Recrafting in/formality, leveraging public market trade in Baguio, Philippines

With growing urbanization, Southern governments often privilege large-scale developments that frustrate urbanites’ livelihood needs. In Baguio, Philippines public marketers counter such top-down disenfranchisement by operationalizing formal “advocacy” and informal “everyday” politics. That authorities negotiate agreements to accept payments for marketers’ infractions, I argue, materializes complex and complicit intersections of formal/informal and legal/illegal practices.With growing urbanization, Southern governments often privilege large-scale developments that frustrate urbanites’ livelihood needs. In Baguio, Philippines public marketers counter such top-down disenfranchisement by operationalizing formal “advocacy” and informal “everyday” politics. That authorities negotiate agreements to accept payments for marketers’ infractions, I argue, materializes complex and complicit intersections of formal/informal and legal/illegal practices

This is Research; Milgram: Activating Alternatives for a Sustainable Trade: Social Entrepreneurship and Coffee Production in the Upland Northern Philippines

This project explores the channels through which Philippine social entrepreneurs in upland northern Luzon develop new specialty Arabica coffee enterprises that follow a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable model of production and distribution. The project analyzes the opportunities and constraints entrepreneurs and producers face as they scale-up from their small start-up premises to yield an industry for, and more responsive to, producers’ and consumers’ needs

(RE)SITUATING CEREMONIAL TEXTILES IN IFUGAO, UPLAND PHILIPPINES

Theories of macroeconomic development argue that as communities become integrated into a world-market economy, indigenous customs are increasingly threatened. This assumes that forces such as Western missionary activities and the commercialization of household production inevitably lead to a deterioration of local arts, religion and socioeconomic practices. These theories, however, ignore the dynamics of local-level contexts and the agency of individual actors. Since the early 1900s, the interaction of indigenous religious traditions with external religions like Christianity has created diverse ritual practices throughout the upland Philippines. An important part of the indigenous religion of the Ifugao of northern Luzon, for example, is the belief in and practice of ancestor worship. But the Ifugao are also Catholic and their woven ceremonial textiles figure prominently in both these religious practices. Since the 1950s, the Ifugao have also become increasingly dependent on a cash economy. To earn money they sell local household crafts such as woodcarvings and certain textiles produced for tourists and their labor. In this changing climate, local groups such as the Ifugao desire increased public recognition of their cultural identity and their role in society, yet they also possess national aspirations for material progress and development. These contradictory tendencies, raise many questions. For example, given the continuing challenges of social and economic integration, how can the principles of a market economy and those of Christianity, the religion of the dominant lowland majority, be reworked in ways that uphold unique local worldviews and practices? This paper, based on my 1994-1995 fieldwork in the northern Philippines, examines the impact of changing economic and social conditions on the production and use of Ifugao ceremonial textiles in the village of Banaue, Ifugao Province. I suggest that the prcxluction and use of ritual textiles - women\u27s skirts, men\u27s loincloths and blankets - form a bridge between indigenous and external religious customs such as Catholicism. In fact, they are the medium through which this transformation is articulated. While the patterns in Ifugao ritual cloths continue to reproduce past designs, the contexts within which these textiles function are constantly in flux. In the face of change, Ifugao ceremonial textiles continue to provide a visual statement of an ongoing negotiation and an enduring ethnic identity. This focus on Ifugao ritual textiles adds to the related work on sacred textiles in Southeast Asia by documenting the survival, through redirection and reconfiguration, of this indigenous practice

Narratives Of Action And Identity In Cloth: The Textiles Of Highland Luzon, The Philippines

The textile artifact, although framed by its physical existence, is not an isolated entity, but functions as a vital part in the ongoing systems of society. By viewing the artifact as an actor with its own life history and with particular parts to play in every sphere of life\u27s narrative, we are provided with an entry to discovering how both the textile object and the subject, its creator and user, collaborate to mutually define one another. To interpret fully the significance of textiles within their cultural context one must examine not only the artifact\u27s physical qualities, its materials, techniques and design, but also, its patterns of movement, namely, its circulation and distribution.2 The interior mountainous area of northern Luzon, Philippines, known as the Gran Cordillera Central, is home to several distinct cultural groups who have had a long history of producing textiles for functional clothing, for gifts in ceremonial exchange and for trade. Anthropologist George Ellis (1981:227) states that these fabrics are among the last remnants of an indigenous artistic tradition which flourished throughout the area, preserving traditional pattern systems and articulating the values of society. All aspects of cloth production, the cotton cultivation, the spinning, the dyeing and the backstrap loom weaving are the responsibility of the women, and girls learn to weave from their mothers from approximately ten years of age. Previous artifact-based literature on highland Luzon textiles focused principally on technology and taxonomy describing and classifying only the cloth\u27s formal characteristics, namely, weaving techniques (Lambrecht 1958) and regional styles (Vanoverbergh 1929). A change in the direction of such research here is overdue. Utilizing the early 20th century striped textiles of highland Luzon as a case study, this paper argues that the textile artifact is utilized according to formal principles of order through which it communicates information to the members of the community. As a means of communication, the artifact then functions in a dialectical relationship with other cultural forms relaying information through similar channels. By examining the arenas of textile movement, the character of this code may be made visible since cloth circulation occurs within the context of meaningful social events

Gift-commodity conversations in a transnational Philippine market trade

Gift-Commodity Conversations in a Transnational Philippine Market Trade with Professor Lynne Migram, Professor of Anthropology, OCAD Universit

Reconfiguring space, mobilizing livelihood: Street vending, legality, and work in the Philippines

In the Philippines, the liberalization of the country’s economy has meant increasing rural to urban migration and dramatic growth in informal sector trade. Women, in particular, building on their historical roles as the country’s primary public and regional market traders, have made Philippine city streets their new business venue for itinerant, but viable work selling different goods: fresh produce, manufactured goods, cooked food – gendered occupations common throughout Southeast Asia. That their livelihood enterprises occur within public spaces not customarily used for commercial activities, means that such trades raise questions about who has access to and rights over such street spaces. Focusing on the growing street economy in Baguio City, the industrialized and administrative center of the northern Philippines, this article argues that female street vendors, through their livelihoods, unsettle essentialist categories such as informal/formal work, appropriate space use, and legal/illegal practice. Many of these women may appear unprepared for labor organizing, as few have the fi nancial resources or the training they need to protect their rights. Yet, by organizing themselves into vendor associations, using letter writing campaigns and assuming innovative leadership positions, vendors successfully protested the 2007 Baguio City bylaws banning street trade in the central business district. The concessions these women won on selected laws enabled them to capture urban spaces consolidating their access to livelihood despite the constraints they face and the differences among street-based groups. Recognizing such gendered place-based politics makes nuanced analyses of Baguio City’s street vendors important to policy makers and social scientists seeking to understand how vendors’ actions may contribute to informed renegotiations of rights to integral wor

Article: Banking on Bananas, Crediting Crafts: Financing Women's Work in the Philippine Cordillera

This paper addresses the emergence of microfinance programmes in international development as a preferred strategy for povertyalleviation and empowering women. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Philippine Cordillera, it argues that microfinance projects have embedded social change objectives in initiatives driven by market-led forces thereby failing to realize social justice for women. To effect a more normative agenda for development, this paper suggests integrating women's perspectives and initiatives other than credit.Cet article adresse l'apparition de programmes de microfinance dans le developpement international comme strategie de choix pour eliminer la pauvrete et permet aux femmes de s'assumer. En se servant de la recherche ethnographique aux ordillieres des Philippines, il soutient que les projet de microfiance ont ancre les changements d'objectifs dans les initiatives guidees par les forces du marche ce qui fait qu'elles ne reconnaissent pas la justice sociale pour les femmes. Afin de mettre en effet un ordre du jour plus normatif pour le developpement. cet article suggere d'integrer les perspectives et les initiatives des femmes autre que le credit

Article: Banking on Bananas, Crediting Crafts: Financing Women's Work in the Philippine Cordillera

This paper addresses the emergence of microfinance programmes in international development as a preferred strategy for povertyalleviation and empowering women. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Philippine Cordillera, it argues that microfinance projects have embedded social change objectives in initiatives driven by market-led forces thereby failing to realize social justice for women. To effect a more normative agenda for development, this paper suggests integrating women's perspectives and initiatives other than credit.Cet article adresse l'apparition de programmes de microfinance dans le developpement international comme strategie de choix pour eliminer la pauvrete et permet aux femmes de s'assumer. En se servant de la recherche ethnographique aux ordillieres des Philippines, il soutient que les projet de microfiance ont ancre les changements d'objectifs dans les initiatives guidees par les forces du marche ce qui fait qu'elles ne reconnaissent pas la justice sociale pour les femmes. Afin de mettre en effet un ordre du jour plus normatif pour le developpement. cet article suggere d'integrer les perspectives et les initiatives des femmes autre que le credit