Find in Library

This essay is an exercise in the histoire des mentalités that traces the evolution of the characteristic ethos in relation to State and nation in the Philippines. Whereas State-propagated nationalism and associated rituals are inescapably present, these fail to evoke the sense of belonging to a shared civil world. It seems as if the public sphere of the State and the private sphere of everyday life do not articulate, which is practically enhanced by the systematic exclusion of the ordinary citizen from the oligarchic political process. As it is often expected that a civil society rooted in the emerging middle classes has the potential of bridging the gap and of providing the cultural leadership that moulds the nation, the evolution of their members’ ideas, from militant idealism to current self-centred morality, will be brought into focus against the dynamics of the political economy and of a culture that is increasingly divorced from the practice of everyday life.