Globalization, Environmental Change, and Coping Strategies Among the Ifugao of the Philippine Cordillera Mountains

Abstract

As Ifugao people have become more extensively integrated into the global market economy, their ability to adapt to the environment in the Philippine Cordillera Mountains has involved an expansion of the scope of the sources of livelihood available to them. Ifugao people have faced difficult environmental and social conditions in recent decades, including a growing population, deforestation, and rice terrace degradation. From engaging in tourism, transnational labor migration, craft production for global exportation, and international development programs, to maintain swiddens to raise particular crops, Ifugao people have coped with these challenges by finding creative ways to diversify their livelihoods and participate in opportunities both within and outside of the Cordillera Mountains. These labor practices have enhanced the ability of their culture, as well as their kin groups, to thrive and change in relation to their shifting social and natural environment. But this process has also been an uneven one among different social groups. This anthropological political ecology analysis assesses class and gender differences in approaches to coping with a changing social, cultural, and natural environment among Ifugao people in the Cordillera Mountains during the late twentieth century.