Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

284 MICHAEL PINCHES
The ethos of private enterprise that has become so popular in the middle and
upper reaches of Philippine society, finds clearest expression in the rhetoric of
entrepreneurship that has become associated with the Philippines’ new rich.
Entrepreneurial behaviour, and the upward social mobility of those who are seen
to have practised it, are celebrated in numerous tales of people who have made
good through hard work and business acumen. These narratives constitute much
of the subject-matter of the local business magazines Say, Filipino Entrepreneur,
Manila Inc., Philippine Business and Young Taipan, and are also regularly
presented in daily newspapers, television programmes, speeches at civic functions
and business training courses. Invariably they emphasise initiative, vision, diligence,
resourcefulness and perseverance in the face of setbacks and risks; in short, the
qualities that one finds listed in many textbooks on entrepreneurial behaviour.
For the new rich themselves, as well as for those who admire them, the
experience of success seems proof enough that these qualities will win out if given
free rein. According to one academic who teaches business administration at one of
Manila’s premier universities, the principal ambition of students had long been to
become a professional manager in a large corporation, but since the late 1980s,
she says, most graduates leave university in the hope of setting up their own
businesses. The celebration and rhetoric of entrepreneurship turn private success
into the idea of national advancement. They give new status and respectability to
the successful, and help to open the way for some of them to a social, as well as
economic, position alongside members of the old elite.
In part, the appeal of entrepreneurship and unencumbered private enterprise
among the middle and upper echelons of Philippine society, lies in the country’s
long exposure to the American ideas of economic liberalism and electoral
democracy. These ideas continue to be cultivated among scores of wealthy
Filipinos who study in North America and other liberal democratic societies. The
appeal of these ideas also arises out of the unpopularity and economic calamity of
authoritarian rule under Marcos.
But perhaps more than anything else, the celebration of these ideas needs to be
understood as part of the attempt to elevate the status of Philippine national
identity in the context of the shifting geopolitical environment of Southeast and
East Asia. At the same time as the power of the United States in the Philippines
and the Pacific has been receding, the influence of neighbouring countries with
booming economies and authoritarian regimes has been growing. Not only has the
Philippines been left behind economically by these countries, but in the process its
elite has been humiliated and its national reputation demeaned. Some elite and
middle-class Filipinos travelling to Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, as well as
to parts of Europe, have been appalled to find that Filipino nationals are often
thought of, in general, as domestic servants. Increasingly, those in the privileged
classes have come to see the often racist mistreatment of Filipino overseas
contract workers as an attack on their own national and personal identities. Thus,
the popular outrage that was vented against Singaporian authorities for their
execution of Filipino maid Flor Contemplacion in 1995, was as much a response to