PG Student Seminar Series
Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation
http://www.issti.ed.ac.uk/research_students/seminar
Thursday 23rd March 2017, 2pm - 3.30pm
Seminar Room 1.06, Old Surgeons' Hall
(http://www.issti.ed.ac.uk/about/how_to_find_us)
Racial Taxonomy in a Colonial Multi-Institutional Network: A Narrative from American Occupied Philippines from 1898 to 1946
Dayana Ariffin (PhD Candidate, University of Edinburgh STIS)
The Americans occupied the Philippines from 1898 to 1946, using an assemblage of institutions to accomplish their imperial goals. The construction of a racial taxonomy of the Filipinos was partially a result of the heterogeneous undertakings of these colonial institutions. The interactions, collaborations and regressed commitments between institutions in the metropole and in the colony warrant an investigation as to what had really contributed to the eventual racial taxonomy of the Filipinos. I intend to describe the interactions between the vicissitudes of institutional actors in the American-occupied Philippines and present a narrative on the catalyst to and consequence of the scientific concept of race and racial taxonomy as was propounded in the early 20th century.