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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Kabuhayan Index: Gendered Dispossession and Resistance in the Philippines Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7tt4k72r Author Santos, Stephanie Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Kabuhayan Index: Gendered Dispossession and Resistance in the Philippines A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Gender Studies by Stephanie Santos 2018 © Copyright by Stephanie Santos 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Kabuhayan Index: Gendered Dispossession and Resistance in the Philippines by Stephanie Santos Doctor of Philosophy in Gender Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Kyungwon Hong, Co-Chair Professor Purnima Mankekar, Co-Chair Development scholars and practitioners have struggled to implement programs that were inclusive of the needs women in the Global South. As a Global South country lauded for its high levels of gender equality indices, the Philippines offers a generative site to analyze the gendered effects of uneven economic development. While some developing countries like the Philippines report a rising number of women in economic and public life, feminist and Global South scholars have argued that gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment programs have failed and even harmed marginalized populations, such as urban poor women. This research intervenes in this debate by foregrounding the gendered forms of dispossession in communities that are “made poor” in the pursuit of rapid industrialization. Specifically, this research is compelled by the following questions: First, what are the mechanisms through which market-based development ii strategies transform Filipino women’s bodies into sites of capitalist accumulation? And second, how do Filipino women conceptualize gender equality based on their own epistemes of development and belonging? This dissertation examines these questions through how Filipinas analyze market-based projects like microcredit and labor export as attacks on their kabuhayan, a Filipino word that loosely translates to “life-making.” Unlike concepts such as “labor” or “livelihood,” kabuhayan references a complex, dynamic, and relational set of practices that includes everything from creating informal economies where formal means of employment are impossible and building communal relations of support when state-based social welfare programs are nonexistent, to redefining what livable conditions are and collectively imagining a future for themselves and their communities when no such future seems possible. Focusing on kabuhayan highlights the specificities of neoliberal state-capital regimes of extraction. The disruption of vending, community loan groups, and other practices of kabuhayan ensures a steady supply of workers for the country’s labor export programs, which then translate to the high gender equality index levels in the Philippines. This research uses interdisciplinary methods to examine institutional and discursive strategies deployed by the state to render women subaltern and to assimilate disenfranchised Filipina women into the flows of global capital and labor. By juxtaposing the gender equality indices and economic development strategies with narratives and cultural productions from marginalized Filipina women, my research illuminates how gender equality indices demonstrate not how Filipinas have been empowered by development schemes, but rather how vulnerable women are violently assimilated into the flows of global capital. iii The dissertation of Stephanie Santos is approved. Victor Bascara Lucy M. Burns Lieba Bernice Faier Kyungwon Hong, Committee Co-Chair Purnima Mankekar, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iv DEDICATION For Molson, Sandy, and Tex, whose unconditional love and support continue to inspire me to be a better human. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……….………………………….……………………………..…...vii VITA………………………….………………………….……………………………..................x INTRODUCTION: Development and Filipina Women’s Kabuhayan………………………….1 Bibliography………………………….………………………….……………………………....30 CHAPTERS: 1. “We were not poor, we were made poor”: The Production of Bare Life in Sitio Mapalad…...35 Bibliography………………………….………………………….………………………….…...61 2. Unnatural Disasters: Kabuhayan in the Wake of Typhoon Yolanda…………………….……62 Bibliography………………………….………………………….………………………....……95 3. “And so I rallied the women”: Kabuhayan and Urban Poor Women’s Activism……….……98 Bibliography………………………….………………………….………………………….….124 Conclusion: Calvary of the Poor…….………………………….………………………….….126 Bibliography………………………….………………………….………………………….….140 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to have received financial and institutional support for this research project from the University of California, Los Angeles. The Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the Labor Center, the International Center, and Graduate Division provided generous financial support for research and fieldwork. The Center for the Study of Women’s awarded me a dissertation year fellowship that supported my writing. In addition to UCLA, I have also been fortunate to receive support from the Social Science Research Center’s InterAsia Program and from the Association for Asian Studies. Their grants allowed me to workshop early versions of this research at different conferences and have connected me with many scholars in Critical Asian and Critical Filipino Studies. The Department of Gender Studies at UCLA has been a stimulating and nurturing intellectual home for the past years. The Department of Gender Studies at UCLA has been a challenging and nurturing intellectual home and for that, I am grateful to Samantha Hogan, Jenna Miller-Von Ah, Van Do-Nguyen, and Richard Medrano for their support and friendship. My sincere gratitude to Lieba Faier, Victor Bascara and Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns for being part of my dissertation committee. Your rigorous comments, advice, and support throughout the various stages of this project have been crucial for my growth as a scholar. I would like to especially acknowledge Grace Kyungwon Hong and Purnima Mankekar, my dissertation committee co- chairs. This research would not have been possible without your feedback, generative conversations, and encouragement over all these years. Your writing, research, mentorship, and collaborations have indelibly shaped my development as a scholar and a person. Probably my favorite thing about going back to graduate school was being in collaboration with incredible colleagues. Thank you especially to Rahel Woldegaber, Freda Fair, vii and Preeti Sharma, long-time interlocutors and writing partners whose work continues to inspire me. At UCLA more broadly, there are so many of you who made graduate student life stimulating and even pleasurable: Wendi Yamashita, Rana Sharif, Tina Beyene, Naaz Diwan, Esha Momeni, Dalal Alfares, Jolie Chea, Jacob Lau, Bo Luengsuraswat, Lina Chhun, Irene Soriano, Mary Kao. What a privilege it has been to come to campus to be inspired by your insights, knowledge, and passion. And my colleagues and friends from the Philippines: Bomen Guillermo, Gene Lacza Pilapil, and Crisline Torres-Pilapil, we are an ocean apart but connected through our friendship and our work. Thank you everyone for your labor, your fellowship, the bike rides, meals, and laughter. You are all amazing activists, scholars, teachers, and I am blessed to be in your community. For my family in the Philippines and in Los Angeles, I would not have made it this far without you. Much pasasalamat at pagmamahal. And for my partner JL and our dogs Molson, Sandy, and Tex, your love and support sustain me and inspire me as we move to the next stage of this academic and life journey. From the bottom of my heart, salamat. viii CURRICULUM VITAE Education New York University Master of Arts Department of Liberal Studies University of the Philippines Bachelor of Arts College of Mass Communication Research Fellowships and Awards UCLA Jean and Irving Stone Dissertation Fellowship Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies UCLA Collegium of University Teaching Fellowship UCLA Asia Institute Graduate Fellowship Dean’s Award for Research, UCLA Graduate Division of Social Sciences Graduate Research Mentorship Program Fellowship Association for Asian Studies (AAS) – Philippine Studies Group (PSG) Travel Award Alice Belkin Memorial Scholarship, UCLA International Institute UCLA Alumni Association Fellowship Chancellor’s Prize Award, UCLA Academic Experience University of California, Los Angeles Department of Gender Studies Teaching Fellow • Taught classes in Bodies (GS 103), Feminist Pedagogy (GS 495), Gender and Globalization (GS 185), and Gender and Development in Southeast Asia (GS 98) University of California, Los Angeles Asian American Studies Center Assistant Editor • edited articles for the academic journals Amerasia and AAPI Nexus ix Introduction Development and Filipina Women’s Kabuhayan In the northern Philippine city of Baguio, there is a locked storeroom inside the office of one of the corporate-funded consortiums that provide microcredit services to indigenous women displaced from their ancestral lands by mining projects. The storeroom contains things that loan recipients have surrendered to partial payments for delinquent loans—threadbare blankets, tin plates