Description:
"Considerable research has focused on understanding how upland farmers adjust land-based
livelihoods to the influences of agrarian change in Southeast Asia. In the process, an ?upland
bias? has emerged where researchers focus narrowly on the uplands as localities with distinct,
coherent features, neglecting how families engage place, social relations and ethnicity as they
access opportunities in proximate spaces. This paper considers how the Tagbanua ? long
considered an upland swidden people ? have ?stepped back? from swidden agriculture due to
declining yields and debt to harvest the lucrative grouper (e.g. Plectropomus leopardus).
We show how Tagbanua families on Palawan Island have adjusted swidden as they
negotiate social relations, ethnic cleavages and economic barriers to effectively engage the
grouper industry. Rather than cast such farmers and fishers as ideal types in place, we argue
that how they negotiate social relations creates new livelihood opportunities in varied
environments, reinforcing the dynamic, recursive context of agrarian change"...
Keywords: agrarian change, Philippines, swidden, fishing, human geography
Source/publisher:
Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 11 No. 4, October 2011, pp. 536?555.
Date of Publication:
2011-10-00
Date of entry:
2015-02-03
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Language:
English
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Format:
pdf
Size:
261.75 KB