Papers (Part 1)

• Embedded Moralities in Social Media and the Philippine War on Drugs Karl Arvin Hapal University of the Philippines

  Recently, Facebook has become ubiquitous as platform for the exchange and shaping of public opinion and politics in the Philippines – albeit not without notoriety. In the Philippines, this dual-edged potentiality of social media has come to fore during the 2016 presidential elections social media became arenas not only for impassionate and, at times, bitter political debates, but also the rise of support for extra-judicial measures to address the problems of country such as illegal drugs. This became especially apparent soon after Duterte’s ascension to the presidency when the social media sites became laden with support for the government’s bloody war on drugs, seemingly embedded with anti-human rights sentiment. This presentation aims to explain the seemingly overwhelming support for the government’s war on drugs in Facebook. This will be accomplished by critically examining the implicit discourses within the comments section of news posted in Facebook about two sensational cases of extra-judicial killings in 2017: Kian de los Santos and former Mayor Rolando Espinosa. The process of examination of these comments or texts will draw inspiration from James Scott’s (1990) concept of “hidden transcripts” and then attempt to outline moral categories embedded in them. The presentation will also draw inspiration from what Tadiar’s (2009) calls “historical experience”. By drawing from Tadiar (2009), the presentation treats the discourses in social media as manifestations of historical continuities, particularly that of class antagonisms.

• Gendered Justice: Socio-Legal Perspectives on Myanmar’s Criminal Justice System Ergun Cakal Dignity—Danish Institute Against Torture

  Criminal justice policies and processes, internationally, have long been devoid of gendered sensitivities and perspectives. Experiences of historically-marginalised groups coming into conflict with the law, namely women and people identified or identifying as a sexual minority, have not been adequately appreciated and, in turn, warranted protections have not been afforded. Research in this area has also lagged. Despite the comparably overrepresentation of incarcerated women in Myanmar, as elsewhere in South East Asia, the necessary research elucidating the factors feeding this state of affairs has not been forthcoming. Accordingly, as part of the Legacies of Detention in Myanmar Project, we have turned our attention to key issues including legislative (e.g. rights frameworks and criminalization) as well as institutional and cultural structures and practices (e.g. procedural and social discrimination) at the intersection of gender and the criminal justice system, more broadly. Delimited to women and sexual minorities in Myanmar, this research is looking at the underlying causes of arrest, pre-trial detention and prison sentences as well as the specific rules and regulations with respect to imprisonment from a gendered lens. The paper will present the rationale of the case-study, challenges of implementation and preliminary findings.

• Obo Central Prison: Persistence and Mutation of a Necropolitical Infrastructure Tomas Max Martin Dignity—Danish Institute Against Torture

  Obo Central Prison was built in 1992 as the fist of the Burmese military clenched hard against the protesting public and their growing call for democracy. The new lemon slice-shaped prison, put up to replace the old (pre)colonial jail inside Mandalay Palace, signified the military’s prime and prototypical manifestation of a modern and secure carceral estate. Over the next two decades, this semicircle structure was rolled out as the infrastructural reference model for all new prison constructions in Myanmar. Based on ethnographic material from an ongoing research project on the legacies of detention in Myanmar, the paper develops a ‘history of the present’ analysis of Obo prison. Interviews with i) the prison officers (who played a leading part in the building process); ii) the autochthonous political prisoners (who moved into the new buildings and began to tinker with them); and iii) the engineers (who struggled to roll out the Mandalay model in unwelcome contexts) weave together a telling genealogy of Obo Central Prison as a significant necropolitical infrastructure in Myanmar’s penal landscape – not least in terms of its role as a hub for the extraction of prisoner labour. In conclusion, the paper considers the contradictions, ambiguities and complexities of how Obo Central Prison seeks to appropriate a new role as a reformist institution and transform its deep history of repression by renovating service facilities and introducing 21st century technologies of care and control in close collaboration with international actors.

Papers (Part 2)

• Deciphering Sites and Sensing Prison Climates: The Public and Personal Faces of Carceral Contexts in the Philippines Andrew M. Jefferson Dignity—Danish Institute Against Torture

  This paper examines public and personal images of penality in the Philippines as articulated in official media and in interviews with prison officers. It considers projected images and contingent realities. The public and personal faces and the attitudes and perspectives revealed form part of the backdrop against which human rights interventions take place in prisons and are therefore important to understand. The public faces of the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) will be contrasted with that of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), the two bodies running penal institutions in the Philippines. Interview material addressing the dilemmas faced by prison staff representing these bodies (care versus control; distance versus closeness; intimacy versus professionalism) will be analysed. This data suggests it makes little sense to talk about the prison officer or the state official. If staff embody the state (or the institution) they do so in their own peculiar ways. The paper aims to make a contribution to the way we can understand prisons in SE Asia in their own terms and not simply as expressions of failure to live up to international norms and standards.

• “Lumugar Ka.” Alternative Narratives in Enduring Emotional Labor: Professionalism and Coping Among Officers in a Philippine City Jail Hannah Nario-Lopez University of the Philippines

  This paper analyzes the narratives on emotional labor (Hochschild 1983) among officers operating an overpopulated and undermanned Philippine city jail with dilapidated facilities. A year’s worth of qualitative data point that emotional labor is highly stressful but essential. Emotions in jail work are generally disallowed. According to the officers, in their profession, feelings must be kept personal and kept from the workplace. Because of this, both good and bad emotions are continually subdued under the principles “professionalism.” However, further interrogations reveal that officers do not necessarily disbar emotions but instead carefully deploy it to navigate their positions relative to higher-ranking officials, co-officers, and detainees (gangs). A fascinating point raised by officers, which can be seen as an alternative view to understand emotional labor, is that even though emotional management is draining, they are willing to continue enduring emotional labor because it is seen as an integral part of their profession. With these findings, this paper forwards critical reflections on the unintended consequences of the country’s inadequacy to respond to the strains of its justice system.

Abstract

Keywords

• Justice
• Law
• Power