Building Diaspora: Filipino Cultural Community Formation on the Internet

Acknowledgments

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S ix Acknowledgments When I was in graduate school, crippled with writer’s block, guiltridden (as any good Filipino Catholic girl would be for writing about her elders and her community in such a manner), and frozen with fear because I felt I did not have the right to write about the Filipino community with such an authoritative tone, one of my wise, sage advisors calmed me down by teaching me two things: (1) Every work is a work-in-progress and, thus, should be shared with others as soon as possible; and it’s corollary, (2) the gift of academia is learning, not professing , and people cannot learn if they are under the impression that everything they produce must be perfect. Another thing he taught all of us is that every work, whether it’d be a brownbag presentation given to one’s department or a book complete with glossy, full-color cover, is inevitably written by more than just that person as ideas contained within those pages were generated through many conversations with trusted colleagues and friends. This combination—“no one is perfect” and “the blame for this imperfect piece is shared anyway”—helped assuage my fears and allowed me to complete my research, defend my dissertation, and, after multiple rewrites, turn in this book. (I owe you many cookies, Norm.) To this end, I would like to acknowledge those friends and colleagues who helped me through the years; you are the ones I will be calling once one of my irate titas calls me and admonishes me for exposing Filipinos’ dirty laundry! ix x A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, my Jedi council— John Lie, Susan Leigh Star, Norman K. Denzin, and Andrew Pickering— guided, advised, and encouraged me throughout graduate school and, especially, throughout this project. John’s Zen master advice to his students (i.e., “Think thrice before picking a dissertation topic; you have to court your topic, as you’re going to have to live with it for about ten years.”), his pithy, yet strangely comforting, observations (i.e., “You know, there are some really bad books out there. So don’t worry about yours; go talk to the publishers.”), and his largely “invisible hand” (as I know he quietly made my work known to many scholars without saying a word to me) have been invaluable. He is an incredibly successful and renowned researcher and scholar; the best compliment I ever received from him was just two years ago at the annual conference for the American Sociological Association (ASA), when he said, “So, you’re almost up for tenure, you’ve got articles out, your book is on its way, you’re starting a new research project, and you’re on the Asian and Asian American council at ASA. Is there anything you need from me?” Knowing full well that I could not have achieved any of this without John’s help, I just thanked him for all his encouragement and told him that he could call on me if ever needed. (That offer stands, John.) Susan Leigh Star’s compassion for marginalized peoples, phenomenal ethnographic skills, vast knowledge of the impact of technology on societies, and innovative pedagogical skills (i.e., “Express in poetry the development of the relationships you’ve formed with people at your research site.”) cultivated my interest in using sociological theories to explore the effects of technologies on the largely understudied Filipino community. In addition, her enthusiasm about the positive potentials of technology and her insistence that we understand better the intertwined relationship between late capitalism, technology, human beings, and our ideas of identity and community inspired this “nethnography.” While I was collecting material for the dissertation, she took the time to talk through the emerging threads. Also, knowing that I had a problem with writing about my ethnic community with an authoritative, researcher’s voice, she gently encouraged the use of that voice by consistently assuring me, “There’s more to the debates than just that; you’re treading on unchartered ground and I’d like for you to explain the contours of this territory.” At trying times, whenever I had any doubts, Leigh quelled them by encouraging me to “talk A C K N...