Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

uu.sePublications from Uppsala University
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
The Burden of Responsibility: Predicaments of Environmental Life in the Caraballo Mountains, Northern Philippines
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology. (Engaging Vulnerability Research Group)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0788-4844
2022 (English)Doctoral thesis, monograph (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Indigenous people are not obviously, or naturally, stewards of the environment. But when the idea that they are such custodians gains legal traction, and when indigenous land-use practices are codified to reflect environmental principles, they become a burden of responsibility that has significant consequences for the lives and the livelihoods of indigenous communities.

This thesis is about Ikalahan people of the Caraballo Mountains in Northern Philippines and the vicissitudes of their obligation to the environment. Based on twelve months’ ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis explores what happens when the legal recognition of Ikalahan people as an indigenous group demands that they re-fashion their ancestral land from a place where they practice swidden agriculture into a space where they are supposed to ensure environmental conservation. It explores how the Philippine state utilizes scientific knowledge such as cartography and forestry to facilitate the expulsion and estrangement of Ikalahan people from their land even as it relies on those people to maintain their ancestral land as an exclusive ecological sanctuary.

How do Ikalahan communities enact this environmental responsibility, and how do they contest it? The different chapters explore how villagers deploy the cultural power of shame to impose ecological obligations, how they also create tactics to evade and subvert such obligations, and how they use the rhetoric that the land should not be monetized to, precisely, monetize it. The chapters also discuss how traditional moral principles provide a means for Ikalahan people to both understand and facilitate the economic inequalities that have emerged since their land was transformed into an ecological zone. 

By addressing how Ikalahan communities negotiate the consequences of their legal recognition as indigenous people, the thesis contributes to the expanding literature that shows how indigeneity is not a neutral label, but is, rather, a potentially burdensome positionality whose attachment to the environment is anything but straightforward. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University , 2022. , p. 189
Series
Dissertations and documents in cultural anthropology : DICA, ISSN 1653-0543 ; 25
Keywords [en]
Indigeneity, Indigenous People, Environment, Conservation, Legal Recognition, Swidden Agriculture, Ikalahan People, Philippines
National Category
Cultural Studies Law and Society Social Anthropology Forest Science Ecology
Research subject
Cultural Anthropology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-486935ISBN: 978-91-506-2977-4 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-486935DiVA, id: diva2:1705055
Public defence
2022-12-09, Geijersalen, Engelska Parken, 6-1023, Thunbergsvägen 3P, Uppsala, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2022-11-17 Created: 2022-10-20 Last updated: 2022-12-01

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Authority records

Lacbawan, Macario

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Lacbawan, Macario
By organisation
Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Cultural StudiesLaw and SocietySocial AnthropologyForest ScienceEcology

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 3311 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf