Indigenizing the Social Sciences

prehispanic “barbaric” views vs colonial “civilization”

Salazar calls this a bipartite view as

Indigenization

means translating, reworking, and testing imported ideas in Filipino contexts

UP

became a key incubator of indigenized social science during Martial Law

Virgilio Enriquez

developed Sikolohiyang Pilipino in psychology.

Zeus Salazar

developed Pantayong Pananaw in history and historiography.

Prospero Covar

developed Pilipinolohiya in anthropology and cultural analysis.

Sikolohiyang Pilipino

is psychology rooted in Filipino experience, thought, and orientation

It values culture and language as central to understanding behavior.

It questions outsider categories that misread Filipino motives and relationships.

Concepts like kapwa, pakikipagkapwa, hiya, and loob gain meaning in context.

The approach studies the Filipino from within, not as an exotic object.

Pantayong Pananaw

is discourse among people speaking to one another from shared cultural ground

It privileges Filipino language in constructing meaning about Filipino experience.

The approach resists explaining the Filipino mainly through the gaze of the Other

It asks historians whose voice organizes periodization, evidence, and interpretation.

National consciousness deepens when Filipinos speak historically to and about themselves.

critiques periodizations that center colonial rule as the main timeline of history.

Pilipinolohiya

systematic study of Filipino psyche, culture, and society to highlight pagka-Pilipino.

It asks what makes a theme, practice, or institution distinctly Filipino in lived form.

The approach resists fragmenting the Filipino into categories detached from context

It offers a framework for studying Filipinoness across everyday life, not just formal history.
can interpret family, ritual, language, labor, and identity as interconnected.