Living off the Land

This chapter expands on the exploration of meanings of development at the personal and familial level, finding narratives of development woven into personal histories and aspirations. It recounts the life stories of four village residents, revealing that they understand the local livelihoods of fishing and farming as inextricably tied to poverty and formal education and labor migration as key to breaking from the land. These desires for upward mobility through education and migration are more than economic – they are part of a desire to become a cosmopolitan person, a person at home in the wider world and admired in the village. In this sense, local notions of development on Siquijor concern changes in cultural style, bodily form and knowledge.

Agriculture · Archaeology · Art · Economic growth · Economics · Fishing · Geography · Livelihood · Narrative · Political science · Poverty · Sociology · Style (visual arts) · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development