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

300 MICHAEL PINCHES
12 Since independence, the most influential polemicist along these lines has been
Renato Constantino (1975, 1978).
13 Development Bank of the Philippines advertisement in Philippine Business, 1994, 1(2):
41.
14 I am basing this principally on my own research among workers and peasants in
Manila and Leyte. Talent and hard work may be acknowledged as the source of new
wealth, but generally only when the details of a case are known.
15 See, for example, Manapat (1991) and the regular series Smart File, both of which
attempt to record the corrupt practices of businesspeople and politicians.
16 This is not to deny that many continue to distinguish between the two
characterisations, while some recognise their frequent coincidence.
17 For some nationalist intellectuals this has entailed a major shift from the former
orthodoxy of protectionism. See, for example, Magno (1994).
18 Strong support for this position has come from the Makati Business Club which
represents the country’s largest corporations.
19 I should add, though, that a minority of businesspeople I spoke to thought some form
of authoritarianism was necessary for national development.
20 The allusion here appears to be to the national bird–the Philippine eagle. Bayanihan
-co-operative labour.
21 According to Tiglao (1990:68), this is Cantonese for ‘big boss’.
22 The first project of the Dragon Corporation was to be the building of a new
international airport, though there has been little progress on this.
23 Such views are circulated, for instance, at Manila’s regionally influential Asian
Institute of Management (see, for example, Limlingan 1986). See also Billig (1994:
668—70).
24 See Pinches, Chapter One, this volume.
25 Two of the various attempts to find a suitable label for the Filipino-Chinese which
reflect these combined attachments are sinpino and chinoy, though neither of them is
widely used.
26 In general, I had more difficulty organising interviews with Filipino-Chinese than with
other Filipinos. Some businesspeople I did interview, and who were identified as
Chinese by non-Chinese informants, did not identify themselves this way with me,
though they did speak of others as Chinese. In these cases the issue seemed less one
of secrecy than of the ambiguity and situational character of ethnic identity, as it
concerns many Filipinos. Despite the ideological power of ethnic categories, the
social and interpersonal boundaries constituted in terms of Malay, Chinese, mestizo
and Spanish identities are contentious and blurry.
27 Though it is argued by Ordonez (1982) and Mendoza (1991) that Filipinos and
Chinese belong to a broader Asian cultural tradition of business and management
which they describe as paternalism.
28 Central to much of this discussion was an article by American journalist James
Fallows (1987) which attributed the lack of economic development in the Philippines
to its ‘damaged culture’. The characterisation and analysis of Philippine society in
terms of cultural values has a long heritage in the social sciences, both local and
foreign (see Church 1986 and Enriquez 1989). Indeed, one local writer in
management theory, Tomas Andres, has generated a virtual publishing industry in this
area with his numerous books (for example, 1981) and periodical, Values Digest.