I am a political and urban sociologist who does research on democracy, corruption, social inequality, and segregation primarily in the context of the Philippines, although I’ve also written about Singapore, Cambodia, and the United States. 

I’m wrapping up a book on corruption, politics, and the politics of knowledge titled Bad Words. The book is part of a broader project of understanding corruption as a socially and historically embedded phenomenon—one inextricable from politics and the politics of knowledge. My collaborators and I just published an edited volume called A Comparative Historical Sociology of Corruption. I’m also editing another volume on historical and ethnographic approaches to Philippine politics. The aim of this one is to challenge prevailing conceptualizations of Philippine politics around a set of “bad words” (oligarchy, patronage, corruption). 

Finally, I’ve started work on a new book, an ethnography of democracy in the Philippines. The focus here is on people’s experience of democracy and how it has changed over time with the aim of better explaining the country’s “illiberal turn” of late. Broadly, I’m interested in charting a genuine sociology of democracy, as distinct from current approaches to democracy and “democratic backsliding” in political science. 

My previous work examined the relationship between the urban poor and middle class in Manila as located in slums and upper- and middle-class enclaves. I sought to connect this relationship with urban structure on the one hand and political dissensus on the other. In the process, I highlighted the role of class in shaping urban space, social life, and politics. I wrote a book on the topic called The Patchwork City.