Jose Rizal and the Birth of the Social Sciences in the Philippines

Abstract

The paper narrates Jose Rizal’s sojourn in Berlin in 1887 as a defining momentin the emergence of the social sciences as a Filipino discipline. It situates thismoment in a much wider history, in which such factors as the expansionof the economy, civil bureaucracy, education, and nationalism gave rise tothe first Filipino writings in such fields as history, anthropology, sociology,economics, and political science. In recalling Rizal and his time, the paperargues that there is a longer history of the disciplines in the Philippines thanis usually acknowledged.