Research

As the national university, we champion and support innovative research that addresses the country’s most pressing challenges.

29 Jan 2024

UP Los Baños

Researchers develop an ergonomic keyboard that eases typing in English, Tagalog and even Taglish

In the Philippines nowadays, English and Tagalog languages are alternately used for formal written communications;  in a school setting, English...

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26 Jan 2024

UP Diliman

Study introduces an easy physics experiment for students to do at home, providing learning opportunities with minimal teacher involvement

The COVID-19 pandemic posed a challenge for laboratory classes to keep students engaged amidst the limitations of a fully remote...

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24 Jan 2024

UP Manila

People who are new patients or seeking clearance or referral for endocrine-related symptoms are more likely to opt for teleconsultation

Telemedicine employs the use of technology to increase access to health care. This is especially relevant in developing countries where...

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23 Jan 2024

UP Diliman

While Visayan women were depicted as “most civilized” in colonial photography, the photos still upheld a gender ideology promoting male superiority

Significant works have been published on American colonial photography in the Philippines, which primarily focus on the depiction of Filipinos...

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22 Jan 2024

UP Manila

To improve how we diagnose, prevent and treat allergies, it is crucial to better understand how different factors interact with each other

Allergies are overreactions of the body to harmless allergens and are one of the most chronic conditions worldwide. Atopy or...

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18 Jan 2024

UP Los Baños

A majority of world’s largest flowers teeter on the edge of extinction

The genus Rafflesia, which includes the world’s largest flowers, has aroused curiosity among scientists for centuries and features prominently in local...

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17 Jan 2024

UP Mindanao

Utilizing chitosan as an edible coating presents a promising solution for prolonging the shelf life of fresh produce

The development of diseases and decay in vegetables after harvest limits their shelf life and saleability. To control this, proper...

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16 Jan 2024

UP Diliman

An easy-to-build computer-based spellchecker designed to help foreign language learners in writing provides error-specific feedback with explanations and examples

In second language (L2) acquisition, writing is no longer perceived as a mere consequence of learning, but is now treated...

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15 Jan 2024

UP Manila, UP Open University

A novel method has the capability to precisely identify the author of unknown texts, particularly news articles

This study tackles the challenge of figuring out who wrote anonymous text, like online articles, in an age when there...

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11 Jan 2024

UP Manila

The main obstacles to a “good death” during the Covid-19 pandemic were strict limitations on comforting and communicating with patients

Dying is not a medical experience but also a social and psychological one. We would like to ease the suffering...

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10 Jan 2024

UP Manila, UP Open University

Researchers build a smart computer system that can accurately predict issues when two drugs are taken together

Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) can be a serious problem in healthcare, causing around 30% of unexpected and dangerous medication issues. Over...

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10 Jan 2024

UP Diliman

There is a clear correlation between planktonic foraminifera fluxes and seasonally changing environmental conditions

Planktonic foraminifera are calcareous zooplankton inhibiting the water column. They are sensitive to hydrographic stresses, and variations in their population...

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Research

In Visayan and Mindanao epics, one encounters the figure of an enigmatic character called the “Man With No Breath”. This figure is durable, as it has been recorded in epics collected from the 1950s up to the 2000s, and found across the Philippines in Panay and in southern Mindanao. Moreover, the idea that breath can be detached and placed elsewhere is likewise found across
Island Southeast Asia and the Austronesian-speaking world, as our comprehensive mapping demonstrates.

We view this spatial and temporal durability as a regional cultural feature that foregrounds “breath” and “breathing” (in the negational form of “no breath”) as a key category in Philippine and wider Southeast Asian/Austronesian “animism.” However, we approach animism not simply as beliefs in spirits, but by proposing what we call a “logic of breathing” that is instantiated in various socio-cultural domains—from observances during deaths and births, to marriage conventions and emotive expressions.

In beliefs and practices governed by this “logic of breathing,” breathing is symbolically construed as “cutting and linking,” with cutting—as a symbolic entity and action—specifically associated with marking-with-value. This may seem counter-intuitive because we are used to the idea that it is continuous (or “not-cut”) breathing that connotes wellbeing. But in the epics we studied, it is the Man With No Breath character that is actually considered deathless and invulnerable in his “no breath” state. We thus argue that breathing as cutting and as marking-with-value is more generative of insights addressing cultural-philosophical paradoxes in indigenous/Austronesian “religion” and “ritual”.

This publication works along these three themes:

(a) Juxtaposing Visayan and Mindanao epics and the key, durable “metaphorical” figures that occur in them (specifically, the “Man With No Breath”);

(b) Broadening the ethnological comparative context of studying these Philippine epics to cover Southeast Asian and  Austronesian-speaking world (we accomplished this through a comprehensive mapping of beliefs, stories, philosophizing, etc., revolving around the detachability of breath in this broad region); and

(c) Proposing an approach in studying these “metaphorical” figures as indices of a durable schema and notions of “personhood” and “self” (in the local terminology of “souls” and “spirits”) that can be found across this geographic domain.

This study is therefore significant because these three aspects/approaches are not usually drawn together and centered in studies of Philippine epics. We observed that Philippine epic studies have been, by and large, more literary or folkloristic in analytical bent rather than anthropological. Our contribution is a step towards the study of indigenous epics as a key facet in the study of the
anthropology of society and its institutions, as well as (and more importantly), self and personhood.

Authors: Myfel D. Paluga and Andrea Malaya M. Ragragio (Department of Social Sciences, University of the Philippines Mindanao/Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University)

Read the full paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0967828X.2023.2234820