ABSTRACT
Since independence from America in 1946, attempts by the Philippine state to construct a cohesive sense of national identity have met with limited success. In contrast to the situation elsewhere in Asia, where colonial histories are widely invoked for nation-building purposes, a prolonged and varied experience of colonisation has not been consistently or effectively harnessed to the task of creating a shared sense of identity. National identity in the Philippines, and the state’s role in its construction, have previously been analysed from a variety of perspectives: some contrasting a ‘non-developmental’ Filipino state with its ‘developmental’ East Asian neighbours (e.g. Bello 2009); others focusing more broadly on ‘strong state’–‘weak state’ dynamics (e.g. Abinales and Amoroso 2005); and still others positing a relationship between the strength of the family and the weakness of the state (e.g. McCoy 1993; Kaelin 2012). These studies in turn draw upon the work of Hutchcroft (1991) and Anderson (1983), who respectively portrayed the Philippines as a ‘patrimonial state’ and an ‘imagined community’. But despite their varying emphases, existing studies agree in portraying a weak state whose failure to engender a strong sense of nationhood sets it apart in a region of powerful and often antagonistic nationalisms. Indeed, as this chapter shows, official discourse has in recent years sought to portray Filipinos as uniquely ‘global’ in their outlook – in an attempt to make a virtue of the economy’s massive reliance on remittances from migrant workers. 1
