All of the projects listed are works-in-progress.
1. [Book Project] Colonial Creatures: Animals and the Making of Modern Health in the Philippines, 1860-1935
In progress
This book will be the first monograph on the history of animals in the Philippines and their impact on modern health. It discusses diseases that have originated from animals and how they affect societies and economies. While animals have always played a role in health, it was not until the late nineteenth century that modern science made the connection more apparent. The book talks about the measures taken to control animal diseases, such as segregation, quarantine, and extermination, as well as the development of technologies like pasteurization, refrigeration, and vaccination. It argues that blaming animals alone overlooks the role of humans in the emergence and spread of animal diseases.
The book focuses on the period from the late Spanish to the American colonial period and investigates the governance of domesticated animal geographies in the Philippines. It examines the influence of political, social, economic, and scientific movements on animal-human interactions. The arrival of Americans in 1898 brought new methods of disciplining animals and the colonized Filipinos. Drawing from various primary sources, including textual, visual, cartographic, and material, this book is grounded on extensive research from archives in the Philippines, Spain, and the United States. It adopts a cross-disciplinary approach, combining scholarship from colonial history, animal studies, anthropology, geography, environmental studies, and science and technology studies.
2. [Edited Special Issue] Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints on Health Messaging in the Philippines
Co-edited with Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk (Leiden University)
From the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, breakthroughs in scientific medicine and advances in visual technology combined into a new public health practice: health messaging. Health messaging was heavily reliant on visual materials such as film, photography, posters, pamphlets, diagrams, and maps to translate new insights on the nature, transmission, and prevention of disease to lay audiences. Although referred to as “medical propaganda” by contemporaries, health messaging was not just about education. In particular, in non-Western settings health messaging was instrumental in promoting new biomedical practices and ideas among the general population, displacing local medical traditions, and transforming both. Today, health messaging—what we now refer to as public health education—remains a key practice of public health around the world.
We propose that the Philippines has been significant to the history and development of health messaging. Beginning with—if not before—the American occupation in 1898, health officials, philanthropic organizations, and companies started to experiment with the development of health messaging in the archipelago. With an early focus on infectious disease, health messaging would ultimately expand to cover hygiene, sanitation, nutrition, childcare, sexual health, mental health, and lifestyle diseases. Health messaging was a constitutive component of public health in the Philippines under American rule and was instrumental in achieving imperial ambitions. In the postcolonial era and indeed up to the present, health messaging remains a principal means by which local populations are exposed to “modern” medical knowledge. The practice continues to be enmeshed with political agendas.
3. Nutrition and Animal Experiments in Early 20th-Century Philippines
The paper explores the role of coloniality in knowledge production involving animal experiments and rice consumption in the early 20th-century Philippines under American colonial rule. Beriberi, a thiamine deficiency causing high infant mortality rates, prompted the American-led Philippine Bureau of Science to conduct extensive animal experiments involving dogs, monkeys, and chickens. The Bureau identified heavy white rice consumption, a staple in the Philippine diet, as the main problem and has sought to apply their findings from animal subjects to human subjects, specifically targeting Filipino bodies.
Drawing on archival research, this paper seeks to uncover the colonial power dynamics that shaped scientific inquiry and dietary practices during this period. The paper reveals that the desire to correct and control the consumption of rice in humans was influenced by the way animals were seen and treated. Against the colonial backdrop of labour productivity and economic progress, the paper argues that knowledge production perpetuated not only the scientific results into public policy but also colonial hierarchies and attitudes towards animals and Filipinos. By critically examining these connections, this paper contributes to the broader understanding of the enduring impact of coloniality on scientific and dietary practices for both humans and non-humans. In this manner, this study underscores that the coloniality of knowledge production extends to a multispecies question wherein the pursuit of human betterment through proper nutrition often comes at the expense of animals.
