Veronica Tries To Write

What does “dating” mean? For a scientist, it means determining the age of an artifact. For most people, it is a stage in a romantic relationship. The reality of research containing jargon and specialized language is not new. As researchers, we need to use words that best describe the process so that we can explain them as precise as possible. Unfortunately, our general audience – the very purpose of our research, does not understand our results due to the wide vocabulary and hard to define words. Some researchers succumb to the sin of jargon because it can signal to the audience, especially those who are writing for an in-group audience, that they are not a member of that group or have not mastered the group's terminology.  But we need to realize that as researchers, in whatever field, we write to communicate. If we cannot maintain clarity and relay our results to our audience, why did we even conduct one in the first place? --------------------------------------------- REFE...

Does it Mattel?  Political Economy & Sociology of Toys Barbie, Boomco, Disney Cars and Hot Wheels are just some brands and toys manufactured by the multinational company, Mattel. Mattel is the world's largest toy maker in terms of revenue (Carnevale, 2013). In 1959, it introduced the Barbie doll making it one of the company’s best-selling toys up until now. It is presented as an aspirational doll to the child with variants in different skin colors and nationalities. This in turn gravely affected how girls at a young age have projected themselves. With permanent vital statistics of 39-18-33, more and more strive to be as thin as she is. But just like any company, Mattel also faced difficulties when sales began to fall in 1980s but was able to bounce back through what Spigel (1992 quoted in Cook, 2009) calls “intertextuality”. Through intertextuality, Barbie was extended beyond a single medium or genre. They began to advertise toys on television especially on shows targeted...

Fashionalism, a portmanteau of FASHION and NATIONALISM seems to have established its place in the Philippine fashion industry. The term from Rhett Eala who created a collection of collared shirts and polos for the brand Collezione C2 using the Philippine archipelago for its main design.  From polo shirts that bear the map of the Philippines to the more formal terno or Filipiniana, the trend of fashionalism has been on the rise. The “Pinoy Pride” sensation became an effective way of pronouncing one's nationalism - identifying oneself through these commodities. Regionalism or tribalism is the consciousness or in group loyalty through possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity. This best explains its success to the Filipino consumers. With its claim to fame by peaking our Filipino identity and consciousness, those who support fashionalism often argue that through it, we are making history and nationalism more viable and marketable to the youth. Those who were not familiar w...

            The 1988 horror-comedy film titled Kumander Bawang tells the story of Tikboy, an awkward and frail teenage boy who suddenly becomes a superhero to save Matambato from Conde Regalado and his army of aswangs raging from vampires to self-segmenting viscera suckers by transforming to Kumander Bawang and using garlics to ward off the villains. The film opens when Tikboy’s grandfather laments that the Moro-Moro, a stage play depicting battles of Christians and Moros during the Spanish colonial period, is being less popular due to celebrities being invited during fiestas. Even in recent times, with the rise of popular culture and our fascination of Hollywood, this proves to be true. A reflection of the on-going struggle of cultural workers such as Lolo Ambo, countless days of practice, memorization and exaggerated movements with no room for mistakes, makes theatre a nurturing art form that unfortunately only rewards th...

         Pancasila or the five principles of Indonesia, written by then President Sukarno, is the national ideology that guided Indonesia after achieving its independence. It consists of the following principles: belief in one God, just and civilized humanity, Indonesian unity, democracy under the guidance of representative consultations and lastly, social justice for all people of Indonesia. Pancasila was made and ratified from the desire to establish a neutral cultural identity that would also unify Indonesia as a nation.     Fast forward several decades later, the Pancasila is now embedded in Indonesians’ way of life through their educational system, politics, economy and society. And while it has been successful in strengthening Suharto and Sukarno’s reign, it is important to ask if it served its purpose of truly uniting the Muslims and Christians of Indonesia. Under these presidents, it is not surprising that the Pancasil...

       It was 1989 when Michael Edwards shook the academe and sparked a debate when he wrote the critique “The Irrelevance of Development Studies”. Fast forward to almost three decades later, whatever happened to his criticisms? Is the irrelevance of Development Studies still relevant today? Or did it become obsolete over time? When Edwards published his work, he pointed out salient points about how development studies is being carried out inside and outside the academe. According to him, there is still a gap between research and development. Development studies fails to solve the problems it was supposed to. It ceases to serve its purpose to bring progress in most areas especially the underdeveloped countries.      One of the points he expounded was that development studies scholars are still victims of the banking style of education where there is a passive reception of ideas and inputs from professors to students. In turn, this a...