Professional Documents
Culture Documents
F Landa Jocano A Career in Retrospect PDF
F Landa Jocano A Career in Retrospect PDF
111613
ANT 309W
Final paper
F. Landa Jocano:
A Career in Retrospect
A study of the oral literature of a social group offers valuable insight into the character and integration of its
cultural values. Anthropologists have long recognized this, but in actual practice, many have tended to give
it minimal treatment in their reports of have not fully explored its relation to culture. In the Philippines, in
spite of the richness of available data on traditional lore, studies of Filipino folk literature have not yet
received the attention that their significance would warrant. In the past, folklore studies have been devoted
primarily to collecting and publishing recorded texts without taking note of the sociological context from
which they have been lifted. Yet studies of folk literature as an aspect of the total cultural configuration may
shed much light on the nature of Filipino culture and society.
—F. Landa Jocano (1965:1)
(Note: the task of writing this biography of Dr. Felipe Landa Jocano was supposed to be much less
speculative than it now is out of necessity. I was supposed to be able to center this paper on personal
interviews with the man to whom I give the most credit for pushing me toward pursuing a degree and
hopefully an eventual career in sociocultural anthropology. After all, I was supposed to attend the
PagBayaw Conference in Iloilo City, Philippines from November 14th16th. However, this biography
has been written this way not because I could not attend the conference, but because he could not. Dr.
Jocano died of a stroke at age 83, only two weeks before I was supposed to meet him, or so I had
assumed. Now that chance is unfortunately gone, but the biography continued regardless.)
F. Landa Jocano was many things in the course of his academic career—folklorist, historian,
participantobserver, and Professor Emeritus among them—but first, he was a Filipino. He was born
into a family of farmers in 1930 in Cabatuan, Iloilo, Philippines (Cruz). Life in these kinds of rural
settings played a large part in his future fieldwork among indigenous groups like the Panay
Bukidnon/Sulodnon, though the scope of his research also included urban poverty (Slum as a Way of
Gowey 2
Life was published in 1976 by University of the Philippines Press) and largescale ethnographies of
nonindigenous Philippine ethnic groups (Hiligaynon and Ilocano, both published in 1983 by his own
Punlad Research House).
After finishing the sixth grade, his father pressured him to give up school and work on the family
farm, but Jocano wanted to continue his education in any way he could. Taking just the clothes he was
wearing and his most recent report card, he ran away from home and snuck on a boat bound for Manila
in order to look for work. Jocano worked various lowincome jobs such as janitor, accountant, errand
runner for the Manila Chronicle, and eventually a reporter for the same paper. Additionally, he taught
himself shorthand and typing, and finished high school before returning home due to sickness (Pedroso).
Once he had returned to Iloilo in 1954, he began work as an amateur folklorist and research aid at the
National Museum of the Philippines, the latter position largely consisting of more janitorial work (Cruz).
However, he had a series of articles published by the Manila Times and Department of Education on
local plant and animal mythology; his condition that his title “janitor” be published with his byline earned
him a change in job titles, if not a change in duties or salary (Pedroso).
Jocano continued his studies in anthropology at Central Philippine University, where he began
work on one of his most important folklore studies, this time centering on the oral literature of the Panay
Bukidnon [a more modern term currently in favor by the tribe, but Jocano’s work originally referred to
them as the Sulod, for living primarily in Panay Island’s central mountain valleys] people north of his
family home in Cabatuan. While working in their lands, he recorded two of the primary stories which
make up the overall body of chanted Panay Bukidnon literature, known as sugidanon after the
Kinaraya word sugid [to tell] (Magos). Jocano detailed the process by which he recorded these epics
Gowey 3
in the first volume he published, which included hiking a reeltoreel recorder over a day into the
mountains before arriving in the Panay Bukidnon villages he focused on in his studies (Jocano 2008:3).
The recording of these two stories took place between 1954 and 1957, relying primarily on two
chanters: Ulang Udig for the sugidanon following the hero Labaw Donggon, and Huganan for that of
Labaw Donggon’s soninlaw, Humadapnon (Jocano 2008:34). Jocano and his successors in research
on the Panay Bukidnon oral tradition have noted several factors which impeded the collection and
publication of the chants. First, the tribal members’ reluctance to share their culture with outsiders
caused Jocano much frustration in the beginning. He noted the following:
...any outsider begins to establish rapport with these people by first being systematically
“misled” or “deceived” by them. Perhaps these terms are too sweeping and ungrateful to
describe so wonderful and kind a people as the Sulod. It must be emphasized, therefore, that
these terms are used here not to disparage the Sulod as a people but to stress the point that one
does not discover who the Sulod are in a short period of time. Every time I returned to them
and to check on previous information concerning their territorial and group identity, I always
obtained different terminology. When I showed annoyance over these repeated changes, one of
my close informants smiled and said: “We were not friends then, were we?” And that was my
third visit (Jocano 2008:28).
This has often been attributed to a long history of discrimination against the Panay Bukidnon as being
ignorant, primitive or even bandits on the run from the Spanish and postcolonial Philippine governments
(German 2010).
Another issue which is still highly relevant to researchers of the sugidanon today is central the
Gowey 4
nature of oral literature itself, namely the appearance and perpetuation of changes in the text. This was a
frequent topic of discussion when I attended the PagBayaw Conference, where contemporary chanters
of the epics asserted two reasons why Jocano’s initial publication of the Labaw Donggon story was
incomplete. First, it was suggested that Ulang Udig had misremembered certain details of the epic which
did not necessarily compromise the narrative, but that introduced misconceptions and minor
inconsistencies in comparison with other storylines. Second, they pointed out that Jocano’s methods of
direct transcription without being able to stop the chanter for questions limited his ability to spot
apparent contradictions in the narrative or ask for further explanations of passages he may have
misunderstood (Federico Caballero et. al, personal communication, November 1415, 2013). The
validity of the first of these contentions was hinted at by Jocano himself when he noted that Ulang Udig
had forgotten parts of other major stories, indicating the possibility that he had similarly forgotten parts
of the Labaw Donggon epic.
Regardless, Dr. Jocano’s work in conducting these preliminary recordings of the sugidanon is
rightly remembered as one of his most important contributions to the fields of Philippine folklore and
world literature in general. Nationally awarded author F. Sionil Jose said this about those first recordings
and publications:
In recording these epics, scholars like Pepe Jocano are actually setting up the cultural foundation
of this nation, providing us with materials from which creative writers can draw sustenance.
From such epics we also get to know our ancestors. As mythical stories, these anchor us to the
past, a connection as well to the land itself. Although the authors of such epics are not really
identified, they illustrate the earliest examples of our literature whereon we will build (Jose).
Gowey 5
As work continues on the sugidanon, especially in the wake of his recent death, Dr. Jocano’s original
recordings will be increasingly valuable as a way to both verify the accuracy of his translations, and also
to track variations in recitation over time and depending on the individual chanter.
After completing his initial work among the Panay Bukidnon, Jocano graduated CPU in 1958.
He subsequently received a study grant to attend the University of Chicago for graduate studies and an
eventual teaching position (Pedroso). While in Chicago, he earned a Master’s and Ph.D. in
Anthropology. In addition, he published the first of the two stories he had transcribed and translated
while doing fieldwork in the mountains of Panay, entitled The Epic of Labaw Donggon, which earned
him the university’s annual folklore prize (Jocano 1965). Apparently disappointed that he would not
earn tenure at the University of Chicago, he returned home to teach at the University of the Philippines,
where he taught for thirtyone years (Pedroso). In his time with UP, he filled various positions from
assistant professor (Pedroso) to professor emeritus of the UP Asian Center (Jose). It was while he was
teaching here that most of his historical and ethnographic work was completed.
His first of several ethnographies, Sulod Society, returned the focus of his studies to the Panay
Bukidnon. Apart from providing the reader a brief geographic and linguistic orientation, the main focuses
of the book are kinship practices and surrounding rituals. For Jocano, kinship “is the bond which serves
as a framework for social, religious, and economic cooperation; as a communicative device which
integrates members of the group; and as an important factor for the continuity and stability of Sulod
society” (Jocano 2000:232). However, one critic has noted that this characterization of kinship among
the Panay Bukidnon as an overreliance on social constructs in his monograph which reveals Jocano’s
desire to understand the tribe based on only the structuralfunctionalist model. He states:
Gowey 6
The kinship system was unduly privileged by the anthropologist Jocano as a heuristic device in
order to delineate the ethnic identity of Sulod people. To construct such an ethnic identity with
the kinship system serving as the rationale concretizes an abstraction. Moreover, to then employ
such a model of local society to comprehend the broader anthropological reality requires an
unjustified leap of faith. The kinship system may differentiate an ethnic group and in the process
exclude others, but such a system cannot cover broader groups of which the Sulodnons are
part. Regrettably, what Jocano has achieved in the monograph, mainly served to reinforce a
tendency in the discourse of Philippine Studies. This tendency gives greater weight to the world
of our constructs rather than the constructs of our world. The former is the world of abstraction,
while the latter are abstractions derived from the world (Talledo).
However, it is worth noting that the apparent counterexample Talledo provided from Sulod Society,
meant to show the power of the incest taboo among the Panay Bukidnon, proves Jocano’s point more
fully than it does his own. By disowning his children after the revelation of their incestuous relationship
and child, Jocano’s informant demonstrated that kinship, particularly its associated regulations and
penalties for violation of the same, are key in understanding one’s place in society.
In addition to his work in folklore studies, Jocano also made theoretical contributions to the
longstanding issue of the peopling of the Philippine archipelago. Initial theories by foreign
anthropologists like Professor H. Otley Beyer relied on what they called a wave model, which
postulated that the islands were inhabited by several distinct waves of immigrants that each brought
increasing levels of culture, while also pushing previous arrivals farther and farther inland. Points of this
theory are consistent with both the diffusionist and classical evolution models prominent in Beyer’s
Gowey 7
time—and special emphasis needs to be placed on the implications of racial hierarchy inherent in a view
which relies on a progression in cultural development beginning with the darkskinned huntergatherer
groups known as Ati or Aeta and culminating in the arrival of “higher” cultures like Muslim and Catholic
Filipinos—but according to Jocano and others, it is not sufficiently detailed to explain the wide ethnic
and cultural diversity present in the Philippines.
To Jocano, the evidence pointed to much more random migrations that could be divided along
chronological but not necessarily racial lines. He outlined this view in what he called the Core Population
Theory. Instead of making the distinction between Negritotype Filipinos, Indonesians A and B, and
Malays, as did Beyer, Jocano gave the following timeline: the first immigrants came in what he called the
germinal period (250,000 to 10,000 BCE), which was followed by the formative period (10,000 to
500 BCE), incipient period (500 BCE to 900 CE), and emergent period (900 to 1400 CE). What
follows is the historical period, which roughly corresponds to the point of Spanish contact and beyond
(Tan 2008:2930). While still diffusionist in nature, Jocano’s theory has more in common with a
multilinear, Neoevolutionist view than Beyer’s reliance on cultural superiority as the determining factor
in where a given group of immigrants lives or how its respective culture develops.
Throughout the course of his research, participantobservation was key to Jocano’s quest to
understand the Filipino psyche, both as a collective and in more specific studies focusing on individual
ethnicities within the country. For instance, he used his time as a lowpaid writer living in the slums of
Manila as an opportunity to observe and report on conditions around him. In Slum as a Way of Life,
he noted that “living in the community and taking part, whenever possible in the activities of the
members, observing what they do and checking the observed behaviour in terms of what they say and
Gowey 8
do” was critical to answering questions he considered impossible to quantify in paper questionnaires.
Addressing said questionnaires which were used in previous studies in the slums, “one cannot possibly
go up and paper and ask questions without arousing suspicions, especially among [the] street corner
gang members” which were integral to his study (Jocano 1975).
F. Sionil Jose related two further anecdotes regarding Jocano’s participantobservation studies:
At one time, he got himself hired as a motel boy while doing a study on sexuality among
Filipinos. He confided that he surprised some of his colleagues who patronized these motels.
From that study, Pepe gave me a chapter which I published in my journal, Solidarity. Right at
the press, some 20 copies disappeared. The issue was sold out in a couple of months, I had to
order a reprint. As one academic told me—it was a landmark article—the first “scholarly
pornography.” And at one time, a relative accosted him in Quiapo where he was actually
begging at the church door to gather data on his study of the urban poor. The relative was so
shocked to see him there in tatters, he had to drag away the protesting scholar with the promise
to help him.
Jose was also surprised to note that Jocano’s studies among different Philippine ethnic groups,
particularly his own Ilokano group, ended up validating extant stereotypes about their “industrious” and
“frugal” nature (Jose).
Perhaps more important to his legacy than his ethnographic work on Philippine ethnicities was
his desire to understand the Filipino in general, especially in a postcolonial context. One aspect of
decolonialization of particular importance to him was the revision of history to allow Filipinos to take
pride in their ancestors’ accomplishments. He explained his sentiments in the following way: “our history
Gowey 9
is the only one in the world where we concentrate on our faults rather than whatever success we have,
or if we succeed, we never talk about the valor of our warriors.” To Jocano, this is demonstrated in the
fact that whereas the foreign invader Ferdinand Magellan is honored with statues, the native warrior
LapuLapu who defeated him now shares his name with a small fish. Furthermore, he blames the
Filipino historical tendency to glorify their conquerors (namely the Americans) while labelling those who
fought for independence as bandits or “insurrectos”, for perpetuating both the colonial mindset and a
deepseated, national inferiority complex. This, among other examples, is likened by Pedroso to
psychological conditioning methods, only on the scale of hundreds of years (Pedroso).
F. Landa Jocano’s contributions to the body of Philippine literature and understanding of its
national character have won him a number of awards, including the aforementioned folklore prize during
his time at the University of Chicago. On the national level, he was given a national citation by the
Philippine government in 1999 for his work in anthropology. His published works included nearly forty
books, including studies on prehistory; aspects of the Filipino mindset including value systems, social
organization and nationality; ethnographies; townbased studies; folklore and mythology; and
international relations. As stated previously, he was many things in his life but most importantly, he was a
Filipino. Taking this along with his theoretical contributions to concepts of Filipino ethnicity, it becomes
readily apparent that F. Sionil Jose was not incorrect in naming Jocano “the country’s foremost cultural
anthropologist” (Jose).
For example, even though the wide variety of his research subjects prevented him from carrying
out longterm studies with the Panay Bukidnon, his work has inspired several generations of researchers
and artists to continue his work in that area. A prominent scholar of the sugidanon, Dr. Alicia Magos,
Gowey 10
credits Jocano and his Sulod Society in particular for providing the impetus to collect her own
recordings of Labaw Donggon’s story and further epics which explore the characters family members
(Magos). Additionally, a steady revival in modern Philippine media of indigenous and preHispanic oral
literature has largely taken its main inspiration from the Panay Bukidnon sugidanon, crediting Jocano as
a pioneer in the field (Jose). Though this has presented the tribe with entirely new issues regarding
misrepresentation of their culture in the media, it is arguable that such productions as 2011’s television
series “Amaya” is useful as a way to introduce viewers to correct information despite its numerous
historical inaccuracies (Gowey 2013). Personally, I would like to include myself in this group of
researchers inspired by his work, especially Sulod Society, and look forward to the opportunity to
eventually pursue fieldwork in the same region where Dr. Jocano began his work nearly fifty years ago.
Gowey 11
Works Cited
Cruz, Vida. GMA News, "F. Landa Jocano, anthropologist and UP professor emeritus, passes
away." Last modified October 28, 2013. Accessed October 28, 2013.
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/332871/lifestyle/peopleandevents/flandajocanoanthro
pologistandupprofessoremerituspassesaway.
German, M.A. “(Re)searching Identity in the Highlands of Central Panay.” June 2010. 56.
https://www.academia.edu/294238/Re_searching_identity_in_the_highlands_of_Central_Panay
Gowey, David. “Modern Technological Media as an Agent of Cultural Selfdetermination.”
Unpublished.
Jocano, F. Landa (1965). The Epic of Labaw Donggon. Quezon City: The University of the
Philippines Press. 1.
______ (1975). Slum as a Way of Life. Quezon City: Punlad Research House, Inc.
______ and Huganan (2000). Epic of Central Panay 2: HINILAWOD Adventures of
Humadapnon (Tarangban I). Diliman, Quezon City: Punlad Research House.
_____ (2008). Sulod Society: A Study in the Kinship System and Social Organization of a
Mountain People of Central Panay, 2nd ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.
Jose, F. Sionil. “Anthropology as theater: F. Landa Jocano’s ‘Hinilawod’.” Philippine Star,
November 5, 2012. Accessed November 4, 2013. http://www.philstar.com/artsand
culture/2012/11/05/863305/anthropologytheaterflandajocano’s‘hinilawod’.
Magos, Alicia P. “The Sugidanon (Epics) of Central Panay.” 1.
http://epics.ateneo.edu/epics/archives/14/articles/The%20Sugidanon%20epics%20of%20Central
%20Panay.pdf
Pedroso, Anna. Mosaic Ministries, "F. Landa Jocano: Proud to be Filipino."
http://www.mosaicministries.com.sg/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=85:flandajoc
anoproudtobefilipino&Itemid=6.
National Commission for Culture and the Arts. "The Manila Critics Circle and the National
Book Awards." Accessed October 28, 2013.
http://www.ncca.gov.ph/aboutcultureandarts/articlesoncna/article.php?igm=1&i=144.
Tan, Samuel K (2008). A History of the Philippines. Quezon City: University of the
Philippines Press. 2930.
Gowey 12
Tomasito T. Talledo. "Construction of Identity in Central Panay: A Critical Examination of the
Ethnographic Subject in the Works of Jocano and Magos," Asian Studies, 40, no. 1 (2004): 111123,
http://www.asj.upd.edu.ph/mediabox/archive/ASJ4012004/talledo.pdf.