Social Change And Applied Anthropology by Miriam Chaiken Anne K. Fleuret

Author:Miriam Chaiken, Anne K. Fleuret [Miriam Chaiken, Anne K. Fleuret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000311679
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Upper 5 14.3 6 16.7

Middle 5 14.3 21 58.3

Lower 25 71.4 9 25.0

Total 35 100.0 36 100.0

* Household counted as “Tagbanua” if either spouse is Tagbanua

Second, the notion that the Tagbanua are poor because they are unwilling to work as hard as lowlanders is not supported by data collected on household time allocation. A year-long time use survey based on random observations of the daytime activities of adults in Napsaan5 found no significant difference between Tagbanua and lowlanders in the overall amount of time allocated to economic tasks over the year. As shown in Table 10.2, Tagbanua women engage in economic activities to the same extent as lowland women while Tagbanua men are only slightly less active than their lowland counterparts (see Conelly 1983 for details).

Though the amount of labor expended is roughly equal, the time allocation data do indicate important differences in the type of economic activities that the Tagbanua and lowlanders choose to pursue. For both ethnic groups, swidden rice production remains the dominant subsistence activity. But rapid population growth and a government ban on clearing swiddens from forest land above the village have resulted in fallow periods that now average only two or three years. As a result, the returns to swidden rice production in Napsaan are now precariously low, averaging only about 700 kilograms per hectare. This figure is less than one-half of the yield achieved in earlier years when fallow periods were typically ten years or more, and it is one of the lowest rice yields reported for a swidden system in all of Southeast Asia (Conelly 1983). In response to these declining returns, in recent years many Tagbanua men have intensified their collecting of rattan and copal in the forest for sale on the market. In contrast, lowlanders have increasingly focused their efforts on wage labor, irrigated rice production, tree crop production (e.g. cashew), and ocean fishing.6

Table 10.2 – Adult Daylight Time Allocation to Economic Activities by Ethnicity

TAGBANUA LOWLAND

TASK Females (n–640) Males (n–728) Females (n–425) Males (n–631)

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