Rice as Self, Rice as Kapwa

Jenina Danielle L. Melchor    Rice has become a resource for understanding ancient Asians particularly their mobility, culture, and identity. Through genetic evidence, the history of rice cultivation and domestication is used to trace early migration across Asia and beyond. Scholars likewise study the effects of economic developments and climate change to rice food security, …

Rice as Self

Chelsea Nicole Pineda 1. To what extent do Japan and Malaysia share (and do not share) the ‘rice as self’ thesis? Francesca Bray (2014) argued that “rice as self” thesis contributed to the historical nation-building of Malaysia and Japan yet are different from each other. The decisive factor for this argument is that “rice” helped shape …

Essay on Marvin Harris’s The Abominable Pig

By Romina Eloisa Manabat Abuan  Harris (1987, p.67) starts by claiming that the aversion to pork is more irrational than the aversion to beef because the pig is an efficient producer of meat in terms of growing in size and birthing offspring in a span of months. Harris is dissatisfied with the explanations or arguments …

Between Codification and Practicality: Notes on Pig Abomination

By Untivero, Dorynna Zyneensky L. The pig is quite the controversial animal. Often caught between love and hatred amongst men — from religious proclivities to its physiological benefit to one’s body or diet — it has been subject to a wide-range of treatment, seemingly arbitrary in today’s modern lens. In fact, it has been used …

India’s Sacred Cow

By Jenina Danielle L. Melchor Mahatma Gandhi once said, “the central fact of Hinduism is cow protection. Cow protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in human evolution. It takes the human being beyond his species” (“Cow Protection,” n.d.). On 18 March 2016, a cow protection group murdered two Muslim cattle herders …

India’s Sacred Cow

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “the central fact of Hinduism is cow protection. Cow protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in human evolution. It takes the human being beyond his species” (“Cow Protection,” n.d.). On 18 March 2016, a cow protection group murdered two Muslim cattle herders who were accused of selling …