Book Reviews by PJ Mariano Capistrano
Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, 2023
BOOK REVIEW Investing in the Unseen: Cases on Biodiversity Conservation (Sourcebook for Development Management)
Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture, 2018
Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South, 2014
Blog Entries for the LUCID Project by PJ Mariano Capistrano
Relationships of extraction and affiliation: Hypotheses on the relationships and structures that support high-yield variety corn farming
It begins with relationships: Reflections on a week in the Upper Pulangi
Encyclopedia entries by PJ Mariano Capistrano
Philippines, Education of Ethnic Minorities in
Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education, 2012
The Philippines is an archipelago with more than 88 million inhabitants (as of the 2007 census) w... more The Philippines is an archipelago with more than 88 million inhabitants (as of the 2007 census) who belong to 182 ethnic groups and who speak almost as many languages. The country's broad diversity, coupled with its colonial history, has shaped the directions that education has taken. Issues of national identity and inclusiveness have been just as significant as discussions about learning competencies and educational achievement.
This entry begins by providing overviews of the ethnocultural diversity in the Philippines and the Philippine educational system. It then discusses two areas where major developments have occurred that address the needs of ethnocultural minorities: medium of instruction and culture-based curricula.
Papers by PJ Mariano Capistrano
Thesis Eleven, 2026
In this paper, I take rural Philippines as the centre of my analysis to articulate structural inj... more In this paper, I take rural Philippines as the centre of my analysis to articulate structural injustice in a postcolonial rural context, inspired by Getachew and Mantena's suggestion of conceptual reanimation as a decolonial practice. I show how smallholder corn farmers in the southern Philippine province of Bukidnon articulate a loss of agency, perpetuated not only by local economic-political elites but also by multinational seed corporations, building on colonial structures of power. This demonstrates Young's and Haslanger's assertion that material conditions and social-cultural structures are mutually sustaining, but also shows how structures of global capitalism intertwine with colonial relationships of patronage and the marginalization of rural and indigenous peoples. This decolonial approach to structural injustice is needed because much of the conceptual discussion of structural injustice, as well as practices of global capitalism, originate from the Global North; without contextual awareness, critical theory from the Global North can reproduce structural injustice in the Global South.
Pamela Joy M. Mariano Light + Write - Photographs
Budhi a Journal of Ideas and Culture, Dec 1, 2008
Book Review: Costly Wars, Elusive Peace: Collected Articles on the Peace Processes in the Philippines, 1990–2007, by Miriam Coronel Ferrer
Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South, 2014
Thesis Chapters by PJ Mariano Capistrano
Between Structure and Agency: Structural Injustice in the Capability Approach, its Applications, and in Genetically-modified Corn Farming in Bukidnon, Philippines
At the heart of this thesis is the concern for justice amid, and in resistance to, social structu... more At the heart of this thesis is the concern for justice amid, and in resistance to, social structures that are unjust. More specifically, I investigate whether the capability approach can be used to understand and analyze the background conditions of injustice in concrete applications, without losing a sense of individual agency, especially the agency of those who are most disadvantaged.
To do this, I survey both the capability approach literature on justice--particularly those of Amartya Sen, Sabina Alkire, and Jay Drydyk--examining its existing conception of structural injustice, and whether it can be used in such types of analyses. I also draw from the work of feminist critical social theorists Iris Marion Young and Sally Haslanger to further develop and specify a concept of structural injustice and its mechanisms for sustaining and perpetuating injustices. This theorical discussion is also informed by my field research with the LUCID Project, which studied the social and economic impact of nearly 20 years of genetically-modified, high-yield variety corn on the small farmers of the Upper Pulangi watershed in the province of Bukidnon, southern Philippines, in which I sketch the social structure that enables small farmers to participate in these farming practices, but also illustrating how they are disadvantaged and how their agency is constrained in this context.
I propose and sketch a capabilitarian critical analysis of structural injustice, a mode of social analysis that allows a researcher to articulate and analyze a concrete situation of injustice in terms of the social structural processes that produce and reproduce injustice, while also accounting for the positions occupied by the various agents who participate in the social structural processes. The degrees of agency of these various participants--that is, whether they experience the social structure as enabling or disabling of their agency--gives us not only points of evaluation and assessment of who is the most disadvantaged in an unjust social structure, but also (and equally importantly) gives us a direction for further investigating the mechanisms that allow these structures to perpetuate as well as possible levers of change. Expanding on Haslanger’s social ontology, in my sketch I focus on reasons to value as the drivers of the social structural processes that underpin the social structure. Unjust social structures are unjust because they misrecognize or exclude a plurality of possible reasons to value the resources around which the social structural processes are organized. This limits and impedes the capabilities and possibilities for action of some agents while enabling possibilities for other agents better positioned and whose reasons to value are aligned with that of the social structure. We can thus find the limitations of the existing social structure, how it is perpetuated, and identify the agents that occupy the most disadvantaged positions within that structure.
This sketch of a capabilitarian critique, finally, addresses what other capability scholars have identified as a gap in the literature, particularly on operationalizing the approach to make analyses that focus on the background conditions of injustice--that is, the broader social factors and processes that contribute to and perpetuate the concrete situations of injustice.
Between Structure and Agency: Structural Injustice in the Capability Approach, its Applications, and in Genetically-modified Corn Farming in Bukidnon, Philippines
At the heart of this thesis is the concern for justice amid, and in resistance to, social structu... more At the heart of this thesis is the concern for justice amid, and in resistance to, social structures that are unjust. More specifically, I investigate whether the capability approach can be used to understand and analyze the background conditions of injustice in concrete applications, without losing a sense of individual agency, especially the agency of those who are most disadvantaged.
To do this, I survey both the capability approach literature on justice--particularly those of Amartya Sen, Sabina Alkire, and Jay Drydyk--examining its existing conception of structural injustice, and whether it can be used in such types of analyses. I also draw from the work of feminist critical social theorists Iris Marion Young and Sally Haslanger to further develop and specify a concept of structural injustice and its mechanisms for sustaining and perpetuating injustices. This theorical discussion is also informed by my field research with the LUCID Project, which studied the social and economic impact of nearly 20 years of genetically-modified, high-yield variety corn on the small farmers of the Upper Pulangi watershed in the province of Bukidnon, southern Philippines, in which I sketch the social structure that enables small farmers to participate in these farming practices, but also illustrating how they are disadvantaged and how their agency is constrained in this context.
I propose and sketch a capabilitarian critical analysis of structural injustice, a mode of social analysis that allows a researcher to articulate and analyze a concrete situation of injustice in terms of the social structural processes that produce and reproduce injustice, while also accounting for the positions occupied by the various agents who participate in the social structural processes. The degrees of agency of these various participants--that is, whether they experience the social structure as enabling or disabling of their agency--gives us not only points of evaluation and assessment of who is the most disadvantaged in an unjust social structure, but also (and equally importantly) gives us a direction for further investigating the mechanisms that allow these structures to perpetuate as well as possible levers of change. Expanding on Haslanger’s social ontology, in my sketch I focus on reasons to value as the drivers of the social structural processes that underpin the social structure. Unjust social structures are unjust because they misrecognize or exclude a plurality of possible reasons to value the resources around which the social structural processes are organized. This limits and impedes the capabilities and possibilities for action of some agents while enabling possibilities for other agents better positioned and whose reasons to value are aligned with that of the social structure. We can thus find the limitations of the existing social structure, how it is perpetuated, and identify the agents that occupy the most disadvantaged positions within that structure.
This sketch of a capabilitarian critique, finally, addresses what other capability scholars have identified as a gap in the literature, particularly on operationalizing the approach to make analyses that focus on the background conditions of injustice--that is, the broader social factors and processes that contribute to and perpetuate the concrete situations of injustice.
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Book Reviews by PJ Mariano Capistrano
Blog Entries for the LUCID Project by PJ Mariano Capistrano
Encyclopedia entries by PJ Mariano Capistrano
This entry begins by providing overviews of the ethnocultural diversity in the Philippines and the Philippine educational system. It then discusses two areas where major developments have occurred that address the needs of ethnocultural minorities: medium of instruction and culture-based curricula.
Papers by PJ Mariano Capistrano
Thesis Chapters by PJ Mariano Capistrano
To do this, I survey both the capability approach literature on justice--particularly those of Amartya Sen, Sabina Alkire, and Jay Drydyk--examining its existing conception of structural injustice, and whether it can be used in such types of analyses. I also draw from the work of feminist critical social theorists Iris Marion Young and Sally Haslanger to further develop and specify a concept of structural injustice and its mechanisms for sustaining and perpetuating injustices. This theorical discussion is also informed by my field research with the LUCID Project, which studied the social and economic impact of nearly 20 years of genetically-modified, high-yield variety corn on the small farmers of the Upper Pulangi watershed in the province of Bukidnon, southern Philippines, in which I sketch the social structure that enables small farmers to participate in these farming practices, but also illustrating how they are disadvantaged and how their agency is constrained in this context.
I propose and sketch a capabilitarian critical analysis of structural injustice, a mode of social analysis that allows a researcher to articulate and analyze a concrete situation of injustice in terms of the social structural processes that produce and reproduce injustice, while also accounting for the positions occupied by the various agents who participate in the social structural processes. The degrees of agency of these various participants--that is, whether they experience the social structure as enabling or disabling of their agency--gives us not only points of evaluation and assessment of who is the most disadvantaged in an unjust social structure, but also (and equally importantly) gives us a direction for further investigating the mechanisms that allow these structures to perpetuate as well as possible levers of change. Expanding on Haslanger’s social ontology, in my sketch I focus on reasons to value as the drivers of the social structural processes that underpin the social structure. Unjust social structures are unjust because they misrecognize or exclude a plurality of possible reasons to value the resources around which the social structural processes are organized. This limits and impedes the capabilities and possibilities for action of some agents while enabling possibilities for other agents better positioned and whose reasons to value are aligned with that of the social structure. We can thus find the limitations of the existing social structure, how it is perpetuated, and identify the agents that occupy the most disadvantaged positions within that structure.
This sketch of a capabilitarian critique, finally, addresses what other capability scholars have identified as a gap in the literature, particularly on operationalizing the approach to make analyses that focus on the background conditions of injustice--that is, the broader social factors and processes that contribute to and perpetuate the concrete situations of injustice.
To do this, I survey both the capability approach literature on justice--particularly those of Amartya Sen, Sabina Alkire, and Jay Drydyk--examining its existing conception of structural injustice, and whether it can be used in such types of analyses. I also draw from the work of feminist critical social theorists Iris Marion Young and Sally Haslanger to further develop and specify a concept of structural injustice and its mechanisms for sustaining and perpetuating injustices. This theorical discussion is also informed by my field research with the LUCID Project, which studied the social and economic impact of nearly 20 years of genetically-modified, high-yield variety corn on the small farmers of the Upper Pulangi watershed in the province of Bukidnon, southern Philippines, in which I sketch the social structure that enables small farmers to participate in these farming practices, but also illustrating how they are disadvantaged and how their agency is constrained in this context.
I propose and sketch a capabilitarian critical analysis of structural injustice, a mode of social analysis that allows a researcher to articulate and analyze a concrete situation of injustice in terms of the social structural processes that produce and reproduce injustice, while also accounting for the positions occupied by the various agents who participate in the social structural processes. The degrees of agency of these various participants--that is, whether they experience the social structure as enabling or disabling of their agency--gives us not only points of evaluation and assessment of who is the most disadvantaged in an unjust social structure, but also (and equally importantly) gives us a direction for further investigating the mechanisms that allow these structures to perpetuate as well as possible levers of change. Expanding on Haslanger’s social ontology, in my sketch I focus on reasons to value as the drivers of the social structural processes that underpin the social structure. Unjust social structures are unjust because they misrecognize or exclude a plurality of possible reasons to value the resources around which the social structural processes are organized. This limits and impedes the capabilities and possibilities for action of some agents while enabling possibilities for other agents better positioned and whose reasons to value are aligned with that of the social structure. We can thus find the limitations of the existing social structure, how it is perpetuated, and identify the agents that occupy the most disadvantaged positions within that structure.
This sketch of a capabilitarian critique, finally, addresses what other capability scholars have identified as a gap in the literature, particularly on operationalizing the approach to make analyses that focus on the background conditions of injustice--that is, the broader social factors and processes that contribute to and perpetuate the concrete situations of injustice.