Excerpt

Towns /pueblos, malls, restaurant menus, t-shirts: the primary material and objects of study for the scholars whose research is featured in this volume might strike detractors of Cultural Studies (CS) as simply tell-tale, the unmistakable signs for signature CS work. What else can and do CS scholars and critics examine anyway except these sorts of things?, some might rhetorically ask with disdainful smirks on their faces. In short, CS as a field (if it can be called one for many) suffers from a lot of misconceptions, often based on scanty knowledge and accumulated stereotypes about it. Positively, however, I take this situation of CS to be quite indexical of its immense success both as an academic movement and research formation, institutionally and internationally. So while already setting firm roots in Cordillera and Philippine Studies, as the essays in this special number of the journal abundantly show, CS still needs to be “introduced” in a Philippine context, the misunderstandings about it addressed (before presenting the kinds of emergent work and local forms of research in it that our published essays in this volume excitingly indicate). […]