Poverty and Prosperity

This chapter introduces Siquijor Island and sketches the socio-economic terrain of the village. It then considers key material markers of development—such as infant formula and concrete block houses—and how these are deployed by individuals and families as they compete for status. While this aspect of the local concept of development emphasizes social mobility anchored in conspicuous consumption, it sits in tension with a contending local ideal of how one should live. Ang simpul nga kinabuhi , the simple life, involves contentment in an austere lifestyle and attention to personal relationships. These ideals respectively embrace and reject liberal norms of enterprise, individual accumulation, competition and the defining of identity in terms of consumer goods. The chapter shows that even within individuals, notions of development are not necessarily singular or fully coherent and these tensions are tied to ambivalent assumptions concerning what constitutes “proper” social and economic relations.

Conspicuous consumption · Consumption (sociology) · Contentment · Economic growth · Economic system · Economics · Ideal (ethics) · Neoclassical economics · Political economy · Political science · Poverty · Prosperity · Social science · Sociology · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

• Harmonizing sustainability and planning

  Open Access•Anthony Kwabena Sarfo, Benjamin Doe et al.•Environment Development and…•2025

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