Local resource management strategies: A case example from Upland Laguna

In most countries of the Third World, rural people have an enormous body of agricultural knowledge. Ironically, however, it has remained an underutilized national resource. Such situations came about largely because the production of knowledge has been historically dominated by a form generally called modern and scientific. This form has also a sense of being western knowledge (Banpasirichote 1986), notwithstanding the native scholars who are, owing to colonial legacy, schooled in the western tradition. An anthropologist calls it as knowledge production within the profession (Crick 1982:31). As a result, rural development has traditionally been guided by a certain set of values different from the Third World context.

This case study originates from the concern that much can be learned from indigenous knowledge systems. Chambers (1983) argues that rural development can be better advanced through reverses of learning among professionals and the encouragement of joint use of knowledge derived from local peoples and professional outsiders. He further stresses that understanding the descriptive and conceptual terms of rural people can "provide scientific points of departure for scientific investigation which may be more practical and useful than the externally determined categories of outsider's knowledge" (ibid:94). This case demonstrates that people's land and resource classification has its own dynamics which is inextricably linked with their sociocultural life and livelihood. It further shows that agricultural production is both an ecological and economic adaptation that utilizes the diversity of micro-environment combined with judicious risk-taking as commercial agriculture penetrated the community. (author)