About

Marco Garrido is a professor whose work involves the study of the brain, neuroanatomy, and related psychological phenomena. He has contributed to educational initiatives, such as giving the annual Aims of Education address at the University of Chicago, and has engaged in public discussions on topics like perception, ethics, and human behavior. His research includes neuroanatomical dissections, illustrating the parts of the brain and their development, and he has conducted experiments demonstrating social behaviors in animals, such as the Bystander Effect in rats. Garrido's work emphasizes understanding the brain's structure and function, as well as exploring psychological and social dynamics through scientific and educational approaches.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Economic geography
• Geography
• Law
• Regional science
• Anthropology
• Media studies
• Linguistics
• Economic growth
• Economics
• Political economy
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• Conclusion

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-12-19

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• The Postcolonial Reconstruction of the Chicago School in the Philippines

  The American Sociologist · 2025-05-30

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In the Philippines, a group of scholars associated with the Institute of Philippine Culture took up and reworked the Chicago School tradition of social science research. “IPC sociology” has been depicted as an American transplant and, worse, a neocolonial project. Critics took issue with what they saw as its intellectual and material dependency on the United States, deeming it not just inappropriate but “irrelevant” to Philippine society. I will contest this reading and argue that IPC scholars didn’t just import the Chicago School tradition wholesale but had to reconstruct it in the face of challenges, pressures, and demands particular to Philippine society. In the process, they transformed it, producing a distinctly Filipino research tradition. I will tell the story of these reconstructions through the figure of Mary Racelis Hollnsteiner, whose academic career spans almost 70 years, virtually the entire history of social science research in the Philippines. The aims of the paper are twofold: first, to contribute to a global history of the Chicago School by highlighting the way it was taken up and transformed in the Philippines. Second, I use the case study to provide purchase on the question of what an authentic postcolonial sociology looks like in practice. In the case of IPC sociology, it came to be articulated not in opposition to Eurocentric legacies but through their use and adaptation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Review of “Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora”

  Social Forces · 2025-12-27

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Thousand Years of Corruption: A History of Corruption and Anti-corruption in the Philippines since 1946

  Comparative Studies in Society and History · 2025-04-25 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The scholarly and popular commonsense about corruption in the Philippines is that the country has always been corrupt. Seventy-eight years of corruption as an independent state (1946–2024) may as well have been a thousand. Lay and scholarly accounts explain this continuity with respect to traditional values and premature democratization. In both accounts, corruption is all but genetic to Philippine culture or politics. To be sure, continuity is self-evident if we are looking only at corruption scandals—but scandals have been accompanied by anti-corruption movements, broadly speaking. The two have gone hand-in-hand historically, suggesting that we need to understand them together. Taking them together, that is, focusing on their dialectic, produces, as I will show, a history of change. Specifically, how Filipinos relate to corruption has changed. They have become less tolerant of it in general and learned to embrace an anti-corruption model of politics. How scholars and policymakers conceive of corruption has changed. They have come to adopt a view of corruption as a generic social problem, effectively disembedding it from society. These developments have enabled a more intolerant approach such that, today, the greater danger lies in an anti-corruption “fundamentalism” leading to the rejection of politics altogether. Viewed as a whole, the history of corruption/anti-corruption has been a popular struggle over what politics should look like, and thus we might read their dialectic as driving the progress of political modernization from below.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Prison of Misrecognition: The Epistemic Struggle against “Bad Words” in Philippine Politics

  Sociological Theory · 2025-07-13

  article1st authorCorresponding

  For scholars of the Global South, epistemic struggle happens in the particular, that is, over the course of debates around particular models of reality. To illustrate, I reconstruct debates around an influential model of Philippine politics, arguing that the model is premised on a set of “bad words” and that these bad words have real effects. These bad words produce a prison of misrecognition. Delving into this literature yields a finer-grained picture of epistemic struggle. Specifically, we can discern three kinds of blindnesses: ontological, epistemological, and sociological; two kinds of pain: feeling stuck in a cognitive prison and worse, feeling one deserves to be stuck there; and one kind of agency at stake: not just the capacity for action but also the capacity for subjects to act within the parameters of their own reality.

  PublisherDOI

• The Emergence of Corruption in the Cambodian Land Market

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-12-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Sociology of corruption

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2024-05-02 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Corruption has detrimental effects on economic growth, public trust, and political participation. While competitive elections in democratic countries provide a mechanism for holding corrupt politicians accountable, the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of electoral punishment for corruption is mixed. The retrospective voting model suggests that voters evaluate incumbents based on their performance, including their handling of corruption. However, several factors influence the formation of corruption performance evaluations. Limited access to information, biases in blame attribution, and cognitive processes can affect voters’ perceptions of corruption. Furthermore, the weight assigned to corruption in the overall performance threshold varies based on contextual factors, policy preferences, and in-group biases. The consideration of others’ intentions and the decision to abstain or vote also impact the electoral punishment of corruption. Effective strategies to combat corruption require addressing these complex dynamics and fostering coordination, transparency, and citizen engagement.

  PublisherDOI

• Rodrigo Duterte as “the Trump of Asia”? The Limits and Pitfalls of Thin Comparison

  American Behavioral Scientist · 2024-08-06 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte often gets lumped together with the former U.S. president Donald Trump on the basis of their autocratic practices. However, there are crucial differences in their respective situations and the reception of their autocratic practices on the ground. Consequently, if we understand Duterte only through Trump or with reference to the category of “emerging autocrat” then we end up misunderstanding the situation in the Philippines. This article is about the limits and pitfalls of thin comparison and the necessity of thicker ones. It advocates understanding practices embedded in the social structures and processes that make them meaningful. I proceed as follows: I present the case of Rodrigo Duterte and review the grounds for lumping him along with Trump as an emerging autocrat. I then pursue a thicker comparison of Duterte and Trump, putting their support in economic, social, political, and historical context and highlighting substantial differences in their respective situations. Finally, I argue that thin comparisons are especially susceptible to interpretive biases in general and highlight three such biases—toward contemporaneity, continuity, and centrality—using the case of Duterte to illustrate.

  PublisherDOI

• A Comparative Historical Sociology of Corruption

  Sociology Compass · 2024-11-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT A view of corruption as disembedded from society and history is predominant today. In this view, corruption is basically the same thing everywhere and inherently a bad thing because it gets in the way of proper processes. In opposition to this view, we argue for understanding corruption as socially and historically embedded . While there are many viable ways to embed corruption, we advocate a comparative historical sociology of corruption in particular. This approach has in mind a view of corruption as “a moving object,” that is, as subject to variation across social space and transformation over time. It focuses on the processes through which a course of action is worked out in relation to historically specific structural conditions. By tracing these processes and embedding “corrupt” practices in the situations where they were developed and make sense, we gain a deeper understanding of these practices and are in a better position to evaluate them. We are also able to make better comparisons, comparing objects shaped by similar processes rather than objects identified by definition alone. We proceed, first, by situating our intervention in the context of the rise of a disembedded approach to corruption. Second, we review a selection of more or less embedded approaches in anthropology and sociology. Third, we describe what a comparative historical sociology of corruption entails. Finally, we highlight the costs of a disembedded view in terms of ineffective and pathologizing anti‐corruption efforts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Trajectory of Illiberal Backlash

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024-01-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter traces the trajectory of illiberal backlash in the Philippines. Conceptually, it emphasizes the work of time in the formation of an illiberal disposition. It espouses an historically embedded explanation of illiberalism centered on the question of “why now?” rather than simply “why?” and accounts for dynamics such as sequence, buildup, and contingency. Empirically, it roots the Philippines’ illiberal turn in the serial failures of actually existing liberal democracy. Repeated failure has given rise to calls for “disciplining” democracy. Rodrigo Duterte was seen as a “strong leader” and the answer to such calls, hence his enormous popularity. Over the course of his administration, Filipinos have developed a taste for illiberal rule. The concluding section looks beyond this trajectory to examine another aspect of illiberal backlash: class power. Here I argue that the election of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos III was partly driven by anti-elitist sentiment, and that, in general, attending to class dynamics can help us appreciate illiberalism’s counterhegemonic aspect.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Marina Zaloznaya

  2 shared

• Fabio Rojas

  Indiana University Bloomington

  1 shared

• Kevin Lewis

  1 shared

• Edward O. Laumann

  University of Chicago

  1 shared

• Yaniv Ron-El

  1 shared

• Hans Joas

  1 shared

• Jenny Trinitopoli

  1 shared

• Cameron Campbell

  1 shared

Labs

• Amyoli Internet Research LabPI

Awards & honors

• Nick Feamster: Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist…
• Nick Feamster: Technology Review 35 “Top Young Innovators Un…
• Nick Feamster: ACM SIGCOMM Rising Star Award
• Nick Feamster: Sloan Research Fellowship
• Nick Feamster: NSF CAREER award