Citizenship, Nationalism, and Regionalism in Bicol, Philippines

• In Event: Citizenship in the Peripheries: Identities in SE Asia (Mini-Conference 1/3)

Abstract

What explains the persistent lack of nationalist movements in the Bicol Region of the Philippines? Despite having its own regional language dialect, local political elites with few connections to Manila, and a history of armed rebellion, political mobilization has very rarely coalesced around a regional identity. This contrasts with other regions in the Philippines, including the ARMM region in Western Mindanao and even the Cordillera region in northern Luzon. In this project, I explore the factors that drive nationalist mobilization, or in this case the lack of it, in the context of the Bicol Region. I examine how factors such as language, elite political connections, and geographic features may have created the potential for nationalist mobilization and how institutional and social factors ultimately resulted in this type of mobilization failing to take shape. Finally, I discuss how the active presence of the armed communist insurgency in the region affected the potential for regional independence movements.

Author

• Dotan A Haim, Dartmouth College