Duterte's Disciplinary Quarantine How a Moral Dichotomy was Constructed and Undermined

Kusaka, Wataru

doi:10.1353/phs.2020.0027

Cited by 9 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…Finally, beyond the 'bruises' described by anthropologists elsewhere in the form of 'vitriolic and even threatening anonymous on-line responses' (Besteman 2010: 413), the political risks for anthropologists in the country can be far worse in light of Duterte's disciplinary regime (Kusaka 2020) and the overall 'climate of fear' (Warburg and Jensen 2020) throughout his administration. While academics themselves have largely escaped the fate of Duterte's high-profile critics in politics and journalism, perhaps it has more to do with the fact that they have been perceived as largely harmless to his political standing (though it is worth noting that the museologist and public anthropologist Antonio Montalvan II found himself relieved of his column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer after lamenting 'censorship').…”

Section: Discussion: Continuity and Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropological Responses to COVID-19 in the Philippines

Lasco

2022

Anthropology in Action

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This article reflects on the roles anthropologists have played in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines, and identifies the challenges – from the methodological to the political – they faced in fulfilling these roles. Drawing on the author’s personal and professional experiences in the country, as well as on interviews with other anthropologists, this article identifies three major roles for anthropologists: conducting ethnographic research; bearing witness to the pandemic through first-person accounts; and engaging various publics. All these activities have contributed to a greater recognition of the role of the social sciences in health crises, even as anthropologists struggle to gain the same legitimacy as their clinical and public health counterparts. The article concludes by making recommendations that can better prepare local anthropologists in responding to future health crises.

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Section: Discussion: Continuity and Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropological Responses to COVID-19 in the Philippines

Lasco

2022

Anthropology in Action

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“…To explain its failures, the Philippine president engaged in “finger pointing” which was “parroted” by his “minions and government” at the irresponsible “ pasaway ” said to regularly violate quarantine who were primarily to blame for an increase in COVID-19 cases during successive waves of the pandemic (Lasca, 2021: 1). Kusaka (2020) has termed this “disciplinary quarantine” that is based “on a moral dichotomy between ‘good citizens,’ who abide by strict regulations, and undisciplined “evil others ( pasaway ), who endanger the nation.” As will be discussed more below, this helped him deflect from the government's failures in dealing with pandemic, ensuring that his popularity long remained at record levels. 2…”

Section: Medical Populism Blunt Force Regulation and Brute Force Gove...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Brute Force Governance: Public Approval Despite Policy Failure During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Philippines

Thompson

2022

Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs

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The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed enormous governance deficits globally. Several populist strongmen practiced “medical populism” – ignoring scientific advice, proffering denials, and blaming others. More technocratic leaders recognised its severity, implementing strict lockdowns. But some failed to adopt more flexible restrictions once testing improved due to local enforcement difficulties, termed “blunt force regulation.” Although neither a pandemic denialist nor an obtuse technocrat, Philippine president Rodrigo R. Duterte's response combined aspects of both approaches with blame shifting and one-size-fits-all lockdowns while also securitising the crisis. Utilising methods developed during his bloody “war on drugs,” Duterte imposed a heavily militarised approach, scapegoated supposedly disobedient Filipinos ( pasaway) and bullied local politicians. While the Philippines has been among the worst pandemic performers globally, Duterte's approval ratings remained robust. It is argued “brute force governance” undermined the dynamics of accountability, enabling him to win public approval despite policy failure.

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“…Due to the instability and rupture of conventional communal norms and practices amid the pandemic, these collective endeavors toward unified action are mired with differentiated lines of moral fragmentation. In this context, a moral splitting of body classification exists which views bodies as primarily un/safe, non/dangerous, un/clean, or un/disciplined ( Kusaka, 2020 ; Lasco, 2020 ; Reny and Barreto, 2020 ; Todd-Gher and Shah, 2020 ). Specifically, a morally dichotomous ordering of bodies can be understood as a specific form of moral urbanism or the symbolic-affective construction of cities ( Darling, 2013 ).…”

Section: Politics Of Pandemic Cities and Moral Urbanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this extraordinary war, we are all soldiers ” ( Petty and Morales, 2020 ). In view of the Duterte administration's implementation of top-down disciplinary quarantine measures, local bodies are morally demarcated between those embodying ‘good citizenship’ and the ‘pasaway’, a ‘perpetual enemy of health and order’ ( Hapal, 2021 ; Kusaka, 2020 ). Whilst the idea of a morally charged social construction of the body is nothing new (e.g., Canoy and Ofreneo, 2017 ; Miller et al, 2017 ; Rich and Evans, 2005 ), its bio-necropolitical loadings to existing regimes of health governance needs to be further fleshed out as these can fuel moral panic, deep seated prejudice, and violence directed toward certain groups, especially amid the pandemic ( Chakraborty, 2021 ; Rose, 2021 ; Sandset, 2021 ).…”

Section: Politics Of Pandemic Cities and Moral Urbanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Here, we use the Philippines as a sample case of generating paradoxical urban imaginaries that are shaped by fragmented and uneven ‘covidscapes’ in the country ( Aguilar, 2020 ). In view of the Duterte administration's implementation of top-down disciplinary quarantine measures, local bodies are morally demarcated between those embodying ‘good citizenship’ and the ‘pasaway’, a ‘perpetual enemy of health and order’ ( Hapal, 2021 ; Kusaka, 2020 ). Working through this polarizing moral field, wisdom ‘from the ground’, however, also show that communities as a reconstituted and differentiated collective body are sustained by multi-scalar and multi-actor networks that facilitate mutual aid from the national and local governments, non-government and private agencies, faith-based organizations, and by individual efforts of anonymous citizens.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Bodies-in-waiting as infrastructure: Assembling the Philippine Government's disciplinary quarantine response to COVID-19

Canoy

Robles

Roxas

2022

Social Science & Medicine

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The purpose of this article is to advance the concept of bodies-in-waiting as an everyday infrastructure to explain the shifting nature of ‘pandemic cities’ in response to the changing dynamics of infection control in urban spaces. While previous literatures have been ‘sanitized’ to emphasize the importance of managing optimal physiological health and safety, we would like to argue that keener attention is needed to rethink the constitutive role of bodies in co-producing a city's sociopolitical ecologies at this time of crisis. The main body is divided into three sections. The first section introduces the political dimensions of pandemic response by various governments with an emphasis to experiences of middle to low income countries. Our intention is to show how these studies bring into light the role of local politics of pandemic response within countries, and that actual governance mechanisms in cities are shaped and contested by shifting power blocs and emergent affinities. The second section forwards an embodied urban political approach that conceptualizes bodies-in-waiting as infrastructure. In this view, bodies-in-waiting is produced and reproduced by complex social-material flows and transformation rooted in variegated matrices of power through which urban spaces are (re)assembled. The last section demonstrates a sample case that shows how bodies-in-waiting as infrastructure are understood using Twitter-sourced data associated with the Philippine government's disciplinary quarantine measures which started March 12, 2020 in the NCR. At its core, bodies-in-waiting as infrastructures populate a politically affirmative urban imaginary of bodies living on despite the existence of an accelerated and mutating virus in slower moving cities.

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Duterte's Disciplinary Quarantine How a Moral Dichotomy was Constructed and Undermined

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Anthropological Responses to COVID-19 in the Philippines

Anthropological Responses to COVID-19 in the Philippines

Brute Force Governance: Public Approval Despite Policy Failure During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Philippines

Bodies-in-waiting as infrastructure: Assembling the Philippine Government's disciplinary quarantine response to COVID-19

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