In the Image of Industry: Indigeneity and Migrant Labor in the Making of Filipino America

This dissertation presents a cultural and labor history of race in 20th century Filipino America through the political-economic conditions that displaced lowlands peasants and indigenous groups from Northern Luzon in the 19th century. It argues that the constellation of contradictory identities that constitute the “Filipino”—the indigenous “savage” and the industrious migrant worker—across the early 20th century Pacific emerge out of archival productions that decontextualized political economic upheavals, as the island of Luzon became repurposed into a commodity producing colony. Industrial empires, nationalist political elites, rural intellectuals, migrant peasants, and indigenous Cordillerans alike competed over the terms of what the modern “Filipino” would look like as northern resource frontiers produced a global labor force, bringing with it a vibrant transpacific political culture. This dissertation investigates the racial economy of the colonial archive, or the phenomenon of archival production and circulation through which race manifested as ways for empires to manage human resources.

Department dc:contributor.department

History

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• De Leon, Marc Adrian

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Fujitani, Takashi
• Bender, Daniel

• Archival Theory
• Critical Race Studies
• Filipino America
• Indigeneity
• Labor History
• Visual Culture

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/109371

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/109371