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The Anthropologist as Deviant Modernizer: Felipe Landa Jocano’s Journey Through the Cold War, the Social Sciences, Decolonization, and Nation Building in the Philippines

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This chapter traces the transnational journey of Philippine anthropologist Felipe Landa Jocano from the 1950s to the 1970s. Jocano was part of a group of Philippine social scientists who earned their post-graduate degrees at the University of Chicago after the Philippines became independent from the US. One of the pre-eminent scholars in the Philippines, Jocano’s professional and intellectual journey unfolded against the backdrop of the Cold War and decolonization. Jocano received funding from US institutions that contributed to the Cold War, and he was committed to structural functionalism and modernization theory. Yet he developed a decolonized approach to modernization that questioned the United States as the ideal type. He tweaked Western modernization and merged it with an emphasis on pre-colonial heritage in the Philippines with the aim of contributing to his homeland’s post-World War II nation-building efforts. Moreover, Jocano’s work contributed to Philippine Dictator Ferdinand Marcosʼs ideology for a “New Society.”