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Who Profits from Custom? Jural Constraints on Land Accumulation and Social Stratification in Benguet Province, Northern Philippines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Melanie G. Wiber
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Extract

In the on-going debate over the consequences of national policies of political and economic integration in pluralistic nations such as the Philippines, two facts have become increasingly obvious. We need to know more about the effects of the patterns of political incorporation and more about the type of economic strategies pursued by individuals to judge the effects of integration on peripheral populations. Our former views of the monolithic nature of external influences have been modified; new research has made it apparent that local populations have certain resources at their disposal which can influence the direction of political and economic change. One such resource is the manipulation of the discrepancy between state law and customary law, a strategy which often includes the use and/or invention of custom. This paper uses diachronic data from one upland community in the northern Philippines to illustrate how individuals have manoeuvred within and utilized the conflicts between the provisions of customary law and national legal codes in order to pursue certain economic strategies. The creative process of inventing custom is demonstrated, since the patterns of communal ownership which have been set against Philippine state property law in this region, and which have been used to support claims for regional autonomy, are shown to be a relatively new jural construct. The paper suggests that there are no clear winners in these strategies, elite prerogatives have been eroded in favour of poorer families and the community as a whole has suffered from increased factionalism. This in turn suggests that should regional autonomy be granted in this region, conflict will not necessarily be reduced by a return to customary practice.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , September 1990 , pp. 329 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1990

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References

1 For an interesting contrast in theoretical views on this topic, supported by similar data sets, see Lopez-Gonzaga, V., Peasants in the Hills (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1983)Google Scholar and Eder, James, On the Road to Tribal Extinction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

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4 This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship and was conducted in 1983–84. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 41st Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies,Washington, D. C.,March 1989Google Scholar.

5 See Scott, W.H., The Discovery of the Igorots (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1974)Google Scholar.

6 Wiber, M. G., “The Canao Imperative: Changes to Resource Control, Stratification and the Economy of Ritual among the Ibaloi, Northern Philippines”, in Changing Lives and Changing Rites: Ritual and Social Dynamics in Philippine and Indonesian Uplands, ed. Russell, Susan and Cunningham, Clark (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

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9 Through the Department of Justice, Land Registration Commission, Torrens titles were granted where a claim was submitted and no competing claimant to the land could be discovered in the records. Claims could also be supported by minimally required improvements to public lands (modeled after the U.S. Homestead Act). Title once granted was indefeasible, that is, tenure was guaranteed for the owner by the power of the state.

10 Keesing, and Keesing, , Philippine Headhunters, p. 163Google Scholar.

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13 Ibid., pp. 212–13.

14 Prior to 1976, the Philippine government granted water titles in a process similar to land title, that is, title was granted where there was no competing claimant and was thereafter indefeasible. However, after 1976 a new national water code was enacted in which water permits replaced title. These permits were based on an assessment of the litre-per-second consumption of water from the source for each canal intake rather than granting control over an entire source. See Cruz, Ma. Conception, et al. , Legal and Institutional Issues of Irrigation Water Rights in the Philippines (Agrarian Reform Institute, University of the Philippines at Los Banos, 1987)Google Scholar.

15 These sanctions included censure by elders, and potentially, corporal punishment by the affected community elite.

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18 See Aranal-Sereno, Ma. Lourdes and Libarios, Roan, “The Interface Between National Land Law and Kalinga Land Law”, Philippine Law Journal 58 (1983): 420–56Google Scholar, for a discussion of the doubtful legality of this practice.

19 It is interesting to note that government policy towards native mines was just beginning to undergo change in 1984. One provincial publication made the following announcement by the Provincial Attorney's office: “Gold Panning and Illegal Miners: your Provincial Attorney continues to represent [a list of miner's associations]. We have always taken the position that these groups be allowed to share in nature's bounty.” Anon, “Random Activities”, Sadiay E Dinteg Ja Kuansia. A Periodic Report from the Office of the Provincial Attorney, Benguet Province 1 (1984): 14Google Scholar. Informants tell me that today, gold from native mines is openly sold in Baguio City.

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22 As Scott, Weapons, has noted, many ploys and strategies serve as the “weapons of the weak” in stratified societies.

23 Aranal-Sereno, and Libarios, , “Interface”, p. 438Google Scholar.

24 Bacoling, W.T., “Legally Yours”, Sadiay E Dinteg Ja Kuansia. A Periodic Report From the Office of the Provincial Attorney, Benguet Province 1 (1984): 9–10Google Scholar.