Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

Blurred borders and social integrationsEXPLORING ISLAMIC MOVEMENTS AMONG FILIPINO MUSLIMURBANITES IN THE QUIAPO AREA: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OFTHE IMPACT OF MODERNIZATION AND URBAN LIFEMokhammad YahyaThe fusion of religion and politics, a key feature of Islamic fundamentalism, is very much a part of the aspirationsof Filipino Muslims, although they may differ in their positions on whether or not an independent nation (Bangsa)for Moros (Filipino Muslims) can actually be achieved and whether or not their goal can be reached only througharmed struggle. Clusters of Muslim groups in the Quiapo area have been formed around these aspirations and thestruggle of political movements, and around emerging schools of Islamic thought. The differences among theseclusters can be understood in the context of three types of Filipino Muslims’ struggle: armed struggle, collaborationwith the Philippine government, and an apolitical movement. The first and the second are operating politically atsocietal levels while the third type is primarily a struggle in the cultural realm at the individual level. The factorsthat have shaped the rhetorically fundamentalist but pragmatic and moderate approach to the Islamic state of asample of Filipino Muslim urbanites are: the experience of centuries of Bangsamoro struggle against colonialism andcontinuing political and economic imbalances; the enclave character of Quiapo and the mosques that have allowedMuslims living there to retain their ethno-cultural identity against the onslaught of the Christian majority ideology;the modernizing/secularizing tendencies of urban life; and an orientation toward the imagined community ofMuslims in the Philippines.FLUID BOUNDARIES: TOWARD A PEOPLE-CENTERED APPROACHTO BORDER ISSUES IN NORTH SULAWESIDjorina VelascoThis paper explores border issues on the Indonesian side of the Indonesian-Philippine border. It surfaces thecontestations between state and society over the maintenance of the border and the social construction of identities.It traces the history of the porous maritime border in order to contextualize contemporary problems relating to“illegal” cross-border flows. In so doing, it puts forward a critique of the predominant frameworks of understandingborder issues, namely, the security and cultural approaches, for not being sufficiently attuned to realities on theground, and proposes a more people-centered perspective in addressing the needs of border populations.THE HISTORY OF TOMORROW: THE DISCOURSE OF SCIENCEAND THE IMAGINATION OF THE FUTURE IN ASIAN SCIENCEFICTIONSAlwin C. AguirreThis study presents a reading of Japanese and Indonesian science fiction (in translation) in various media. Throughdiscourse analysis, we attempt to examine the representation of science and technology (ST) in these texts and, alongwith it, the representations of the future. We aim to make palpable the political in our constructed relationship withscience and technology, especially highlighting skepticism toward pervasive discursive binary oppositions betweenscience as truth and others as myth. At the risk of exposing an offhanded attitude, the texts as subject matter in thisproject are seen as repositories of both personal and shared psyche of particular societies and their members. Thoughseen as (just) fantastical and even frivolous at times, science fiction as a cultural product is a representation of thesentimental, ideological, theoretical and philosophical musings of a people’s inescapable interaction with ST. Forthe marginalized and oft-disregarded members of the “third world”, the significance of this extends to its continuedexistence as a sovereign and actively engaging agent and recipient of change.243Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows