Father Frank Lynch and the Shaping of Philippine Social Science

Abstract

Although the United States granted the Philippines formal independence in 1946, American influence in the former colony did not disappear overnight. In the decades following independence, American policymakers continued to play key roles in Philippine politics; American businessmen, presidents, legislators, and bureaucrats and US-based international money lending agencies continued to have a considerable impact on the Philippine economy; and American popular culture continued to penetrate Philippine society and culture (as it did elsewhere). But perhaps no sector of Philippine society was as profoundly influenced by Americans as the academic one, and no subdivision of the Philippine academy bore the American imprint as visibly as Philippine social science. This paper examines the academic career, writings, institution-building efforts, and scholarly agenda of the US-born scholar who arguably had the greatest impact on post-war Philip- pine social science: Father Frank Lynch, a Jesuit professor of anthropology and sociology at Ateneo de Manila University.