How do people conceptualize human nature? How does it become an object of perception and experience, an entity toward which value, action, or politics can be formulated? This talk will consider nature as both a folk concept and an analytic concept in my ethnographic research on Philippine elite formations. First, I will explore how linguistic and semiotic anthropology have dealt with the question of nature, outlining three areas across the literature: naturality, naturalization, and naturalism. Then, I will draw on my fieldwork at a private university in the Philippines to explore how college student participants discussed becoming an elite “naturally,” and being a “natural” elite. My participants conceived of nature as involving reinvention, thus formulating an essence as artificial, accomplished through will or adaptation. I argue that naturalizing elites helps naturalize the political economic systems that sustain them, framing a world that can be regretted but not changed.

Angela Reyes is Professor of English and Anthropology at the City University of New York (Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center). Her research examines historical and contemporary formations of language and personhood in the U.S. and the Philippines. Her books include The Oxford Handbook of Language and Race (co-edited with H. Samy Alim and Paul Kroskrity), Discourse Analysis Beyond the Speech Event (co-authored with Stanton Wortham), Beyond Yellow English: Toward a Linguistic Anthropology of Asian Pacific America (co-edited with Adrienne Lo), and Language, Identity, and Stereotype Among Southeast Asian American Youth: The Other Asian.