Title: Deciphering Duterte: Alternative Explanations
Speaker: Prof. Patricio Abinales, Director, Center for Philippine Studies, University of Hawaii-Manoa

Date & Time: June 1st (Fri.) 16:00 – 18:00, 2018
Venue: Tonan-tei (Room no.201) on the second floor of Inamori Foundation Memorial Building, CSEAS, Kyoto University

Moderator: Prof. Caroline HAU, CSEAS, Kyoto University

Abstract:
The presentation takes a second look at explanations that depict Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte by exploring a series of contradictions. There is the problem of looking at his popularity from an inter-country comparison when it is better to understand as a strand of post-war Filipino populism. The lecture also explores the dual nature of Davao City and then Davao province as settlement zones where migrants were supposed to move into “empty spaces,” on the one hand, but also an important cog in a global trading network on the other. It then moves to explore the distinctive Davao political economy of Davao (which relies on agricultural exports) and how it configures the local political culture, including the way Duterte’s constituents recollection of historical events like the 1986 People Power Revolution. Finally, it probes how languages and dialects are used by Duterte to reach out to his “voter base.”

About the speaker:
Patricio N. Abinales is professor at the School of Pacific and Asian Studies and former professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. A second and expanded edition of State and Society in the Philippines, which he co-wrote with Donna J. Amoroso, came out in 2017. He is currently working on Filipino revolutionaries traveling around Europe in the 1980s.