This is a new collection of essays by a prize-winning author, scholar, and TV talk-show host. According to David, this book is addressed to the general reader, but it is primarily intended for students of sociology and the other human sciences who demand of every branch of knowledge that it speak clearly of practical realities.

The present volume invites the student to learn sociology by looking at her own formation as a human being, growing up and living in a society that time incessantly shapes and organizes in a specific but ultimately predictable way. Instead of talking about society in the abstract, we give it names -- our families, our communities, the Filipino nation, or the vast planet that we must share with the different nations of the world. Instead of talking about just anybody's biography, we refer to one's own life-long project of building and negotiating selfhood as ongoing achievements, subject to the blind imprints of the past, the contingencies of the present, and our individual collective strivings for a better future. The discourse of nationhood and social responsibility pervades every area of Philippine social science. The Filipino nation is unfinished business, and therefore it is understandable that in public discourse the nation's needs take moral precedence over individual fulfillment. Thus, the book takes up the troubled quest of the modern Filipino for autonomy and meaning in the bosom of his own society, a young nation that is itself aspiring to grown into full modern nationhood in a globalized and, some say, postmodern era. — From the introduction

Based on a 20-month ethnographic study of television and audiences in class-divided Philippines, this is the first book to take a bottom-up approach in considering how people respond to images and narratives of suffering and poverty on television. The book aims to contribute to the broader project of de-Westernizing media studies and explore the tension between ethical prescription and anthropological description in the social sciences and humanities. Winner of the 2016 Philippine Social Science Council Excellence in Research Award.

Babaha na naman ang mga flyers, ang mga pader matatakpan ng mga posters, pero handa na ba ang mga voters? Parang langis at tubig ba ang faith at politics---Hindi pwedeng mag-mix? Kung gusto mong makakita ng seryosong pagbabago, wag mong sayangin ang boto sa maling kandidato. Para maparinig ang boses mo, di kailangang maki-rally sa EDSA at Mendiola. Why? Dahil pwede mong gawin yan sa pamamagitan ng iyong balota. Akala ng iba na ang future ng Pilipinas ay nasa mga kamay ng mga kandidato. Ang totoo niyan, ito ay nasa kamay mo.

Some fledging democracies in the world have encountered setbacks due to political parties trying to grapple with the expectations of sophisticated electorates and introducing gradual political reforms over the years. This book describes how democracy is evolving in East Asia and how it assumes different forms in different countries, with political parties adapting and evolving alongside. It has a two-fold intent. First, it contends that the existing variety of party systems in East Asia will endure and may even flourish, rather than converge as liberal democracies. Second, it highlights the seeming political durability of one party systems OCo unlike two-part or multi-party systems in the US and Europe OCo and their enduring predominance in countries such as Cambodia, China, Singapore and Vietnam.

Even as the specter of populism haunts contemporary societies, scholars have not been able to agree about what it is. Except for one thing: a deviation from democracy, the source, it seems, of the precarious position in which so many societies find themselves today. This volume aims to break the Gordian knot of “populism” by bringing a new social theory to bear and, in so doing so, suggesting that normative judgments about this misunderstood phenomenon need to be reconsidered as well. Populism is not a democratic deviation but a naturally occurring dimension of civil sphere dynamics, fatal to democracy only at the extremes. Because populism is highly polarizing, it has the effect of inducing anxiety that civil solidarity is breaking apart. Left populists feel as if civil solidarity is an illusion, that democratic discourse is a fig leaf for private interests, and that the social and cultural differentiation that vouchsafes the independence of the civil sphere merely reflects the hegemony of narrow professional interests or those of a ruling class. Right populists share the same distrust, even repulsion, for the civil sphere. What seems civil to the center and left, like affirmative action or open immigration, they call out as particularistic; honored civil icons, such as Holocaust memorials, they trash. How can the sense of a vital civil center survive such censure from populism on the left and the right? Populism in the Civil Sphere provides compelling answers to these fundamental questions. Its contributions are both sophisticated theoretical interventions and deeply researched empirical studies, and it will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the most important political developments of our time.

The term coup d'état--French for stroke of the state--brings to mind coups staged by power-hungry generals who overthrow the existing regime, not to democratize, but to concentrate power in their own hands as dictators. We assume all coups look the same, smell the same, and present the same threats to democracy. It's a powerful, concise, and self-reinforcing idea. It's also wrong. In The Democratic Coup d'État, Ozan Varol advances a simple, yet controversial, argument: Sometimes, a democracy is established through a military coup. Covering events from the Athenian Navy's stance in 411 B.C. against a tyrannical home government, to coups in the American colonies that ousted corrupt British governors, to twentieth-century coups that toppled dictators and established democracy in countries as diverse as Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, and Colombia, the book takes the reader on a gripping journey. Connecting the dots between these neglected events, Varol weaves a balanced narrative that challenges everything we thought we knew about military coups. In so doing, he tackles several baffling questions: How can an event as undemocratic as a military coup lead to democracy? Why would imposing generals-armed with tanks and guns and all-voluntarily surrender power to civilian politicians? What distinguishes militaries that help build democracies from those that destroy them? Varol's arguments made headlines across the globe in major media outlets and were cited critically in a public speech by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Written for a general audience, this book will entertain, challenge, and provoke, but more importantly, serve as a reminder of the imperative to question the standard narratives about our world and engage with all ideas, no matter how controversial.