Between illegality and recognition: Exploring sacrificial violence in a Manila brotherhood

Abstract

This article explores how poor, young men in a Manila relocation site enter into a brotherhood as a means to claim recognition from dominant society. It argues that by joining the brotherhood, which emanates out of a Greekletter fraternity tradition in US and Philippine universities, the young men establish a link to people and networks in power. Drawing on ritual and religious sacrifice theory, the article illustrates how sacrificial violence in initiation rites becomes a performance of worth. This performance of valour and worth do indeed reach dominant society. After exploring the initiation ritual of the young men the article then turns to explore the nature of the Philippine elite. This analysis suggests that while there are several, often competing strands within elite politics (legalistic, moralistic and clientelist), the efforts of the young men end up confirming and reproducing the elite and their own marginalization as unruly, uncouth goons of political machines.

Keywords

Ritual sacrificial violence brotherhoods politics Manila

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abinales

(1996) The Revolution Falters: The Left in Philippine Politics after 1986, Attica: Cornell University.

Anderson

(1988) Casique democracy and the Philippines: origins and dreams. New Left Review 169: 3–33.

Bankoff

(1996) Crime, Society and the State in the 19th Century Philippines, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Bloch

(1991) Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Coronel

(2007) The Rule-makers: How the Wealthy and the Well-Born Dominate Congress, Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

Green

(2004) A commentary to Paul Farmer, “and anthropology of structural violence”. Current Anthropology 45(3): 319–320.

Hansen

Stepputat

(2001) States of Imagination: Ethnographic Exploration of the Post-Colonial State, Durham: Duke University Press.

Hedman

E-L

(2010) The politics of ‘Public Opinion’ in the Philippines. Journal of Current South East Asian Studies 29(4): 97–118.

Hirslund

(2012) Sacrificing youth: Maoist cadres and political activism in post-war Nepal, PhD Thesis, Department of Anthropology: University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

10.

Hutchcroft

Rocamora

(2003) Strong demands, weak institutions: the origins and evolution of the democratic deficit in the Philippines. Journal of East Asian Studies 3: 259–292.

11.

Ileto

(1979) Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910, Manila: Ateneo University Press.

12.

Jensen (2012) Shosholoza: political culture in South Africa between the secular and the occult. Journal of Southern African Studies 38(1): 91–106.

13.

Jones

(2004) Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice and Manhood in Black Greek Letter Fraternities, Albany: New York University Press.

14.

McCoy

(1993) An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

15.

Merlino

(2012) From man to ‘Man of Honour’: the role of religion in the initiation ritual of the Sicilian Mafia. The International Journal of the Humanities 9(1): 59–69.

16.

Narag R (n.d.) Inside the Brotherhood. Available at: http://raymundnarag.wordpress.com/category/social-advocacy/fraternity-violence-social-advocacy/ (accessed 27 October 2012).

17.

Quimpo

(2009) The Philippine Predatory Regime, growing authoritarian features. The Pacific Review 22(3): 335–353.

18.

Roitman

(2006) The ethics of illegality in the Chad Basin. In: Comaroff

Comaroff

(eds) Law and Order in the Postcolony, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 247–272.

19.

Sidel

(1999) Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

20.

Steinberg

(2004) The Number, Cape Town: Jonathan Ball.

21.

Syrett

(2009) The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

22.

Tadiar

(2005) Fantasy-production: Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Consequences for the New World Order, Manila: Ateneo de Manila UP.

23.

Taussig

(1999) Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

24.

Turner

(1995) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.

25.

Van Gennep

(2004) The Rites of Passage, London: Routledge.

26.

Vitug

(2010) Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court, Manila: Public Trust Media Group Inc.

27.

Wilson I (2010) The biggest cock: territoriality, invulnerability and honour amongst Jakarta’s gangsters, Indonesian Studies Working Papers, 13, University of Sydney.