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Alvin A. Camba

PhD Candidate in Sociology, Johns Hopkins University

About Alvin

In the News

"China’s Belt and Road Initiative Paved with Risk and Red Herrings," Alvin A. Camba (with Kuek Jia Yao), East Asia Forum, June 26, 2018.
Guest to discuss Chinese FDI in Southeast Asia and Local Politics on Stimson Center, Alvin A. Camba, May 11, 2018.
"The Philippines Foreign Direct Investment Boom: Comparing China with the Rest," Alvin A. Camba, Asia Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, April 10, 2018.
Alvin A. Camba quoted by Rey Gamboa, "Take Two for China" The Philippine Star, March 8, 2018.
"The Philippines' Chinese FDI Boom: More Politics Than Geopolitics," Alvin A. Camba, New Mandala, January 20, 2018.
"The Grand Narratives of Chinese FDI aren’t So Great," Alvin A. Camba, East Asia Forum, January 9, 2018.
"Why did Chinese Investment in the Philippines Stagnate?," Alvin A. Camba, East Asia Forum, December 12, 2017.
"Fact-checking Critics of Chinese Aid," Alvin A. Camba, East Asia Forum, November 20, 2017.

Publications

"The Food Regime in Late Colonial Philippines: Pathways of Appropriation and Unpaid Work" Journal of Agrarian Change (2018).

Argues that food regimes need to take into account the production relations of paid and unpaid work. As an angle of vision, uses the historical geography of late colonial Philippines (1901–1941) to show how paid and unpaid work in food production was not discrete and separated processes but rather conjoined moments of capital accumulation.

"Inter-State Relations and State Capacity: the Rise and Fall of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in the Philippines" Palgrave Communications 3, no. 41 (2017): 1-19.

Examines Chinese FDI in the Philippines during the Arroyo (2001–2010), Aquino (2010–2016), and Duterte (2016-) presidencies. 

"Contentious Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Investments in the Phlippines" ADR Institute for Strategic and International Studies 9, no. 11 (2016).

Looks at the relationship between political contention and Chinese foreign direct investments in the Philippines. Specifically, it conceptually discusses how elite competition and social mobilization can affect the rise and fall of Chinese FDI.

"Neoliberalism, Resource Governance, and the Everyday Politics of Protest in the Philippines" (with Nem Singh), in The Everyday Political Economy of Southeast Asia, edited by Juanita Elias and Lena Rethel (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 49-71.

Tells a larger story about the changing political economy of the Philippines, one that is frequently characterized by regional specialists as a ‘post-developmental state’. By this, we refer to the emergent strategy of domestic elites to extend the reach of the markets across the economic, political and social spheres, thereby subjecting ordinary people to the imperatives of capitalist accumulation in a globalized world economy.

"From Colonialism to Neoliberalism: Critical Reflections on Philippine Mining in the “Long Twentieth Century”" The Extractive Industries and Society 2, no. 2 (2015): 287-301.

Explores the genesis, rise, and fall of the various Philippine mineral regimes of the twentieth century.