Blood is Thicker than Water: Philippine Politics and Families

Book Review: McCoy, Alfred W., ed. An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines. 7th. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2017.

Abstract

This book review surveys An Anarchy of Families: State and Families in the Philippines by Alfred W. McCoy. Notable for his work on Philippine political and social history, McCoy studied the influences of families in Philippine politics that have remained dominant in the country for the past decades. The said author, along with other scholars, chose notable elite families throughout the Philippines in relation to the study, such as the Duranos and the Lopezes who would dominate the Philippine political scene not only in the metropolitan Manila, but also in the provinces. Furthermore, this review hopes to examine the said author’s use of the methodology and framework in discussing the influence of these families, and how these patterns continued into the twenty-first century.