The Subject of Norms

The Subject of Norms provides much needed insight into the closed lives of undocumented Filipinas in Northern California and their varied relationships with organizations that aim to serve them. Through sensitive ethnography, Eloise S. Lee reveals how conflicting interests and strategies that result in disparate outcomes drive the shared intentions of Filipina immigrants and organizations that claim to represent them. The tensions between organization representations and Filipina immigrants who are being represented in these representations are captured in the construction of social categories that collapse the infinite possibilities of identity. The use of the Filipino immigrant worker identity by the Tulongan Program, a direct service support project of the Center for Filipino Concerns (CFC) in California, reveal how social categories drawn from romanticized ideas of class, nationalism, and culture promote identity politics that exclude non-secular ideas of agency and power for organizing and social justice endeavors. The Subject of Norms is critical reading for anyone interested in issues at the nexus of identity and politics, embodiment and gender, and ethics and regulation.

Autorentext

Eloise is a filmmaker, educator, and cultural worker living in Northern California. She holds a BFA in Film and Television Production from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and an MA in Asian American Studies from San Francisco State University. She was born and raised in Hawaii. The Subject of Norms is her first book.