Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization by Kale Bantigue Fajardo (review)

Since the globalization of the maritime industry in the late 1980s, the Philippines has remained the world’s top supplier of seafarers. As such, various studies have examined the adverse effects of economic globalism on Filipino workers and how they contend with new and morphed forms of exploitation in various spatial and temporal circumstances. However, because radical ideas and actions are proven to harm, even alter, the capitalist hegemonic agenda, resistances against and subversions of economic globalism are suppressed. These silences, if broken, may fill in some gaps in globalization studies. Spaces in between are usually overlooked as discourses locate places and people in the center or on the fringes. But in Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization, the overlapping, liminal, and simultaneous are foregrounded in analyzing the complexity of seafaring and masculinities in the context of globalization.

The author of Filipino Crosscurrents, Kale Bantigue Fajardo, is an associate professor of Asian/American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He was born in Malolos, Bulacan, and raised in Portland, Oregon. Fajardo completed his undergraduate degree at Cornell University and obtained his MA and PhD degrees in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The crosscurrents framework of this book has four elements: (1) oceanic or maritime border zones; (2) oceanic trajectories of seafaring, sea-based migration, maritime trade, and global shipping; (3) alternative temporalities and spatializations of globalizations; and (4) heterogeneous masculinities (23–24). Through this framework, Fajardo argues that Filipino/a seafaring and seamen as key masculine cultural and economic spaces and figures are a result of neoliberal economics, capitalist globalization, and overseas migration. The author also makes a case that this heteronormative representation of maleness and manhood is produced and reproduced by the government, but Filipino seafarers find alternative spaces and nonconventional ways of defining masculinities. Through interdisciplinary ethnography, the author unfolds his arguments in four chapters, each part contributing to new ways of understanding gender and maritime issues.

Commencing the narrative with the Manila–Acapulco Commemorative Regatta (also known as The Race of the Century) in 1998, Fajardo illustrates the government’s effort to reenact the glorious past of the Manila–Acapulco galleons and regain Manila’s reputation as one of the principal ports of world commerce. Fittingly the regatta symbolizes a more aggressive economic agenda in the race for the world’s investments, a year after the Asian financial crisis. He then validates the state’s active role in emphasizing heteronormative citizens who are perpetually indebted to the nation. For example, promotional campaigns like Tagumpay Nating Lahat highlight masculinities that are based on fulfilling obligations to the family and nation according to the norms and policies set by the state, even as resistance is policed through watch lists and blacklists. Implicitly obedience and compliance remain among the criteria to become an exemplary overseas migrant. However, seafarers can also challenge the discourse: some of them “jump ship,” or fail to report for duty when the ship sails, and escape from state-sanctioned economic and cultural impositions. Tired of sending money to family members and the government, seafarers run away and seek new employment on foreign soil without legal documents. Citing various ethnographic and historical data, Fajardo regards this act as courageous and a subversion of the colonial construction of “utang na loob” (debt of gratitude).

The second half of the book focuses on the different perspectives of time, space, and masculinities in the global economy. The ethnography on land and at sea reveals concepts of time that are different from Harvey’s generalized analysis of the annihilation of space by time. I agree with Fajardo that persons, groups, and nations have different capabilities in conquering space as a result of uneven economic development. Through the high speed of ultra-large carriers that sail on the world’s oceans, increased containerization, and other advancements in shipping technology, time is made faster for capitalists. Modern machines discharge...