REVISITING LOCAL HISTORIES
Author(s): Resil B. Mojares
Source: Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society , September/December 1997, Vol.
25, No. 3/4, SPECIAL ISSUE: LOCAL HISTORIES (September/December 1997), pp. 225-231
Published by: University of San Carlos Publications
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Philippine Quarterly of Culture & Society
25(1997):225-231
REVISITING LOCAL HISTORIES
Resil B. Mojares
Local history was a major wave of interest in Philippine historical stud?
ies in the 1970s.
This interest was borne of an awareness of the need for cultural preser?
vation, scholarship, and advocacy focused on subnational communities
(geographic or ethnic). This was an awareness fed by the spirit of national?
ist self-examination and "rediscovery" that pervaded the years before and
after the declaration of Martial Law in 1972.
The need to look at the country's constituent communities primed the
ground for the independent establishment of local research centers, muse?
ums and special libraries, such as the Coordinated Investigation of Sulu
Cultures in Jolo, Dansalan Research Center in Marawi, Leyte-Samar Re?
search Library in Tacloban, Folklife Museum and Archives in Cagayan de
Oro, Cordillera Studies Center in Baguio, and Cebuano Studies Center in
Cebu.
Other initiatives were undertaken. In 1978, the annual National Con?
ference on Local History was launched with a conference in Cagayan de
Oro, the product of many individuals and institutions but one in which
province-based academics and historians played a leading role. The con?
ference was subsequently adopted, in its seventh year, by the Philippine
National Historical Society (which, under then society president Marcelino
A. Foronda, Jr., was one of the principal sponsors of the Cagayan de Oro
conference). The PNHS continues to stage the conference today. To com?
plement the conference, the PNHS also revived its publication, The Jour?
nal of History, with a strong focus on local and regional studies.
Resil B. Mojares, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Graduate Humanities at the Univer?
sity of San Carlos, Cebu, and is editor of this journal. His e-mail address is that of the journal,
[email protected].
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226 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY OF CULTURE & SOCIETY
The interest in local history in the Philippines antedates these initia?
tives and can be traced as far back as the turn-of-the-century work of such
nationalist writers as Isabelo de los Reyes (1864-1938), who published on
the history and culture of the Ilocos and the Visayas. At the local level,
across the years, a mass of village, municipal, and provincial histories has
been produced on the occasion of commemorative events, including an?
nual town or parish fiestas, as well as by such projects as the nationwide
effort of the Department of Education in the 1950s to collect, through the
public schools, local history, folklore and traditions, a project that pro?
duced a large compilation of reports called Historical Data Papers, now
deposited at the Philippine National Library. At various times, too, the Na?
tional Historical Institute, a government agency, undertook training-and
dissemination activities, usually in partnership with local government
units, aimed at promoting an interest in regional and provincial histories.
University-based research on local history, however, gained momen?
tum only in the 1970s. Historian Ed. C. de Jesus (1980: ix-xiv) sees this
development as part of a felicitous convergence of themes within South?
east Asian and Philippine historiography. These themes - expressed by
such a diverse range of scholars as J.C. Van Leur, Harry Benda, John
Smail, Teodoro Agoncillo, Horacio de la Costa, Jr., and John Larkin -
arose out of critiques of "Eurocentric," colonialist, elite-centered, and
monolithic "national" histories. Scholars argued for an "autonomous" his?
tory focused on the internal dynamics of particular societies; history that
goes behind the standard preoccupation with "big" institutions, personali?
ties, and events; and history that takes full account of the territorial, social
and cultural variations in the people's experience of events.
In the case of local history, the most programmatic statement of its aim
was made by John Larkin (1967:316-317) thus:
"Scholars have not treated Philippine society as it has always been, a collec?
tion of integrated societies developing at different rates and subject to diverse
stimuli. Until each unit is studied as a unique entity and then compared with
other regions, Philippine history will remain incomplete."
University-based research gave local history not just academic respect?
ability but a prominent position in the agenda of Philippine historians (see
Tan 1977, Bauzon 1978, Mojares 1981). The impetus came from an
awareness of the need to "flesh out" and create the substance of national
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REVISITING LOCAL HISTORIES 227
history as well as interrogate the generalizing and summarizing statements
of "national historians" insufficiently attentive to the differential character
of communities and traditions in the country. Criticism was leveled against
a "national history" that focused on the doings of the national elite and the
national capital and primate region (Manila, the Tagalog provinces, Luzon)
and neglected the experience of the great mass of the population in the out?
lying regions.
Reaction took varied forms, including a Marxist historiography (as in
the influential writings of Renato Constantino) that deployed class analysis
in subverting the focus on the elite and foregrounded the role in history
making of the masses. Innovative approaches in writing "history from be?
low" - as in the seminal work of Reynaldo Ileto on the pasyon (folk
narratives of the life of Christ) - produced fresh data and insights into ne?
glected and misrepresented aspects of the people's historical experience.
Influences from such sources as the French Annales school and American
quantitative history produced fresh, tighter, and more empirically
grounded analyses of old historical problems.
Locality-specific histories (whether "locality" was defined as regional,
provincial, or municipal) became a prolific area of work. Over the past
three decades, a vast amount of research has been done by a large number
of writers and scholars covering localities across the country in the form of
books and monographs, periodical articles, conference proceedings, and
unpublished papers.
* * *
The question, however, has been raised as to what this "
edge" has amounted to. Undoubtedly, work in local history h
ble impact in raising public awareness of local pasts as wel
effect in areas like historical preservation (such as the preser
chives, monuments, and sites) and history teaching (to the ext
experience has been integrated into the classroom teaching
history).
What remains to be charted however, is the question of how the prac?
tice of local historiography has lived up to its promise of enriching, inter?
rogating or revising old versions of the national history. Related to this is
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228 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY OF CULTURE & SOCIETY
the problem of how the "decentering" of national history has enriched
theoretical and methodological practices in Philippine historical studies.
As early as 1977, the American historian Alfred W. McCoy (1977 II:
741) already raised this point:
"The question at hand is no longer whether to change the focus of research
from center to periphery, but how to define an autonomous set of historical
questions derived from the region being studied. If the same historical questions
and research methods once applied to Manila continue to define the boundaries
of provincial research, there is a danger that the efforts of this generation of his?
torians will produce new information but no greater understanding" (emphasis
mine).
Other scholars have warned against the tendency of local history to
take on a mitotic character, a succession of studies that seem like more of
the same," where standard national narratives are simply retold at the "lo?
cal level" and what changes are mainly the locale and the details. As a con?
sequence, local histories read like running footnotes to a national narrative
that has remained basically unchanged. (For a summation of the argument,
see Mojares 1983-84,1989-90.)
The lack of interest in methodological reflexivity and conscious the?
ory-building is, in part, occasioned by what many local history practitio?
ners perceive as their audience and priorities. Operating in local
communities where even basic chronicles do not exist, researchers and
writers have taken to the basic task of "reconstructing" a usable chronol?
ogy of past events. Attentive to a local audience, much research has been
tied to the needs of civic commemoration (the marking of local anniversa?
ries), the raising of public awareness of the importance of the past, and the
construction and celebration of local identities.
Such work serves a useful purpose. To the extent that primary research
is sound, the generation of "local detail" (in a discipline that thrives on de?
tails) is not unimportant. The construction and reproduction of local identi?
ties can be a positive value in the face of the homogenizing pressures of
globalization and official nationalism. In focusing on the "local," however,
much work has tended to be conservative in its aims and parochial in
range.
The "civic-commemorative" motive occasions the tendency to focus
on current politico-administrative divisions (such as province, city, mu
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REVISITING LOCAL HISTORIES 229
nicipality, or even the "congressional district") as units of study instead of
more integral and dynamic fields or formations defined by economic or
geographical variables, such as a crop district, a multisite trading network,
a small island, a river, or a watershed. The needs of civic celebration occa?
sion standard chronologies of "important" events and sketches of "impor?
tant" personalities that mime the conventions of old national histories. An
insufficiently dialectical approach produces parochial histories that gloss
over how the "inside" (the local) is constituted by the "outside" (the na?
tional or global), or vice versa. Moreover, there is the tendency to hew to a
conventional range of written sources. While initiatives have been under?
taken in the promotion of "oral history" and more innovative historical
methods, the challenges and prospects of new modes of research have not
been adequately engaged.
* * *
This is not to say that significant, innovative work has no
plished. Theoretically-informed, well-researched provinc
histories have been done. Some of the best work in this fiel
are showcased in Philippine Social History (1982), edited
and Ed. C. de Jesus. The late William Henry Scott (1921-1
rigorous scholarship and diverse interests, and with a stron
the local and popular dimensions of history, exercised a sig
ence on a generation of scholars. The parameters of histo
been expanded by work dealing with a variety of topics and
verse approaches. One can cite groundbreaking studies th
on the investigation of institutions, texts, and practices, and
time geographically-framed and locality-specific. These in
of Reynaldo Ileto on the Tagalog pasyon and folk ideology
sus on the tobacco monopoly, James Warren on piracy in
Norman Owen on the abaca trade in Albay, Renato Rosa
headhunting, and Ma. Luisa Camagay on working-class wo
Philippine historiography has been enriched by contr
scholars working out of fields like demography, anthropolog
studies (see Larkin 1979, Doeppers & Xenos 1998). Withi
tions as the University of the Philippines, there are attempt
agenda of an "autonomous" history, one that seeks to free P
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230 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY OF CULTURE & SOCIETY
riography from a preoccupation with colonial and Western time frames
and categories.
The expansion in the range and quality of Philippine historical scholar?
ship over the past three decades is evident. The field however is uneven
owing to weaknesses in the institutional base of the discipline of history in
the country. There are only a few graduate training programs in history;
the quality of history teaching is lamentable; and university conditions,
generally, are not supportive of research activities, particularly in the hu?
manities and disciplines like history.
The first flush of enthusiasm that drove local history in the 1970s and
1980s has, in part, waned. Of the local studies centers established in the
1960s and 1970s, only the Cebuano Studies Center and Cordillera Studies
Center have remained active. While the level of participation in the annual
PNHS-sponsored National Conference on Local History has remained
high, much of the research presented in this conference series has tended to
be repetitive.
A critical assessment is needed. How has local history lived up to its
promise of producing a richer, more highly differentiated, and qualitatively
different "national history"? How has the concept of an "autonomous" his?
tory expanded the approaches, themes, and methodologies in the study of
the past? How far have we gone in investigating the forms or modes of lo?
cal historiography itself ("popular," "oral," "visual," or "performative"), its
conventions, audiences, and uses? (See Harneit-Sievers 1998, for instance,
for trends in this field in Africa and South Asia.) What impact does the lo?
cal history movement have on the teaching of Philippine history in the
country?
Unless a critical assessment of current work is undertaken, the field
will remain fragmented and ill-integrated and the possibilities and promise
of local history vague and ill-achieved.
REFERENCE CITED
Bauzon, Leslie E.
1978 "Local History: Rationale, Problems, and Prospects," Philippine
Quarterly of Culture & Society 6 (3): 157-165.
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REVISITING LOCAL HISTORIES 231
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Enterprise and Social Change, 1766-1880, pp. ix-xiv. Quezon City:
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1981 "Recent Philippine Historiography: An Evaluative Review," Philip?
pine Quarterly of Culture & Society 9 (4):309-319.
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Tan, Samuel K.
1977 "The Methodology of Regional History," The Journal of History 22
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