Moving narratives : gender, indigeneity and the migration of Bukidnon women in the central Philippines

Abstract

This thesis explores the lives of indigenous women in a Bukidnon community in Negros, the Visayas, Central Philippines. It examines the political and social processes unfolding in the town of Don Salvador Benedicto and discusses how different community sectors deploy the identity politics that gives rise to conflicts between "traditional" and "modern" indigenous identities. I examine power relations and actors' subjectivity in these conflicts and use Ortner's "serious games" perspective through which "social life is seen as something that is actively played, oriented toward culturally constituted goals and projects and involving both routine practices and intentionalized action" (Ortner, 2006:129). I situate men's and women's narratives against their aspirations of uswag [progress], involving land rights and migration. The thesis discusses the unintended consequences of women's migration, including a loosening of tradition's grip on women; a breakdown of dichotomies and expansion of indigeneity; a disruption of the category of Indigenous Peoples; an increase in women's bargaining power; and changes in labour arrangements and other aspects of social relations. Migration fuelled desire for further migration especially among neighbours and other community members as well as migrants themselves, some of whom dreamt of going further away, even abroad. The thesis shows the 'dialogues' between State-imposed indigeneity and individual agency. Subjects either appropriate or reject State-imposed indigeneity by using pagbuot, roughly translated as both will and volition. Pagbuot illustrates indigeneity is a process as opposed to a fixed state of being. In the conclusion, I argue that women resort to migration to improve their lives. Migration alters their subjectivities (how subjects feel, respond, experience), and affects the dynamics of gender and indigeneity.