philippine studies Ateneo de Manila University • Loyola Heights, Quezon City • 1108 Philippines Philippine Popular Culture: Dimensions and Directions. The State of Research in Philippine Popular Culture Doreen G. Fernandez Philippine Studies vol. 29, no. 1 (1981) 26–44 Copyright © Ateneo de Manila University Philippine Studies is published by the Ateneo de Manila University. Contents may not be copied or sent via email or other means to multiple sites and posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s written permission. Users may download and print articles for individual, noncom- mercial use only. However, unless prior permission has been obtained, you may not download an entire issue of a journal, or download multiple copies of articles. Please contact the publisher for any further use of this work at
[email protected]. http://www.philippinestudies.net Fri June 27 13:30:20 2008 Philippine Studies 29 (1981): 26-44 Philippine Popular Culture: Dimensions and Directions The State of Research in Philippine Popular Culture DOREEN G. FERNANDEZ Popular culture in the Philippines is a concern of recent awareness, recent exploration, and even more recent definition. Consider the country whose popular culture is in question: a Third World, de- veloping nation; with many indigenous ethnic groups still definite- L ly unurbanized; with a long history of colonization that left be- hind at least two immediately discernible layers of cultural in- fluence, the Spanish and the American, and a less discernible (being more deeply assimilated) one, the Chinese; in a present socio-economic state that is still predominantly agricultural, semi- feudal (many feudal structures, especially in agricultural practices and related lifestyles continue, barely changed), and neocolonial (dependent on foreign economies, especially through the pervasive presence of multinational corporations).