THE PHILIPPINES CONTINUED to be primarily a rural society in
1990, despite increasing signs of urbanization. The family
remained the prime unit of social awareness, and ritual kin
relations and associations of a patron-client nature still were
the basis for social groupings beyond the nuclear family, rather
than horizontal ties forged among members of economically based
social classes. Because of a common religious tradition and the
spread of Pilipino as a widely used, if not thoroughly accepted,
national language, Filipinos were a relatively homogeneous
population, with the important exceptions of the Muslim minority
on Mindanao and in Sulu and southern Palawan provinces, and the
upland tribal minorities sprinkled throughout the islands.
Filipinos shared a common set of values emphasizing social
acceptance as a primary virtue and a common world view in which
education served as the principal avenue for upward social
mobility. Cleavages in the society were based primarily on
religious (in the case of Muslims