainability: the Manila Bay Sustainable Development Master Plan. Through the theoretical lenses of collaborative governance and the function-sensitive approach, this thesis concludes that the functions non-state actors can fulfil in the diplomatic activities of global governance vary depending on the three contingencies of time, trust and interdependence.