ABSTRACT
The Philippines, has been struggling to build its modern nation-state on a plural society, a term coined by J. S. Furnivall to describe the lack of social consensus in a place like the Philippines. The abstract dream of a single folk is a powerful one that bumps continually into the plural realities. Long ignored by virtually all lowlanders, the upland peoples were proselytized by Protestant missionaries and photographed by National Geographic. For most Filipinos, the uplanders were exotic, primitive, and very fierce. The Chinese who took up residence in Manila or the countryside were feared and needed. The Chinese were seizing the opportunities of a new economic order and a weakened Spanish imperial structure. The most important single social group within the Philippine social fabric is the racially mixed community of the mestizos. As education and the mass media work on people's values, nationalism—that binding belief in the centrality of the Filipino people—brings people together in a sense of unity.
