State and Society in the Philippines.

• Author: Morada, Noel M.
• Position: Book Review

State and Society in the Philippines. By Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso. New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005. Softcover: 351pp.

One could mistake this volume simply as a history textbook about the Philippines. However, it is more than that. It is primarily about state formation and the dynamics of state-society relations that shaped the country's politics, economy, and history all the way from the Spanish colonial period well into the post-Marcos era. The book is divided into ten chapters that are rich in documentation and narratives (in boxes), as well as in-depth description and analyses of contexts and actors, which are quite essential in understanding the nuances of the Philippine state's evolution and state-society relations. The principal concern of the book's authors is to examine "the long history of institutional weakness in the Philippines" as well as the attempts to hurdle the state's "structural fragility and strengthen its bond with society" (pp. 2-3). They also want to stimulate thinking about why the Philippine state remains resilient despite its "weaknesses" (for example, inability to deal with armed rebellions, corruption, mismanagement, and tax collection) and why it has so far not ended up a failed state. Crawford Young's eight main attributes of a modern state served as the basic framework of the book's examination of the nature of the Philippine state and its interactions with various "social forces" defined by Joel Migdal as "powerful mechanisms of associative behaviour" (p. 9) in society.

Chapter 2 of the book situates the Philippines as part of maritime Southeast Asia. The authors argue that, although pre-Spanish Philippines had less centralized polities compared with other parts of the region, it shared the same cultural and political attributes and ruling practices found in many early Southeast Asian states. In particular, small villages called barangays were connected through a web of rulers called datus that had kinship practices, religious traditions, and a system of hierarchy and dependence, which formed part of early state formation even in the absence of larger "supra-barangay" political institutions (p. 38). Archeological, anthropological, and historical evidence and records were cited in the book to support the claim about early state formation, including the Laguna copperplate inscription found in 1986 that was carbon-dated to 900 CE (common era).

The origins of the weak...