P Cagape’s scientific contributions

Pursuing decolonization studies among the indigenous peoples in one of the provinces of Mindanao is a daunting and intricate unboxing of colonized thought and practices that leads to challenges amidst the limiting space of autonomous traditional knowledge production and its sustainability. Such was my encounter with the Subanen evangelicals, sons and daughters of first and second generation Christian converts in an indigenous community in Zamboanga del Sur, some extended relatives of these trailblazers and unraveled questions that can be gleaned more succinctly in the pursuits of decolonization of their newfound belief systems. This study attempted to juxtapose present Christian beliefs systems with their traditional knowledge as indigenous peoples as they shed off rituals that until now, are also being practiced in similar IP in other localities as a sign of discontinuity. The Buklog is one ritual that has been discontinued in Lapuyan while still being observed in other Subanen communities, which many evangelicals claimed to be un-Christian to do. Qualitatively pursued, I immersed with the Subanen community in Lapuyan together with the NCIP and talked to Subanens who were Christian believers at the Lommasson Alliance Bible College. Thematic analysis was undertaken on the narratives shared by the community's evangelical leaders as they charter the new frontier of decolonizing their religious historicity as indigenous peoples. The challenges this paper identified were of institutional forgetting, limits of oral history and cultural and indigenous identity disconnections.

The pivot of the Duterte Administration to China and Russia has resulted to seemingly stronger resistance from the academic and the general public who are used to the bilateral relations with the United States of America. This move to refocus and shift its bilateral relations (improving) to China and Russia has been the hallmark of the Duterte Presidency, one which they have claimed to characterize the independent foreign policy directions of the Philippines in the affairs of Southeast Asia and beyond. This paper delves on the presidential speeches of former Rodrigo Duterte and locate themes and patterns that supports an 'independent' character of Philippine Foreign Policy as enshrined in the 1987 Constitution. It will also undertake framing analysis on various news reports from major Philippine newspapers pertaining to pivot of the Duterte administration to China and Russia. Strategically also, it will pursue how this nexus contribute to the ongoing study of Southeast Asia where the Philippines partakes an influential presence and significant leadership in the region whose relations with the United States of America eclipse that of China and Russia.

Woodcarving in the Philippines predates the colonizers‘ forage into the pristine Philippine archipelago, from the Ifugao of the North to the Paete in Laguna in Southern Luzon to even as far as the Islamic enclave of Marawi in Mindanao. Such craftsmanship proved to the world the creativity of Filipino artisans, who passed on from generation to generation – techniques, style, story-lines and narratives to what we now enjoy as a aesthetics in the home and buildings to artefacts housed in museums in Manila, Makati and the nearby Antipolo. This amazing craftsmanship was heightened during the long Spanish colonial period in the Philippines with even Dr. Jose P. Rizal, the staunchest anti-Spain national hero went to wood carving to while away time in seclusion while in exile in Dapitan, in Zamboanga del Norte. Challenges to modern-day woodcarving in the Philippines includes among other major considerations, sustained indigenous forest management outside the ambit of the total log ban in the Philippines. In 2011, President Benigno Aquino III issued Executive Order 23 which also exempted the Ifugao from the coverage of the log ban to sustain its ―Muyong heritage. In spite this exemption, local Ifugao carvers were not educated as to the basic guidelines of the DENR environmental policies and the exemption granted to them in 2011 therefore they find it harder and harder to gather wood for carving purposes. This study focuses on the ethnology of two woodcarving areas in Luzon, foremost is the Ifugao Woodcarvers Village in Asin Road, Baguio City and the woodcarving capital of Laguna, Paete. It pursues to identity the causal attributes why until this modern times, there remains woodcarving albeit slowly dwindling. The impact of the study is to present a qualitative features of the woodcarving artesan‘s motivations to remain in the industry and continue the creative pursuits handed down by their grandparents for generations. Using critical realism, the study pursued ethnology by interviewing carvers and traders in Baguio City and in Paete, Laguna sometime in February 2019. These interviews were drawn from the grand tour technique of asking ethnographic questions.

Since 2017, the Rohingya has encamped at Cox's Bazar with little hope of returning home safely and of getting a better life in Bangladesh-as a result of a decades-long marginalization, discrimination, deprivation and dehumanization of the Rohingya community by Myanmar, Bangladesh and other host nations in Southeast Asia. This study looked at the lived experiences that meant dehumanization and the continued marginalization of the Rohingya people in South Asia to Southeast Asia, from Bangladesh to Malaysia. Qualitative in nature, it approaches the ongoing dehumanization of the Rohingya from the narratives of the 10 Rohingya, men and women who are in the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. It applied transcendental phenomenology and the data culled out are analysed using IBM-MAXQDA. The results revealed that it was known that for the Rohingya as an ethnic minority, the dehumanization that they have contextualized was blatant dehumanization and that dehumanization happens to them when they were discriminated against, they were subjected to inequality, and they are denied of their human rights, they are denied of education, deprived of rights, deprived of life and denied of citizenship.

Perhaps, the most illustrative book to infer arguments on the rise of villages to cities is the one written by Charles Dickens, aptly titled: A Tale of Two Cities. It is a book comparing London and Paris, although set in 1775, Dickens wrote it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. it is a poignant remember for those in the cities who dream of becoming either London or Paris, but still the same, wanted all the best in both worlds. This literary classic infers a reference to the modern-day and post-modern approaches to urban planning and development, encompassing nations' transformation but goes beyond it as states are eager to globalized and at the same time, making haste in converting villages into mega cities. Such a description by Charles Dickens of how prominent London and Paris are, many planners in Southeast Asia also wanted to pursue the same, that shunning the worst of times, everyone wants the best of times, where prosperity abounds that cosmopolitan megacities exudes. This study investigates the passage of a nation to becoming one in a globalized south, as an easy reference to Southeast Asia and the transformation, from villages to mega cities. Both possesses the narratives for a macro-level adjustment as well as micro-level dynamics of the political economy of villages. Fast-forward today, when the visionary Parag Khanna (2016) authored Connectography, a book that centers on the global network revolution. This is the recent literature that speaks volumes on the arguments for megacities around the world. He tells his readers through his book of the role of infrastructure in the modern world and that how it affects the old mapping of the world. It will affect the local political and policy dynamics of countries, from the economy and investment, to people to people mobilization and resources management. Like Khanna, Paul Millar (2018) wrote: "As megacities such as Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila continue to swallow vast fields of farmland, rural hinterlands find themselves caught in a half-life between industrialized urban activity and increasingly sporadic subsistence cultivation."

The premise of this study is anchored on the berthing of a movement that swept across contemporary Southeast Asia after the Second World War and the rise of nationalism is akin to the birthing of the offspring of colonialism. Nationalism is thus, paradoxically colonialism however it is from the inside. The agents of the nation-building built on their shoulders the desire to free themselves from the oppressing state of the colonialists and mostly, those men and women were icons of postcolonial nations in the region. To contextualize, let us consider the construct of nationalism. Nationalism is frequently regarded by liberal theorists as a universalist kind of ideology emphasizing equality and human rights within its polity, but it can just as plausibly be seen as a kind of particularism denying non-citizens or culturally deviant citizens full human rights and, in extreme cases, even denying them membership in the community of humans (Eriksen 1991).

This is a manuscript for the understanding of macrostructure and social structure of societies in Southeast Asia

This is a manuscript for the study on ethnic identity, orientalism and nomothetic universalism

This is a research undertaken in collaboration with my PSOSEC student-officers which discussed the Pag-Amping sa Kadagatan as a way to come up with a joint SOP Flow for the Philippine Coast Guard and the PNP Maritime Group in the Philippines

This pivotal change in the foreign policy of the Philippines in the time of Duterte has been extended now in the administration of President Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr, in his flexible foreign policy patterned strongly under the constitutional proviso of pursuing an independent foreign policy. This paper seeks to undertake a study on how the Philippines participated in its multilateral engagements in the world, economically and militarily in addition to what it already enjoyed with most of the US and EU. It will pursue critically speeches of the former President Duterte and the current sitting President, to find content discourse that supports the position of the Philippines vis-à-vis its most advantageous national interests in the world.