When the "Bakla" and the "AJ" Fight Back: Looking at how the collective identity of the gay and lesbian social movements in the Philippines and Singapore is created and used.

Abstract

Several studies on the collective identity of social movement organizations suggest that the political condition affects that way identity is strategically used in the movement (Sandoval, 1991; Perez, 1993; Calhoun, 1994; Bernstein, 1997, 2002, and 2008), while others extend the argument by introducing the concept of historicity (Choup, 2008). These understandings of the collective identity, however, are mainly based on different social movement cases in the United States and South America; little has been done outside those regions.

With this gap in the current literature on identity and social movement, this thesis explores the different factors that can possibly affect the way collective identity is created and used by a particular movement outside the conventional research scope. Specifically, this research looks at how the collective identity is formed and employed by four LGBT movement organizations in the Philippines and Singapore. What are the factors that influence the way the collective identity of different gay and lesbian movement organizations is constructed and employed? What do these factors say about role of collective identity in the LGBT movement in Southeast Asia?