Milestones on Ethnicity Studies in UP Baguio

A summary of our preliminary assessment of the gains of the ESWG for the past four years is presented in the appendix. The main achievements of the ESWG are as follows:

• Laid the groundwork for eventual configuration or reflection on future thrusts of UP Baguio ;
• Increased awareness (among the faculty involved) on the theoretical perspectives and issues on ethnicity;
• Confirmed the interdisciplinarity and multi-disciplinarity of ethnicity studies;
• Motivated faculty to carry out research on ethnicity studies;
• Provided a keener sense of where to locate different research interests on ethnicity studies in Northern Luzon ;
• Fostered awareness among Philippine scholars and the general public on the researches of UP Baguio Faculty on ethnicity studies.

How would the ethnicity studies program differ from the other programs in the Cordillera Studies Center? Dr. Narcisa Canilao suggests that perhaps it is in the theoretical perspectives and approaches, and the particularities of problems and issues. Culling from the papers, vis-à-vis the range of theories on ethnicity, Dr. Canilao proposes a checklist of current theorizing of ethnicity in the Philippine and Cordillera setting:

1. A fusion of critical, semiotic and cultural approaches (emancipatory, discursive and culturally appropriate);
2. Interrogates modern-humanist notions of subjectivity, knowledge-justification, science, and representation;
3. Resonates with politics of difference but self-conscious about the limits of the difference framework and so is balanced with recovery projects;
4. Resonates with the textual and cultural turns but conscious of their limits for political agency, resistance, recovery and transformation; balances with material, economic analysis; balancing idealistic trends with realism.
5. Non-metonymic- consciously veers away from universalizing what may be a specific position;
6. Self-reflexive- conscious of, and announces its position- where it is coming from;
7. Truly multi, inter and trans-disciplinary.

While the use of poststructuralist and cultural frameworks and perspectives seem to be the trend now, this is does not mean that the work group will only privilege a single paradigm. The study of ethnicity (like any other social science problem) demands for new insights and the ability to re-examine and revise older theories in consideration of new data and better interpretations.

Challenges

The main challenge confronting the ethnicity studies work group is the absence of institutional funding for a long-term interdisciplinary team research. Most of the researches attributed to the work group are done by individual faculty, with modest funding from the University. It is hard to “sell” postructuralist and cultural studies to non-UP research-oriented funding agencies because the latter are more interested in empirical studies that are useful for policy and development project development.

The work group also needs to take a more programmatic approach to its initiatives. This means that research agenda should be defined, and the research teams organized and made functional. Team researches must be encouraged without prejudice to individual research initiatives, particularly those that can contribute to the goal and objectives of the program.