The Social Sciences in the Philippines: Reflections on Trends and Developments Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon Bautista

This is a Hand-out on one of our discussions.

Reporter: Jerone Avel S. Cansino

                MAED Soc Sci

The Paper is about:

  u  Preliminary thoughts on the development of the social sciences in the Philippines from the American colonial period to 1990’s.

u  How the study of social science grew from an unknown discipline to an institutionalized one.

American Colonial period to the 1960s

u  Pioneer thinkers:

u  Pigafetta, Loarca, Plasencia, Chirino (Anthropology) -Abaya

u  Marcelo H. del Pilar, Jose Rizal (Political Science)- Agpalo

u  Gregorio Sanciano y Joson (Economics)- De Dios

u  Teachings of Social Philosophy, Social Ethics and Penology in UST at the end of the century-  Abad and Eviota

u  Although there are related thinkers, the Social Science is still not considered an Academic discipline with theoretical and methodological perspectives before the 1900s.

u  “The Philippine Social Sciences emerged as specialized disciplines  with the establishment of academic departments I the early American Colonial period”

u  The establishment of Social Science Fields in the University of the Philippines:

u  Anthropology-1915

u  Sociology, Economics And Political Science- 1916

u  Psychology- 1926

u  Economics as a separate field to Political Science- 1926

u  1960s

u  Legalistic studies of government (pol sci) and descriptive and historical approaches(Economics) shifted to more analytical and quantitative.

u  The view of ethnic communities as other culture to the linguistic demography and ethnographic studies of ethnic group within ones culture   (anthropology)

u  Counseling Psychology to psychological testing and dominance of experimental methods in psychology.

Major national association of social scientists and professional journals

Name of Association	Date of founding (incorporation)	Journal	Date of First Issue
Philippine Political Science Association	1962	Philippine Political Science Journal	1974
Philippine Sociological Society	1952* (1953)	Philippine Sociological Review	1953
Psychological Association of the Philippines	1962* (1962)	Philippine Journal of Psychology	1968

	Date of founding (Incorporation)	Journal	Date of First Issue
Philippine Economic Society	1962** (1972)	Philippine Economic Journal	1962***
Ugnayan Pang-Agham Tao (UGAT)	1977***	Agham-Tao	1978

Research Centers Established on the Post-war years

u  Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC)

u  Research Institute for Mindanao Culture (RIMCU)

u  Community Development Research Council (CDRC)

u  Philippine Social Science Council (PSSC)

Heeding the Call for Relevance: The 1970s to the turn of the century

u  University of Chicago- trained the Filipino Anthropologists

u  Marxism influence on Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology on early 70s but, by the mid of 1980s failed to grow further.

u  Third World Studies Center (UP)- Venue for discussion of dependency theory, world system analysis and the mode of production debate      

u  The indigenization Movement of the Social Sciences

u  The focus of Social Science Shifted on Philippine problems

u  Covar (Culture-bound anthropology) Enriquez (sikolohiyang Pilipino)

u  (Sikolohiyan Pilipino was criticized by Sta. Maria)

From Polarization to Pluralism and Convergence in 1990s

Before 1990s

u  In Psychology

Basic goals and perspective         vs.         Methodological issues posed by

Sikolohiyang Pilipino

u  In political Science

Marxism against Structural Functionalism and Systems Approaches with modernization theories of Huntington, Pye, Coleman

u  After 1990s

Convergence of different approaches.

u  Multi-disciplinary research

u  Collaborative research

u  Reinvention of the Social Science disciplines (on how they view a Social Phenomena)

Concluding notes

u                  Social Science Discourses that filtered into the language of politics after 1896

u  Neoliberal Political Economy

u  Democratization

u  Devolution

u  Sustainable developments

u  The articulation of the discourses to the policy framework helped the economists in:

u  Neoliberal Framework

u  Privatization

u  LiberalizationPoverty Alleviation

u  Integrated Approach to Local Government Management (IALGM)

u  Philippine Plan of Action for Children (PPAC)

u  Programs on the Environment

u  Played a role on crafting the current policy thrust and program on social forestry

u  Pushed for the reform on the country’s resource information system

u  Health

u  Improvements on program monitoring and implementation (through research and advocacy networks involving academics, NGO and professionals at the Department of Health)

u  deregulation

u  Woman

u  Woman’s reproductive Health (Advocacy of an NGO)

u  Incorporation of woman to government programs

u  Poverty and Education

u  Indicators of Human Development (HDIs)

u  Minimum Basic Development (MBD)

u  Surveys and Opinion polls

To sum up

u            From an informal discipline, Social Science in the Philippines evolved into a polarized discipline until time came that it came into convergence and finally, came to affect the framework of policy of our country.

#SocialScience
#Development
#History
#Philippines