Finding Your Island: To Return or Not to Return
Based upon multiple field visits to the same site in northwest Mindanao in the southern Philippines, the issue addressed here is how ethnographic data may differ, pro and con, as the researcher ages and changes over time. Issues of validity, reliability and even potential creativity of insights are touched upon as variables in long-term research to the same locale.
Takers Keepers, Losers Weepers: Theft as Customary Play in the Southern Philippines
This article presents ethnographic findings from the northwest coastal region of Mindanao, the largest island in the Southern Philippines. I argue that street-level theft (pickpocketing, land squatting, and kidnapping) can be seen as emerging, at least in part, from customary norms based in what Alan Dundes might term folk ideas. Time-honored behavior patterns conveyed by word of mouth include getting something for nothing (pa-bukongay), being street smart (pa-abtikay), and being first (pa-unahay). These locally resonant ideas influence the kinds of behaviors that are tolerated in children and adults, and they should be considered as important independent variables when attempting to understand definitions of and motivations for theft in this region.
Violence and demoralization in the new world disorder
Etude des consequences de la violence dans les Etats non seulement du point de vue de l'individu mais aussi du point de vue de l'Etat lui-meme. L'absence de controle de cette violence supprime toute morale. L'opposition Etat-Individu n'est plus de mise