Presidents and pests, cosmopolitans and communists / Patricio N. Abinales

Foreword CAROLINE S. HAU -- PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- PART ONE -- The problem with the Nationalist method -- Cosmopolitan, marginality, and prokem: Benedict Anderson's a life beyond boundaries: a memoir -- What sayeth the margins? a note on the state of Mindanao scholarship in Mindanao -- Political science and the Marcos dictatorship -- PART TWO -- Pisting Yawa: Rodrigo Duterte and the language of the crowd -- Let them eat rats! The politics of rodent infestation in the postwar Philippines -- Can communists laugh? Recalling vanishing ditties of the Marcos Era -- Filipino communists, Japanese leftist, and the quest for a new "Internationale" (WRITTEN WITH PATRICIA STEINHOPE) -- REFERENCES -- INDEX.

"Presidents and Pests, Cosmopolitans and Communists brings together a set of essays that place marginal events, pests, politicians, and the country’s backwater at the center of national politics. It does so through methodologies learned from idiosyncratic mentors who valued the analytical power of negative comparisons, jocose asides, and wry academic humor." -- Back cover.