Commercialization and Community Life: The Geography of Market Exchange in a Small-Scale Philippine Society

Abstract

Before World War II, indigenous trade networks integrated a group of village societies in the Buguias region of the Cordillera of northern Luzon, Philippines. Although such small-scale (or “tribal”) societies usually have non-commercial economies, here trade was conducted in a distinctly business-like manner. This linkage of a commercial economy with a village-level social structure was to mold subsequent socioeconomic development. After the war, villagers quickly abandoned their old economy to become vegetable farmers producing for the national market. But because of the mercantile tradition, postwar agricultural commercialization did not force a breakdown of indigenous communal institutions, as is usual elsewhere in the peripheries of the world economy. Redistributive prestige feasts, for example, are now much more vigorously celebrated in the vegetable districts than they are in neighboring regions that retain subsistence agriculture.

These findings controvert several common conceptions of social and economic development. They show that agricultural commercialization is not necessarily accompanied by a breakdown of communal solidarity and that market economies are not limited to large-scale (or “economically advanced”) societies. They also demonstrate a need to distinguish more clearly the market as a pricesetting mechanism from the market as a place of exchange; these economies were based on the market principle, yet they were without distinct marketplaces.

Key Words:

• trade network
• commercialization
• tribal economy
• market development
• prestige feast
• Cordillera of northern Luzon
• Buguias
• Benguet