Everyday Politics in the Philippines: Class and Status Relations in a Central Luzon Village

In this rich and probing study, an experienced ethnographer examines the everyday politics of a rice farming village in central Luzon. Contending that the faction and patron-client relationships emphasized by conventional studies of Philippine politics turn out to be only one small part of political life, Kerkvliet offers a highly nuanced and fascinating portrait of political relationships among villagers. The world he portrays is complex and multifaceted: in a period of flux, relations of status and class shift as traditional roles give way to new social identities. Kerkvliet demonstrates how disputes about claims to land or controversies around wages lie at the heart of political life regardless of whether they manifest themselves in the usual "political arenas."

Kerkvliet shows how everyday politics gives evidence of contending beliefs about what is just and who has rights to particular resources. Furthermore, relationships between people in different class and status positions are far less harmonious than they might appear on the surface. Embedded in this contentious interaction are divergent ideas about how resources should be distributed—the privileged emphasize values supported by capitalism, while the poor press for rights to satisfy basic needs and for human dignity.

Everyday Politics in the Philippines is a comprehensive and masterful study that revises our notions of political life in rural areas of the Third World. It is a distinguished work of scholarship that will appeal to a broad range of social scientists.