Urban Fragmentation and Class Contention in Metro Manila.

[摘要] This dissertation explores the relationship between urban fragmentation and political polarization in Metro Manila, in particular, the rise of a populism associated with celebrity representatives and urban poor support. It finds that these developments are not merely coincident but connected, with class segregation a crucial mechanism in the formation of the polar political dispositions of the urban rich (villagers) and poor (squatters). This thesis is elaborated in three separate, self-contained chapters organized around distinct empirical questions. Chapter II argues that the urban poor responded to the populist appeals of Philippine President Joseph Estrada on the basis of knowledge shaped by their spatial relations with the urban elite. The consolidation in the 1990s of a spatial configuration marked by the virtual contiguity of slums and enclaves led to the rampant imposition of spatial boundaries on the urban poor. This made the stigma attached to their status as slum dwellers more salient. The urban poor’s heightened consciousness of stigma led them to support Estrada because of his apparent sincerity, as deduced from the absence of stigma in his conduct towards them. Chapter III accounts for the symbolic partitioning of Metro Manila by documenting squatters’ and villagers’ segregating practices. These practices reveal a well-developed sense of place on both sides, a commitment to the relative status positioning of the two groups as expressed through their separation in space. A sense of place explains why squatters and villagers engage in segregating practices. It also enables us to identify other spatial practices that conform to or challenge its logic. Chapter IV explains why squatters and villagers framed Edsa 3—a massive, week-long demonstration in support of Estrada—in antithetical ways by developing an analytical procedure derived from three cultural approaches to cognition and grounded in the social psychological literature on social cognition. It employs this procedure to show how squatters’ and villagers’ different class and state schemas predisposed their respective interpretations of Edsa 3. These chapters establish that the spatial divide between squatters and villagers is deeply implicated in their political divide.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Cognition

[关键词] Political Subjectivity;Cognition;Social Class;Segregation;Urban Poor;Metro Manila;Sociology;Social Sciences;Sociology