Foreword

Vicente L. Rafael

Set in the sprawling barangay of Bagong Silang in Metro Manila, Steffen Jensen and Karl Hapal’s research for their book began several years ago, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of Duterte’s catastrophic drug war. What is remarkable is how little has changed through the years of their longitudinal ethnography. The staggering number of deaths from extrajudicial killings continues to rise. Policing practices built on a history of counterinsurgency are pervasive, along with the systematic violation of human rights. Reports of the sharp economic contraction brought on by the virus along with reports of massive corruption fill the news. Meanwhile, the government has effectively surrendered its maritime sovereignty to the Chinese. A different government would have sunk under all these pressures, but not Duterte’s, whose popularity has been barely dented. Recent surveys continue to place the president’s approval ratings at stratospheric levels. His popularity seems to be predicated on his ability to govern by fear and produce a sense of security. Understanding how and why fear has become the organizing principle for ordering urban space and governing people’s lives is one of the more important tasks that Jensen and Hapal’s book undertakes.

Along the way, the authors raise a number of questions. How is it that a mass murderer registers such highly positive ratings, however skeptical one might be about the methods used in these surveys? Why does Duterte’s murderous rhetoric and governance by fear meet with widespread approval? And why do the sources of opposition to his authoritarian rule remain remarkably weak and largely ineffective? What can we learn from looking at the largely impoverished communities like Bagong Silang, which have experienced the most devastating effects of the drug war, yet where expressions of confidence in Duterte remain high? Indeed, is there something about the construction of community that preceded and will continue beyond Duterte’s regime—something about the logic and logistics of living together—that also creates the conditions for cultivating violence and spreading death?

Jensen and Hapal approach these questions by focusing on the production of a sense of order and security through the dis-ordering force of violence.

policing

Experts

Show more authors