Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Thu, 8 Oct 1992 17:05:09 +1000
From:         lulu@COOMBS.ANU.EDU.AU
Subject:      PH: CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS/12

THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL PHILIPPINE STUDIES CONFERENCE:
ABSTRACTS (continued)

PANEL: THE TASADAY CONTROVERSY

(84)	The Tasaday hoax: changing argument and absent evidence
Gerald Berreman, Dept of Anthropology University of California, Berkeley

The claims to 'Tasaday' isolation and primitivity set forth following
announcement of their 'discovery' during the period of information control
which characterized the Marcos era, have been effectively challenged and
dismissed by an overwhelming majority of anthropologists following the
overthrow of that regime and its information control. The remarkable fact
is not that the claims were false, but that anyone knowledgeable about
indigenous peoples of Mindanao, or about indigenous rainforest-dwelling
people anywhere, or about non-food-producing peoples as a whole, believed
them. In fact, few did and with the dissemination of further information
about the claims and the 'evidence', still fewer do now.
This paper discusses the lack of scientific evidence in support of those
claims with specific reference to the systematic control, suppression and
prevention of the kinds of scholarly inquiry which could have convincingly
tested them. It also addresses fraudulent and/or misleading claims,
arguments and 'evidence', put forward by perpetrators and dupes of the
hoax. It concludes with an assessment of recent and mostly disingenuous
attempts to resurrect the "Tasaday".

(85)	The T'Boli homeland: a land of promise at the crossroads
David Hyndman, Dept of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Queensland

After the initial avalanche of international interests in 1971, the Tasaday
were reported as living quietly in a vast protected zone, until five years
ago when exposure of the Tasaday hoax ended the illusion and developed into
a major scientific controversy in anthropology. The Tasaday were T'boli and
the reserve is part of the T'boli homeland. The continuing persistence to
portray the Tasaday as primitive masks the more vital issues of who gets to
control the reserve and its resources. There is serious displacement and
impoverishment of the T'boli, which urgently requires attention more than
the West's fascination with the mythical Other.
This paper takes the T'boli kinship mode of production as being in conflict
with the progressive frontier invasion of state-building and expansion of
the capitalist world system. Peasant capitalism, transnational
agribusiness, gold mining and prospecting, cattle ranching and logging are
shown to be alienating the T'boli from control of their resources while
destroying their culture and environment.

(86)	Where T'Boli bells toll: an indigenous nation people's struggle for
ancestral domain
Levita Duhaylungsod, UP Los Banos

Anthropological research today can no longer ignore the conflictual and
marginal relations that indigenous peoples are experiencing in the fact of
expanding states and the world capitalist system. The Philippines is
experiencing the common clash throughout contemporary Asia Pacific of two
unequal and incompatible social systems (nations and states) and modes of
production (kinship and capitalist) that has not only marginalized but also
'minoritized' hitherto sovereign indigenous peoples. It is important to see
cultures in a continuous process of change, as products of a dialectical
relationship between indigenous peoples with their natural and social
environments and the states into which they find themselves encapsulated.
As the frontier of peasant invaders and the world capitalist system
aggressively expands into the southern Philippines, it creates a clash of
kinship and states. Models for Three Worlds accept legitimacy of the state
as the basic unit of analysis, ignoring the fact that there are many more
nation peoples in the world than there are states which encapsulate them.
As a domination and incorporation into the world capitalist system, a
Fourth World has emerged within the states of the First, Second and Third
Worlds. An acknowledgment of the Fourth World is essential to an
anthropological analysis of the relationship between T'boli as a people and
the struggle for resource control on the competitive frontier in which they
live.
The paper encompasses a Fourth World anthropology for advocacy of
indigenous peoples' political struggles and incorporates 'indigenous voice'
to enable the T'boli people in the southern Philippines to speak for
themselves and for their demands to be articulated within anthropological
discourse. It is a struggle which reveals the contemporary movement of the
T'boli for self-determination by empowering themselves through their
identity as a people through political networking with other indigenous
peoples in Mindanao for asserting control over their ancestral domain,
their resources and their communities today.

PANEL: LABOUR RELATIONS

(87)	Making for export: issues of structure, agency and the
internationalization of production in studies of organized labour
Jane Hutchison, Dept of Politics, Murdoch University

The internationalization of production in the garments industry in the
Philippines has occurred through direct foreign investment, international
subcontracting and export-oriented production. Studies of the impact of
labour on internationalized production more often emphasize the negative
effects of foreign investment and international subcontracting, subsuming
export-oriented production to these. This case study suggests, however,
that production for an overseas market brings about changes in the labour
process which have increased opportunities for women workers in the
garments industry to organize. These observations raise issues of
'structure' and 'agency' that have wider relevance for attempts to theorize
organized labour in the Philippines generally and in other newly
industrializing countries.

(88)	Ethnic factors and the views of Filipino workers
Clemen C. Aquino, Dept of Sociology, UP Diliman

Militant labor occupies a distinct place in the emergence of nationalist
movements in Philippines. Numerous studies have been done which focus on
workers' involvement in nationalist affairs. However, in the field of labor
studies in the Philippines, the analysis of ethnic factors in relation to
structural or nationalist themes has not been adequately considered. In
addition, while the views of labor leaders figure in most academic
analyses, the perceptions of ordinary workers need to be closely taken into
account.
This study will consist of a case study of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) workers
in a 'Chinese-owned' beverage firm in the Malabon-Valenzuela area in Metro
Manila. One may note that KMU workers' educational programs do not pay much
attention to the analysis of ethnic factors in Philippine affairs. In any
case, do workers express views which suggest the relevance of ethnic
factors?
In this context, the following points may be considered:
  How do workers view owners of Chinese descent but are now naturalized
Filipinos? Are they viewed as foreigners, as Filipinos or as a distinct
category?
  What is their definition of a 'Chinese-owned' enterprise?
  How do Chinese managers compare with their Filipino counterpart in the
firm?
  How does the ethnic divide affect employer-employee relations?
  What are their perceptions of the role of the Chinese in Philippine
economy?
  In the light of the increasing role of Chinese capital in Philippine
economy, what changes have been made in the KMU's position on these
matters.

In a way, this study attempts to highlight the voice of ordinary workers in
the task of providing meaningful conceptual categories for the analysis of
Philippine realities.

(89)	The Crisis of the 1980s in the Philippines: the nature of state
interventions on labor-capital relations and societal change
Virginia Teodosio, College of Social Sciences & Philosophy, UP Diliman

The primary aim of this paper is to provide an interpretation of societal
change accompanying economic recession and periods of accelerating
inflation and rising unemployment in the Philippines over the past decade.
It views the continuing crisis as indicative of the influence of the state
on labor and capital relations in the unending struggle for larger shares
of the national income. State interventions are significant to the extent
that they have profoundly modified the long-term arrangement between
economic structure and political power, an arrangement that is fundamental
to the future of Philippine democracy. The crisis necessarily has triggered
transformations and adjustments in the economy and society. Among others,
such adjustments point to the larger question of when and under what
conditions state interventions serve one interest against another, and in
the process further contribute to the maldistribution of incentives and
resources for political actions. What emerges is a more specific,
thoughtful consideration of the basis of conflict in labor-capital
relations wherein the state gets involved in the struggle within the
production process. There are, of course, some ordering and arranging of
interests in civil society as part of the adjustment process. A number of
these interest groups (apart from the labor groups) tend to seek out basic
changes in society. Their surfacing has implications for a wide range of
theoretical and political questions.

-----------------
[more to come]
-----------------
These papers are available from the Dept of Political and Social Change
(see address below) for a small fee.

*******************************************
Lulu Turner
Dept of Political & Social Change
Research School of Pacific Studies
Australian National University
GPO Box 4, Canberra  ACT 2601
AUSTRALIA

tel: (06) 249 0173
fax: (06) 257 1893
e-mail (Internet): lulu@coombs.anu.edu.au
*******************************************
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