COMMUNITIES AT THE MARGINS: Reflections on Social, Economic, and Environmental
Change in the Philippines
Edited by Hiromitsu Umehara & Germelino M. Bautista
Contributions by Germelino M. Bautista, Atsuko Hayama, Shinzo Hayase, Hiroko Nagai, Yoshiko Nagano, Koki Seki, Yoshiki Seki, Tsutomu Takigawa, and Hiromitsu Umehara.
Cover by JB dela Peña
http://www.ateneopress.com
COMMUNITIES AT THE MARGINS provides snapshots of issues in contemporary Philippine rural society set against the changes that transpired from the 1920s to the 1990s.
Focusing on microlevel conditions in communities in Antique, Cavite, Dalaguete, Negros Occidental, Nueva Ecija, South Cotabato, among others, the case studies in the book reveal the complex interrelation of population movements, economic underdevelopment, state inefficacy, environmental degradation, and peoples' survival strategies.
Concentrating on the poor in denuded and non-irrigated areas with low levels of agricultural production and fisherfolk facing a depleted fishery resource, the case studies narrate various means of coping with poverty in a degraded environment. These survival strategies, however, reflect the limits of household efforts. It is thus imperative to undertake collective and macrolevel actions beyond the uncoordinated decisions of individual households to break out of the impoverishing effects of erratic growth cycles and address the intergenerational character of poverty.