The latest issue of Social Science Diliman is now available online, fully open-access and user-friendly. No need to register, just click on the table of contents and follow the links: http://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/socialsciencediliman
Interpreting texts and media. Communications mediated by Moro pirates, by a prehistoric pot, by computers, and which resist being read clearly or straightforwardly, are subjects of some of the articles in the newest issue of the refereed journal.
“Dibidi dibidi!” Whispered by a DVD peddler, the merchandise can be read as a way for the majority of Filipinos to achieve imaginary ‘middleclassness,’ which is only possible through the Moro media pirate, says Rolando Tolentino in the first article. The article explores the role of the Moro in the informal economy, with their stereotyped niche as ‘pirates’ in our society, from colonial time to the present.
Another article offers a decoding of the mysterious Calatagan Pot Inscription (or CPI, the earliest known sample of writing in the Philippines). The CPI consists of syllabic script etched on the archaeological artifact said to be from an ancient gravesite. Authors Ramon Guillermo and Myfel Paluga draw on paleographic and cryptographic techniques to decipher the inscription and contend that it is a charm written in ‘Bisaya.’
How messages may be conveyed through the technologies of new media? This is focus of the study by Almond Pilar Aguila, which examines the views of a lesbian pair and two married couples separated by labor diaspora. If ‘the medium is the message,’ then the quality of relationships sustained by OFW Filipinos with their loved ones left behind through computer-mediated communications are adversely affected, but in some ways also facilitated, by the digital technology.
A fourth article considers conflicts between the 1898 Treaty of Paris where the territorial boundary lines of the Philippines were laid down arbitrarily by Spain and America, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which the Philippines became a signatory to in 1982. Can the Treaty of Paris boundaries be recognized internationally? Lowell Bautista asks a highly current question and examines the legal background for this issue.
In the reviews section, Jose Buenconsejo’s film River of Exchange: Music of Agusan Manobo and Visayan Relations in Caraga, Mindanao, Philippinesis reviewed by Augusto Gatmaytan. Ramon Guillermo’s new book Pook at Paninindigan: Kritika ng Pantayong Pananaw is critiqued by Scheherazade Vargas.
Social Science Diliman is an internationally refereed semi-annual journal for the social sciences published by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development, University of the Philippines Diliman. It is bilingual (English and Filipino) and both disciplinal and multidisciplinary. Articles on any aspect of the social sciences and their applications are invited. Book reviews may also be submitted
—Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development