A Generation Later : Household Strategies and Economic Change in the Rural Philippines

For most of the 20th century, migrant settlers from the Philippines have established homesteads and new ways of life on Palawan Island, a one-time forest wilderness. On the island's coastal plains and in the hilly interior, settlers have created dynamic and prosperous communities based on locally variable combinations of agricultural and non-agricultural lifeways. This volume presents an analysis of socioeconomic change in one Palawan settler community founded during the 1940s. Based on detailed information at the levels of community, household and individual spanning a 25-year period (1970-1995), the chapters center around three basic themes: the development of a post-frontier village economy; household strategies for survival and prosperity; and individual ambitions as they relate to ideas about social standing and personal worth. These themes are connected into an integrated analysis of change in the community across time and set within the context of wider changes in society. "A Generation Later moves beyond analytical models of rural change that focus on the peasant/agricultural aspect of rural communities and makes a convincing case for an approach that integrates farm and nonfarm occupations and does justice to the conditions of occupational multiplicity that characterize, to an increasing extent, many of the rural communities in Asia. In this context, it challenges conventional (and simplistic) "peasant to proletarian" views of change. Rather than finding a dreary and dispirited landscape of sameness and hardship, it offers some empirical support for amore optimistic view of the region's future, one of growing household prosperity and widespread individual opportunity"--Publisher's description Annotation For most of the twentieth century, migrant settlers from throughout the Philippines have established homesteads and new ways of life on Palawan Island, a one-time forest wilderness celebrated as the Philippines' "last frontier". This volume presents a careful, longitudinal analysis of socioeconomic change in one Palawan settler community founded by migrant farmers and fisherfolk during the 1940s and 1950s. Based on detailed information at the levels of community, household, and individual spanning a twenty-five-year period