Held in trust: Relational sovereignties and the affective life of communication

Introduction: between institutions and intimacy, between souths and settler-colonies

My time as a PhD student at the University of Canterbury remains one of the most transformative chapters of my personal and professional life. It was not only the fulfillment of a long-held dream – to pursue doctoral studies overseas on a full scholarship – but also a deeply human experience marked by care, independence, and intellectual generosity. I arrived in Christchurch in July 2019, elated, grateful, and determined. ¹ Life there was remarkably smooth: I enjoyed the beauty of Aotearoa’s southern landscapes, the quiet rhythms of student life, and the warmth of people who, even without fanfare, made space for me to belong.

Outside the university, I worked part-time – as a barista at rugby events and later as a breakfast cook, thanks to the generosity of a Filipina who trained me and welcomed me into her world. But within the university, I encountered something I had not anticipated in such depth: a research culture grounded in trust. The seminars, the collegial tone of discussions, the excellent library resources, and above all, the supervisory relationship I was fortunate to have, reshaped how I understood what it means to do academic work. My supervisor, Donald Matheson, never made me feel I had to prove my worth. He expressed confidence in my writing and encouraged me to pursue concepts and questions that didn’t always fit standard templates. That encouragement led me, through many meandering paths, to eventually engage seriously with Piotr Sztompka’s notion of “trust culture” – a concept I have since refined and localized in my own work.

What struck me during those years was not just the freedom to explore but the sense of being trusted to think, to take risks, and to shape my own intellectual trajectory. I woke up most days not having to conform, not having to perform competence or fulfill rigid expectations. I could just be – a person, a student, and a scholar-in-the-making. And in that atmosphere, I came to see trust not only as a condition for doing research, but as something profoundly affective, cultural, and relational. My New Zealand experience gave me a version of the West that felt different – still structured, still institutional, but softened, in important ways, by an ethos of care I believe is partly shaped by Māori values and ways of being, even if I only sensed them from a distance.

Since returning to the Philippines, I’ve carried this experience with me. I’ve come to view research not only as a technical undertaking, but as a form of relational practice – something shaped by care, obligation, and the responsibility to hold space for others. I now see pedagogy as part of this too, extending into how we supervise, how we respond to students, and how we build cultures of inquiry. These reflections have led me to a broader question: What might it mean to understand trust not merely as an institutional property, but as a cultural and relational performance – shaped by emotion, memory, and moral expectation? And how might attending to this question allow us to rethink the frameworks we use in communication research – not just in the Philippines or Aotearoa, but globally?

While I refer to both Aotearoa and the Philippines as relational cultures, they are embedded in sharply different historical and political terrains. Aotearoa is a settler-colonial state where Indigenous Māori have long asserted sovereignty in the face of land dispossession and institutional marginalization. In contrast, the Philippines is a postcolonial republic with its own legacy of Western domination, but without a settler population in the same sense. These distinctions matter: Māori values like manaakitanga (hospitality and care) have entered public discourse, but this inclusion does not always translate into structural transformation for Māori communities. As some recent public controversies have shown, such as the outrage over a Māori MP’s “uncivilized” conduct in Parliament, relational values can be co-opted into institutional performance without disrupting deeper colonial hierarchies. This tension complicates the celebratory reading of relational governance and reminds us that care without transformation risks reproducing the status quo.

This essay grows from that tension. It offers a modest reflection – part conceptual, part narrative – on how trust is lived and performed in two very different but strangely resonant contexts. In doing so, it hopes to contribute to a broader conversation about the role of emotion, relationality, and cultural meaning in how publics navigate legitimacy, care, and communication.

Trust cultures in the Philippines: between fragility and performance

If my years in Aotearoa taught me what it felt like to be held by an institution, my return to the Philippines has brought renewed attention to how trust operates here – quietly, performatively, and often precariously. In Filipino society, trust is not merely a belief in institutional competence or the credibility of information. It is a deeply relational act, shaped by emotional memory, moral obligation, and the unspoken negotiations of everyday life. It is also something that, despite its centrality in cultural life, is frequently strained – by histories of betrayal, systemic inequality, and a governance culture that struggles to acknowledge the affective and relational labor of legitimacy.

In this context, tiwala (trust) and pagsunod (submission or obedience) are not just behavioral traits. ² They are part of a wider repertoire of cultural responses to power. Both are filtered through Filipino values such as pakikisama (smooth interpersonal relations), utang na loob (debt of gratitude), and hiya (shame or propriety), all of which carry affective and moral weight (Enriquez, 1992; Montiel and Macapagal, 2000). Tiwala is rarely unconditional. It is offered selectively, often based on whether a person or institution is seen to embody care, responsiveness, or shared moral worldviews. Pagsunod, meanwhile, is not always an endorsement of legitimacy – it may also be strategic, a performance of respect, or even a form of quiet dissent. These behaviors are rarely captured in formal political science or governance frameworks, but they structure how Filipinos live with and navigate authority.

The Dengvaxia vaccine controversy illustrates how these dynamics unfold in the public sphere. As I have written elsewhere (Mendoza, 2025), the backlash against the state’s vaccination program was less about misinformation per se, and more about a perceived betrayal of care. The state was not simply mistrusted for what it said – it was disbelieved because it was seen to have failed in its moral and protective role. This moment exposed the emotional basis of public trust in the Philippines: parents and communities were not asking only for scientific clarity, but for assurance that their lives were being valued. In the absence of such recognition, tiwala was withdrawn – not loudly, but with devastating consequences.

These responses are not unique to the Dengvaxia case. They reflect a broader pattern in which trust is offered and revoked based not just on performance metrics or transparency protocols, but on perceived moral consistency and relational alignment. Where institutions fail to care – or appear indifferent – citizens do not simply disengage. They recalibrate their pakikitungo (treatment), withdraw affective investment, or shift to informal networks of trust. In this sense, trust is not a stable property of institutions. It is a constantly negotiated moral field.

And yet, despite this richness, these cultural and emotional dimensions are often invisible in dominant governance discourses. Public administration and political science in the Philippines have tended to emphasize structural, legalistic, or rational-bureaucratic approaches. Communication studies, too, has largely mirrored this focus – especially in recent years, with the rise of disinformation research. While essential, these studies often locate the crisis of trust in the distortion of facts, rather than in the deeper relational ruptures that shape public reception and civic sentiment (Ong, 2022; Ong and Cabañes, 2018).

To understand trust in the Philippine context, we may need to look beyond misinformation and toward what I think of as communicative atmospheres – the relational textures of silence, compliance, skepticism, and hope that circulate in everyday life. These atmospheres are not easily measured, but they are deeply felt. They draw from cultural memory and lived experience, and they shape how people decide what – and whom – to believe. In this sense, tiwala and pagsunod operate not only as values but as modes of communicative life. They are not static traits but social performances – negotiated, embodied, and constantly recalibrated in relation to shifting moral expectations.

Such a view does not reject existing frameworks in communication and governance research. Rather, it calls for their expansion. If we are to make sense of how people engage with public institutions in contexts like the Philippines, we need approaches that can accommodate the full emotional and cultural range of public life. Trust, in this light, is not only a matter of information integrity – it is a question of care, recognition, and belonging.

Aotearoa New Zealand and the atmosphere of manaakitanga

If trust in the Philippines is often fragile, fractured, and expressed through careful performances of deference or withdrawal, Aotearoa offered me a contrasting experience – one that, while still situated within the structures of a Western democracy, felt unexpectedly relational, affirming, and even quietly nourishing. My time in New Zealand was shaped not only by excellent institutional support, but by what I can only describe as an affective atmosphere of care. It was something I felt more than understood at the time, and something I’ve come to appreciate more deeply in hindsight.

Although I did not engage extensively with Māori communities or Indigenous research frameworks during my PhD, I believe the cultural climate I encountered was subtly influenced by Māori values that have, over time, permeated mainstream public life in Aotearoa. Values such as manaakitanga, whanaungatanga (relational connection), and mana (dignity and spiritual authority) do not operate merely as cultural ornaments; they shape how institutions respond to people, how communities relate to one another, and how legitimacy is performed (Durie, 1999; Mead, 2006; Smith, 2021). Even as an outsider, I could sense how these values had carved out a public culture that was – at least in my experience – less suspicious, less performative, and more open to difference.

This was especially clear in my supervisory relationship. My primary supervisor, Donald Matheson, never treated me as someone who needed to catch up, assimilate, or prove myself. He respected my intellectual instincts, encouraged theoretical exploration, and extended the kind of patient care that I now associate with relational trust. I never once felt that being Filipino, or coming from outside the dominant traditions of academic research, was a liability. That experience of being trusted – to think, to grow, to not get everything right the first time – made an indelible impression on how I now view both research and supervision. It showed me what it means to be held by a system not through strict rules or disciplinary hierarchies, but through relationships premised on generosity, openness, and moral regard.

In day-to-day life, this sense of relational care extended beyond academia. It was in the way strangers struck up gentle conversations in cafes, in the respectful quiet of bus rides, in the way people waited patiently at pedestrian crossings. These may seem like small gestures, but taken together, they formed a communicative rhythm grounded in trust, not control. Trust, in this setting, felt ambient. It was assumed, not earned. It was extended first, rather than withheld.

Importantly, New Zealand has also institutionalized, albeit imperfectly, mechanisms for truth-telling and historical accountability. The Waitangi Tribunal, established in 1975 to address breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, and more recently, the Abuse in Care Royal Commission, reflect a willingness – still evolving and far from complete – to reckon with the past through public processes of acknowledgment and repair (Aotearoa, 2016; Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, 2023). While such mechanisms do not guarantee trust, they signal a mode of governance that takes seriously the moral demands of history.

Still, I acknowledge that the presence of Māori values in public discourse is not without its contradictions. Scholars and activists have noted how institutional references to manaakitanga and whanaungatanga can become symbolic gestures, insufficient to address the enduring inequalities faced by Māori communities. The backlash against Māori expressions of political autonomy – such as in the recent uproar over an MP’s refusal to conform to parliamentary dress codes – reflects how settler discomfort persists, even amid formal gestures of inclusion. These episodes caution us against romanticizing relational atmospheres and instead urge a more critical lens toward how care is institutionalized, resisted, or diluted within settler colonial structures.

By contrast, while the Philippines is arguably more relational at the cultural level, its formal institutions often fail to reflect or support this relationality. Despite the richness of Filipino affective life, the state continues to be structured by frameworks that emphasize authority, compliance, and proceduralism – rarely recognition, much less repair. And while political science and public administration remain dominant in shaping governance discourse, they have rarely embraced cultural or relational paradigms. With few exceptions (Abinales and Amoroso, 2005; Agpalo, 1996; Aguilar, 1998; Cannell, 1999; Contreras, 2002; Ileto, 1998; Pertierra, 1988; Roces, 1998), there has been no sustained effort to weave critical, cultural, and affective perspectives into mainstream governance thinking.

In this sense, my comparative experience does not point to a simple contrast between a relational society and a rational one. Rather, it reveals a paradox: that relational life is sometimes more visible, more felt, in places where it has been formalized – however imperfectly – into public norms, institutions, and pedagogies. And that perhaps the deeper challenge lies not in locating where trust exists, but in recognizing where it has been quietly withdrawn, or never fully seen as legitimate in the first place.

Rethinking communication: toward a theory of relational sovereignties

If there is one insight that has stayed with me across both the Philippine and Aotearoa contexts, it is that trust is rarely just a matter of individual psychology or institutional credibility. It is something lived – performed in everyday gestures, informed by cultural memory, and sustained (or ruptured) through moral experience. In trying to make sense of this insight, I have gradually arrived at a tentative conceptual framing I refer to as relational sovereignties.

I do not intend for this to serve as a grand theory. Rather, I offer it as a small conceptual gesture – an attempt to name how publics navigate legitimacy and belonging through culturally embedded, emotionally charged, and morally mediated relationships. In contexts like the Philippines and Aotearoa, trust is not only something granted to institutions. It is something people live with, interpret, and perform – through silence, through compliance, through critique, and through everyday acts of recognition or withdrawal.

In the Philippines, relational life is vibrant, even if institutions often fail to reflect this vibrancy. Cultural practices like pakikisama, utang na loob, pagsunod, and tiwala shape how people assess leaders, engage with state actors, and respond to risk. These are not simply values – they are communicative codes that mark judgments about care, respect, and moral fit. To submit to authority is not always to agree; it may be to survive. To remain silent may not be apathy; it may be refusal. These are expressions of a deeply relational public life that rarely appears in formal accounts of governance or political legitimacy.

In Aotearoa, relationality is differently configured. The Māori concept of manaakitanga, which emphasizes care, reciprocity, and hospitality, has entered the institutional vocabulary of universities, healthcare systems, and government programs. Though its integration is uneven and sometimes symbolic, its presence creates a cultural atmosphere where moral expectation is acknowledged, not denied. Trust, here, is not just something to be restored after it breaks down – it is something to be cultivated as an ongoing relationship, rooted in recognition and care.

What I mean by relational sovereignty, then, is not statehood in the legal sense, nor a claim to independence. ³ It is a more modest, situated idea: that publics have ways of asserting their dignity, their presence, and their moral agency – often through affective and cultural means. It is a way of understanding communication not merely as the exchange of information, but as the space where belonging is made, questioned, or denied. In moments of scandal, crisis, or silence, we see how this sovereignty is expressed – not in loud declarations, but in the subtle ways people decide whom to trust, whom to obey, and when to withdraw.

I use the term relational sovereignties not to redefine sovereignty in its legal or territorial sense, nor to claim parity with the assertions of Indigenous nations. Indigenous scholars such as Simpson (2017) and Coulthard (2014) have emphasized sovereignty as grounded in land, resurgence, and relational accountability to more-than-human kin. In postcolonial studies, thinkers like Chatterjee (2004) and Mahmood (2004) have theorized political life beyond the state, focusing on subaltern agency, moral self-formation, and embodied critique. My contribution is more modest: to surface the moral and affective practices through which publics – especially in fragile or extractive governance contexts – enact belonging, consent, or refusal. Relational sovereignty, in this sense, is not an assertion of autonomy but an attunement to how people hold space, withhold assent, and negotiate care within uneven power structures.

These reflections come into sharper focus when I consider the emergence of the Philippine Studies Network Aotearoa New Zealand – an initiative launched by Filipino scholars to deepen engagement with Philippine life, history, and identity from within the context of New Zealand. I was no longer in Aotearoa when the network was established, but I followed its beginnings with quiet hope. While I am not among its founding members, I recognize in it the very ethos this essay has tried to describe: a commitment to holding space for shared inquiry, care, and recognition across geographical and disciplinary boundaries. It is not a center of authority. It is a relational space – one that trusts others to continue what you cannot carry alone.

This small example reminds me that communication is not only about language or visibility. It is about the moral and emotional labor of being with others, even across distance. In that sense, I do not propose relational sovereignties as a critique of existing theories, but as a supplement – a lens that may help us see what is often missed in public discourse: the silences, the small refusals, the acts of care that hold communities together when institutions falter.

Gently reframing the field: a humble call to decenter, relationally

This essay is not a call to replace existing paradigms in communication research, but perhaps to accompany them differently. Fields like political communication, digital media studies, and public discourse analysis have made important advances – especially in confronting the challenges of disinformation, propaganda, and platform politics. I have learned a great deal from these fields and remain indebted to their insights. But I also wonder whether, in focusing so intently on the architecture of persuasion, we have sometimes lost sight of the emotional, cultural, and moral labor that underpins how people relate to public life.

If this essay contributes anything, it is perhaps a quiet reminder that communication is not only about transmission, accuracy, or even power. It is also about how people feel held – by others, by institutions, by the cultural norms that shape their sense of belonging. This is particularly urgent in societies where trust has been deeply eroded, and where the tools of repair must go beyond fact-checking or transparency protocols. In such contexts, communication is not only a matter of correcting narratives, but of responding to the deeper question: Who is listening, and how?

The notion of relational sovereignties I have introduced here is not a framework to be operationalized or tested in a conventional sense. It is more of an orientation – one that invites scholars to consider how trust is shaped by histories of care, how legitimacy is performed affectively, and how public life is built not only through rational discourse but through cultural codes, silences, and shared moral expectations.

This approach aligns with longstanding insights from feminist communication studies, Indigenous methodologies, and Global South scholarship, all of which have emphasized the importance of emotion, embodiment, and lived experience. Scholars like Smith (2021), Aotearoa (2016), and Rafael (2005) have long pointed to the need to rethink not only what we study but how we study it – and who we believe has the authority to define the field. My reflections echo these calls, albeit in a more modest, experiential register.

What might this look like in practice? In disinformation research, it might mean not only mapping how falsehoods spread, but asking why certain narratives feel trustworthy to some publics – what emotional histories they tap into, and what absences they fill. In health and development communication, it might mean attending more seriously to how moral obligation and cultural belonging shape message reception. In pedagogy and supervision, it might mean recognizing that knowledge-building is relational work, and that trust must be cultivated, not assumed.

I am not proposing a shift away from studying institutions, media systems, or policy frameworks. But I am suggesting that we make more room for those softer, quieter dimensions of communication – those that deal not with volume or reach, but with care, recognition, and the moral atmospheres in which people decide what to believe. These dimensions may not always be legible through dominant methodologies. But they are no less real.

This, then, is not a declaration but a gesture. A way of saying: perhaps it is time to decenter – not by dismantling what already exists, but by shifting our gaze to what has long been present but seldom foregrounded. In doing so, we may begin to see not only the fragility of trust, but also the small, powerful ways it continues to be practiced – even in silence, even at the margins.

Conclusion: learning to be held

Am I speaking only to myself, or to “us” as Filipinos, or perhaps to a wider “we” across contexts like Aotearoa, the Philippines, and beyond? I am not entirely sure. What I do know is that this essay has been shaped by a deep need to reflect – on what it means to be trusted, to be heard, and to be held by institutions, people, and research cultures that either enable or diminish one’s voice.

In retracing my own journey – across two different but unexpectedly resonant contexts – I have tried to surface the often-unspoken dimensions of public life: care, obligation, silence, moral intuition, and cultural meaning. These are not typically the focus of mainstream communication research, especially in an era increasingly defined by platforms, algorithms, and data infrastructures. Yet they remain central to how people experience public life, engage with authority, and decide whom and what to trust.

The idea of relational sovereignties is not a theory I am seeking to assert, but a way of holding space – a term that allows us to see trust not as a fixed trait or an institutional metric, but as something deeply cultural, emotional, and morally contingent. It invites us to understand publics not simply as audiences or actors in a rational-choice framework, but as persons negotiating histories, affective wounds, and ethical expectations – sometimes loudly, often quietly.

As media and governance become increasingly datafied and automated, the temptation is to treat the “soft” dimensions of communication – emotion, culture, care – as less urgent. But perhaps they are more urgent than ever. Not because they offer comfort or closure, but because they help us attend to what gets lost in translation when the focus is too narrowly drawn. These dimensions reveal not only the pain of broken trust, but the possibility of repair – however small, however partial.

While this essay reflects on two specific cultural contexts, I believe the idea of relational sovereignties may offer a generative lens for scholars elsewhere – particularly in societies where trust in institutions is fraught or undergoing transformation. Whether in Latin America, Southeast Asia, or African contexts, where colonial legacies and contemporary inequities intersect, a focus on the affective and cultural labor of trust can deepen our understanding of public life beyond the frames of transparency, accountability, or rational choice. This is not a call to universalize, but to decenter – to notice the quiet grammars of belonging, withdrawal, and care that animate public communication across diverse settings.

In writing this, I do not claim to speak for all Filipinos, or for those in Aotearoa, or for anyone but myself. But I hope my reflections might echo across other contexts, other silences, and other attempts to understand why trust matters – not just as a topic, but as a condition of communication itself. If this essay has a modest offering, it is the hope that in our study of communication, we do not forget the gentle, difficult, and sometimes transformative work of learning to be held – and, in turn, learning to hold others with care.