Volume 30, Issue No. 1 (2013)
Jesuit Notes: Notes from a Language Exercise
These notes are about an exercise tried out in a graduate school cultural anthropology class. The exercise involved bringing some current fieldwork material into class. The results were interesting both for a few things learned about one indigenous Mindanao language and for a few seeds of anthropological contemplation quietly sown on well-prepared soil.
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Perspectives on the Negotiated Status of Filipino Irregular Migrants in Japan
This paper examines the contradictory positions of the state on the treatment of immigrants and irregular migrants. It does so by reflecting on the case study of five Filipino irregular migrants in Japan. Just as any other modern democratic state faced with migration issues, Japan on the one hand needs to regulate migration inflows including irregular channels, and on the other hand protects its citizens and non-citizens alike within its borders, including “illegal aliens.” Underlying this contradiction is the question of the cost of liberalizing immigration. While doing so is in accordance with international conventions and other human rights instruments, it can have an impact on the economic, cultural, and political life of the state. The paper examines this “liberal paradox” within which most host countries, including Japan, find themselves and its impact on future immigration policies.
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Recognizing the Other’s Appeal: Levinas’s Contribution to the Discourse on Multiculturalism
This paper provides an account of Levinas’s contribution to the discourse on multiculturalism. It argues that the recognition of what he calls as the ethical appeal of the other’s face is the necessary starting point in discussions relating to the issue of cultural pluralism. Demands for the recognition of the dignity of each individual can no longer rely on a credible notion of subjectivity and freedom. An individual’s worth is not to be grounded in the idea of autonomy but instead in the ethical signification revealed in the face. However, the Levinasian understanding of the other has been criticized as an abstraction. The paper defends Levinas’s insight by arguing that there is a distinction between the other and the way she manifests herself and that there are different and concrete ways through which Levinas speaks of the other and the self.
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The Deduction of the Possibility and Actuality of Evil in Schelling’s Of Human Freedom
The paper aims to provide an introduction to Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s enigmatic masterpiece Philosophical investigation into the essence of human freedom and matters connected therewith. It uncovers some of its themes namely God’s self-revelation, the processes of creation, human nature, and evil. It presents some of the underlying arguments of Schelling’s notoriously difficult work. More specifically, the paper explains how the possibility and actuality of evil can be deduced through the presentation of God in terms of ground and existence and his self-manifestation as such.
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The Water-Energy Nexus: Exploring Options for Davao’s Future
This paper analyzes the impending water and energy crisis in Davao City. Three statistical models namely linear, exponential, and cubic were used to predict future water and energy demands. The Tamugan River offers a potential source to address this looming problem, yet, it has become a source of conflict mainly between the Davao City Water District and Hedcor, Inc. The former is bent on harnessing the river which is known to have an abundance of high-quality surface water, while the latter proposes to establish cascaded hydropower plants given the river’s immense volume of flowing water. Notwithstanding the sincerity of both parties, the current conflict on who should harness the Tamugan River and how it be harnessed has to be resolved to avoid forestalling Davao City’s development.
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Volume 30, Issue No. 2 (2013)
Anaerobic Digestion of Blackwater With Various Co-Substrates in Eudiometer Scale
This paper investigates the anaerobic biodegradability of blackwater and its suitability for co-digestion in batch digesters (eudiometers) under mesophilic temperature. Readily available co-substrates such as grease trap waste, concentrated urine and high strength domestic wastewater which are high-strength organic substrates were introduced. These substrates were treated in a decentralized reactor through anaerobic digestion. The biomethane potential of these substrates at different inoculum to substrate ratios was investigated using 250 mL reactor bottles according to DIN 38414-8. Biogas production and quality was measured on a regular basis to determine the extent of the substrate degradation in terms of biogas production, volatile solids and chemical oxygen demand reductions, methane content and methanation level. The co-digestion experiments revealed that blackwater is best co-digested with grease trap waste based on the increased biogas production of 57 percent and the enhanced biogas quality. The co-digestion of blackwater with urine is only possible up to 10 percent v/v addition due to inhibition by ammonia at higher urine fractions.
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Filipino Parental Involvement and Children’s Educational Performance
Researchers have long noted that parental involvement can substantially influence children’s academic performance. There is a paucity of research which has focused on this relationship in other cultures. Using a sample of parents from the island of Mindanao, this study examines the nature of parental involvement, and how it affects the school success of Filipino elementary pupils. Overall, Filipino parents are shown to be very active in their children’s school activities. The influence upon children’s performance in school is shown to vary, depending upon the type of parental involvement. The results are discussed within a social capital paradigm.
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HIV/AIDS Women and Spirituality
Researchers have long noted that parental involvement can substantially influence children’s academic performance. There is a paucity of research which has focused on this relationship in other cultures. Using a sample of parents from the island of Mindanao, this study examines the nature of parental involvement, and how it affects the school success of Filipino elementary pupils. Overall, Filipino parents are shown to be very active in their children’s school activities. The influence upon children’s performance in school is shown to vary, depending upon the type of parental involvement. The results are discussed within a social capital paradigm.
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Jesuit Notes: Reflections on a Storm
Typhoon Yolanda struck the Philippines in November 2013. For the island of Leyte, the fact of a tropical cyclone was not news. This part of the country is quite familiar with tropical storms. Yet this storm was different. Not only was it with a strength never before seen in the whole world, but it also followed a path which caught the island peoples off guard. Once the storm with its over 300 km/hr gusts has passed south of the principal city of Tacloban, the stage was set for disaster. The winds now were not from the east and, in that sense, manageable as familiar but they now roared in from the south. This meant they brought with them storm surges, huge waves several meters in height and with a volume of water commensurate with that height. In short, devastation to all the shoreline structures and people along the coast. But this was a principal element of the city of Tacloban. All was blown away, drowned by the storm. The city was obliterated.
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The Shortchange in ‘Building’ Concept: An Ethical Reading of Space and Agency in Urban Development
The reference to development especially in two-thirds of the world to date remains attached to increasing infrastructures, industry, job opportunities, among other things, claiming to serve the economic concerns of the people. This prevalent notion naturally carries with it the attendant troubles of displacement, overcrowding, blight and criminality. This scale of weight between gains and losses triggers ethical questioning. This is so not only because of the inequalities in the sharing of burdens and gains among the people but more importantly because of the need to answer the basic question of what can truly serve the flourishing and development of peoples and societies. The ‘spatial’ inequalities, especially observable in conventional urban development approaches, speak of marginalization rather than of participation. The paper argues that a sensitive and ethical approach to space could serve as corrective to the above. Through a critical reading of the concept of space in forging agency and an appeal to solidarity, the paper hopes to contribute to the dialogue on what makes for authentic development.
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Volume 29, Issue No. 1 (2012)
Effect of Simulated Acid Rain on the Morphology of Galvanized Iron and its Elemental Analysis
The evolution of the corrosion process has been investigated on the surface of galvanized iron (GI) strips subjected to acid rain simulation. Scanning electron microscopy, electron dispersive x-ray and mapping prove that corrosion has occurred in all GI strips samples immersed at sulfuric acid solution having pH of 3.0, 3.5, 4.0 and 5.6 respectively. The pH measurements done on all sulfuric acid solution show that corrosion process terminated seven days after the samples are immersed in acid solution. This is the first time that growth of corrosion on GI strips subjected to simulated acid using sulfuric acid solution has been explored.
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Jesuit Notes: Social Justice and Mining
No one really talked much about mining when I was going to school. It was one of those activities engaged in by a relatively small number of people and its effects were not well understood. Things have changed. While no one will contest that in the modern world we need the products of mining for such things as mobile phones, computers, skyscrapers and the like, there are concerns about the cost of mining on the environment. The desire has been to understand what “responsible mining” is. Even as some Philippine activists’ positions have been characterized as “anti-mining,” the thrust is less to ban mining activities absolutely from the country, but to hold it in abeyance until a broader consensus is achieved as to what responsible mining policy might be, and until the country clearly has the structures and competent personnel to enforce responsible mining.
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John Dryzek’s Discursive Democracy and Environmentalism in the Philippines
The heightened consciousness for environmental concern has become one of the defining facets of both the past and current decades. It has elicited discussions not only among experts from the domain of the scientifically and technologically oriented sciences, but even among social theorists especially those primarily involved in political theorizing. One of the key areas being studied here is the contribution of environmental movements in democratic theory. It is in this context that this article will analyze the environmental movement in the Philippines and the various strategies that it employs in contributing toward greater democratization of Philippine society. To accomplish this task, John Dryzek’s notion of discursive democracy will be used as a conceptual framework. This type of democracy justifies the presence of an oppositional public sphere that operates both outside and against the state to facilitate better democratization.
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Text, Tension, and Territory: The Field of Academic Journal Publishing in Mindanao, 1968-2005
Contenders in the field of academic journal publishing in Mindanao— the state, the Catholic religious, and the nonsectarian sector—generally produce journals once a year only because of the dearth of articles, the protracted processes, and rather modest resources. Thus, print run and reach are limited even as networked technology is expanding journal access. Within Mindanao academic journals are research abstracts, notes and comments, book reviews, and research articles that illuminate aspects of Mindanao: Educational capital and agents; indigenous, Islamized, and settler communities and their evolving cultures; variegated histories; and aspirations for peace and development. Top disciplines are education, history, political science, literature, and anthropology. Journal distinction or excellence is asserted through editors’ linguistic and cultural habitus as well as quality criteria, including advancement of knowledge, new knowledge or data, level of scholarship, appropriate methodology and analysis, relevance to Mindanao realities, theoretical soundness, and acceptable research design.
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The Constant Struggle to Become a Church of the Poor: Fifty Years after Vatican II
The notion of the “Church of the Poor” is oftentimes assumed to be simply based on the Vatican II ecclesiology. To clarify this presumption, this paper attempts to revisit the expression “Church of the Poor” in the context of its conciliar and postconciliar developments, especially in the Philippine Church. This paper also clarifies the conciliar meaning of the church of the poor in contrast with the Third World perspective on the preferential option for the poor. Furthermore, this paper attempts to expand the meaning of “the poor” in light of the new insights offered by social and ecological sciences. Doing so opens the way for the idea that the poor is an analogous notion which may refer to the economically poor, the racially oppressed, the sexually discriminated, and the ecologically poor. This paper argues that these human and ecological faces of poverty have to be creatively included in understanding the meaning of the church of the poor.
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