Jerome Velasco BA (History) – III

201851020 Socio 142

COURSE PAPER 1

For this activity, I chose a news article I found published on August 8th of 2015 on
Rappler written by Agence France-Presse and Guillaume Lavalee. The Article Title
is Philippines’ Aeta people ‘beggars’ in their own land and it talks about how the ancestral
lands of the Aetas of Zambales that was supposed to be protected by a Law ratified in 1997 is
being land grabbed “mysteriously” by outsiders. The Article both interests and speaks a lot of
Deviance to me as I was reading it.  One of the keywords that automatically called my
attention to the article is the word “Aeta” in its title. As a person who was raised in a diverse
city, one group is often a victim of negative reaction and stereotypes and they are the Aetas. I
remember one time in high school when one of my classmates lost his wallet and the first
thing that the rest of our group suspected was the Young Aetas we stumble upon before he
lost his wallet. The kids were about six to eight years old and despite their innocence, they
were not spared by prejudice and the label we put upon them just because of their appearance
and their culture. 

The thing that makes the News Article narrate an incident of deviance is the way the
government and the Society treat the Aetas. To fully grasp how it shows deviance, let us use
a device called “Recipe of Deviance” which determines the important pieces that are required
to make a deviant act as deviant. First, the actor, which is in the article was the Government
and the so-called “Civilized” society. Second, the victim or the violator, which is clearly the
Aeta community that is being displaced. Third, the norm, which is the basis of the actor as to
which behavior or characteristic is acceptable and which is not. In the News Article, it was
clear that the norm violated by the Aetas was that they do not practice the same culture or
way of life such as the rest of the people in the country. Another reason that might contribute
to the negative action put upon them is their appearance. Based on my experience, Filipinos
do not inherently favor people with a skin color darker than them. Sticking to what was
mentioned in the Article, the violated norm, which was the lack of education and a more
modern way of living, made the Aetas who were the original settlers of the land become the
alien of their own land. Not unless they enroll themselves in schools built by the outsiders,
they will remain deviant, to whom the outsiders think deserves no recognition of the land
they cultivated for centuries.

Doing my first course paper on this Subject is quite interesting because I am already
applying the things, I learned so far in this class in my arguments. However, unearthing
deviance in a news article will not help them much in their situation but I’m hopeful that
answers to that concern about how do we use our deep understanding of the concept might
come as we go on in this course. Lastly, one question that pops in my head that actually made
it hard for me to write this paper was where or when to draw the line between deviance and
just plain discrimination. Does deviance contribute to discrimination? Or are they the same?
 REFERENCES

France-Presse, A., & Lavalee, G. (2015, August 8). Philippines' Aeta people 'beggars' in their
own land. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/nation/philippines-aeta-beggars-own-land.

Appendix