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On the Road to Tribal Extinction: Depopulation, Deculturation, and Adaptive Well-Being Among the Batak of the Philippines

University of California Press

One of the most pressing global social issues of the late twentieth century is the rapid disappearance of many of the world's remaining tribal populations. This disappearance, which entails an irreversible loss of cultural institutions and, in many cases, actual physical extinction, raises scientific and humanistic questions of the most urgent sort. On the one hand, there are clear scientific imperatives—to record for posterity as much as possible about vanishing and distinctive lifeways and to explain, in evolutionary terms, why these lifeways could be so summarily extinguished after surviving for generations. On the other hand, there is the more humanistic concern to do something about “detribalization”—a concern that reflects not only a moral imperative but a growing awareness of the practical contribution that the cultural knowledge of tribal societies might someday make to our survival. But what can be done, or even what should be done, is often unclear.

This careful, detailed analysis of the detribalization of the Batak, a Negrito group in the Philippines, provides important insights into these questions. Traditionally nomadic forestfood collectors, the Batak inhabit the interior of Palawan, where their hunting-gathering economy was once finely

tuned to their tropical environment and relatively undisturbed by outside influences. But, as a result of contact with lowland Philippine society, the Batak long ago began to “settle down”: while continuing to hunt and gather, they also plant crops and trade with and work for their neighbors. As the consequences of these changes have reverberated through the fabric of Batak society and culture, they have paid dearly; they are declining in number, and many elements of their traditional culture have been lost. Indeed, some local groups have already disappeared, and it seems to be unlikely that many others will survive long into the next century.

It is well documented, of course, that tribal people 1 in all parts of the world have for centuries suffered from the adverse effects of the expansion of “civilization” into their traditional territories. Tribal suffering, as the result of European colonial expansion and, later, incorporation into modern nation-states, has ranged from habitat despoliation to disease and malnutrition to the decline of traditional cultural practices to outright tribal extinction. The social science literature on these processes is voluminous and includes both case studies (e.g., Cipriani 1966; Turnbull 1972; Wagley 1977; von Fürer-Haimendorf 1982) and more general assessments (e.g., Davis 1977; Bodley 1982; Goodland 1982).

The title of John Bodley's book, Victims of Progress, effectively captures the implicit model underlying much of this work. On this view, it is held that prior to contact, tribal societies enjoy a state of harmonious equilibrium with their environment and, if not outright primitive affluence, relative contentment. Such societies are contrasted with tribal societies, or the remains of them, after exposure to industrial civilization and “modernization,” when their traditional “adaptations” have been disrupted or even destroyed by outside forces that the tribal people themselves cannot control. Indeed, except as sufferers or innocent victims, these people scarcely participate in the processes in question. The victims-of-progress model has helped to draw needed attention to the often tragic human costs of colonial expansion

and development. But it must be refined if studies of detribalization are to advance our understanding of the more general processes of cultural adaptation, change, and evolution or to serve as effective guides to policymaking. The model is deficient in two respects: it incorrectly stereotypes the nature of tribal societies and cultures, and, more fundamentally, it fails to come to terms with the complex nature of human adaptation.

Incorrect stereotypes of tribal societies are scarcely a recent phenomenon in anthropology; those associated with the victims-of-progress model reflect its characteristic preoccupation with the alleged contrast between tribal societies and modern industrial societies. Thus, it is often said that tribal cultures are antimaterialistic (e.g., Bodley 1982:10–11). This is simply not true about all tribal societies. The traditional cultures of the Tolai (Epstein 1968; Salisbury 1970) and the Iban (Sutlive 1978), for example, are said to have fostered such personal traits as individualism and achievement orientation. Such traits, predictably, powerfully influenced the respective responses of these peoples to the opportunities for participation in wider socioeconomic systems. Similarly, in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, a traditional precontact emphasis on wealth accumulation, status achievement, and competition helped spur postcontact cash cropping (Finney 1973). Those who stereotype precontact and postcontact tribal societies should take heed of Baker's observation that “the present-day integration of traditional populations into the modern urban industrial societies is not producing a uniform set of stresses or responses in the various populations” (1984:11).

The incorrect stereotypes of tribal society and culture visible in some approaches to tribal social change reflect, in part, broader shortcomings in anthropological theory. Thus, not only observers of tribal social change but ecologically oriented anthropologists in general have long characterized uncontacted aboriginal societies as being in some sort of natural equilibrium (Love 1983:4). According to Love, there

is in such models “very little sense of contradiction and conflict in human societies, especially small-scale ones, either internally or with neighbors. Aboriginals, lying on the other side of the Rousseauian great divide, apparently have no serious internal divisions and seem to make few ecological mistakes until pressed upon by outside forces, despite growing evidence to the contrary” (ibid.).

Although the equilibrium assumption has been abundantly criticized, it is still common among anthropologists, particularly when contrasts with the modern world are at stake. But if we are to make a more pragmatic assessment of the impact of change on tribal well-being, it is essential to recognize that at least some tribal societies had serious ecological and social problems of their own prior to contact. Van Arkadie, in critically examining the notion that indigenous peoples made effective and ecologically conservative adjustments to their environments, puts it thus:

If there was in some sense a balance, this was in part because the human condition was often nasty and short (although not, we must add, brutish). Among the reasons why such communities survived over the long term and did not destroy their environments were high death rates, which kept the population in check, and extreme austerity of consumption for extended periods. Before we succumb to sentimental visions of paradise lost, it is worth noting that ecological balance may be maintained in some circumstances by the tight limits on both population size and choices open to humans—an equilibrium at a low level of human welfare…. Moreover, it is not clear from the evidence available, how far an ecological balance was in fact maintained. (1978:163–164)

The victims-of-progress approach to tribal social change is also naive theoretically with respect to the nature of human adaptation: it fails to address a growing consensus that such adaptation must be understood in terms of the reproductive and other strivings of individuals. Indeed, it is often unclear

who or what, precisely, is being “victimized” by progress. Many anthropological analyses of tribal sufferings are vague and overgeneralized, conflating questions of the welfare and survival of societies and cultures with questions of the welfare and survival of people. When tribal peoples are said to be in difficulty, the difficulties may be inadequately documented. The “evidence” of distress may consist of informants' invidious comparisons of life in the present with life in an idealized past, or it may consist only of the anthropologist's own ethnocentric assumption that a person ought to be distressed by those particular circumstances. Many anthropological analyses of the impact of development on tribal societies have the appearance of reasonableness, which, on closer scrutiny, is revealed to derive from functionalist assumptions rather than from hard evidence. Even when there is adequate documentation of particular and serious physiological, psychological, or social impairments, the analyses may fail to specify how particular exogenous or endogenous changes brought about the impairments.

Because this model does not deal adequately with human adaptation, it obfuscates the fact that change and adjustment—including demographic fluctuation and culture change and loss—are normal processes in human societies. Knowing where the “best interests” of tribal peoples lie—in change or in stability—is an extremely difficult problem for which the victims-of-progress model provides limited guidance. As humanistically inclined outside observers, we may lament any culture change or loss in tribal societies, but we must recognize that not all such change or loss merits our intervention.

Finally, treating contemporary tribal peoples as victims of the changes going on around them obscures their frequent complicity in the detribalization process. This is not to deny the numerous and well-documented cases of tribal destruction following establishment on tribal lands of homesteads, logging or mining operations, corporate agricultural plantations, or large water projects. Where such intrusions have

brought land expropriation, habitat destruction, epidemic disease, or even genocide, tribal peoples literally are victims (for such a perspective on the difficulties of tribal Philippine peoples, see McDonagh 1983). But many contemporary cases of detribalization do not involve such dramatic or readily identified external factors. Rather, less visible forces associated with the political economics of modern nationstates—market incentives, cultural pressures, new religious ideologies—permeate the fabric and ethos of tribal societies and motivate their members to think and behave in new ways. These new ways of thinking and acting are often dysfunctional with respect to individual and tribal welfare; that is, by their own changing behaviors, values, and preferences, tribal peoples bring many of their difficulties on themselves.

It should be noted that this assertion does not establish blame but, again, points out a crucial shortcoming in the victims-of-progress model: it diverts attention from the very processes of individual choice and change that must be understood if we are genuinely to assist tribal peoples in distress. Many anthropologists would argue, of course, that tribal peoples are entitled to embrace change, if they want to, on their own terms. But the model provides little room for them to make free choices with respect to change and even less guidance for determining whether these choices are “well informed.” To be sure, difficult questions are involved. How do we distinguish voluntary from coerced choices? At what point will we conclude that tribal peoples must bear the consequences of their behavior, even if those consequences include tribal disappearance? But if these are difficult questions, they are best met head on, unconstrained by a paternalistic, even ethnocentric model that celebrates tribal societies as essentially good and sees the rest of the world as essentially evil.

Central to my analysis and to the theoretical contribution I hope to make is a focus on the wellsprings of individual behavior. The failure to focus clearly on individuals in situ-

ations of change—on their wants and needs, on the demands placed on them—in part explains, I believe, why a large anthropological literature on the impact of modernization on tribal societies, however valuable it is for documentary purposes, has contributed relatively little toward the construction of a more adequate theory of human adaptation and culture change. Too many anthropologists pay lip service to anthropological truisms about the centrality of individual decisions in cultural evolution but in fact treat individuals as helpless (and hapless) bystanders in the change process. Hence, my concern here with the circumstances, abilities, and motivations that influence the individual's decision making in times of rapid culture change—with details of the what, how, and why of sociocultural function and malfunction.

But how, in practice, are “function” and “malfunction” in human societies to be distinguished? These notions are closely linked to a central anthropological concept, adaptation. Although definitions of this term are readily had, one of the thorniest conceptual and methodological problems facing anthropologists interested in cultural persistence and change is the construction of indexes that satisfactorily measure human adaptive function and malfunction, or, as I will have it, adaptive “success” and “failure.” Following evolutionary biology, anthropologists of an ecological bent have interpreted human adaptability as referring to “ecological success as measured by demographic, energetic, or nutritional criteria” (Moran 1979:9). Examples of such criteria familiar to anthropologists are a group's balance between natality and mortality and the relative energetic efficiency of its food-getting activities. These are only indexes, however; they are not a firm measure of “fitness,” which, on this view, is reproductive success, something that is difficult to ascertain directly (ibid.).

Many anthropologists (and others), of course, are uncomfortable with the use of such materialistic and biologically derived indexes as the energetic efficiency of food procurement to evaluate human adaptive success. But indexes that take into account the kinds of factors they would presumably

like to emphasize—for example, quality of life—are even more difficult to develop. Bodley's (1982:150) discussion of how one might assess the “standard of living” of a society is helpful in this regard. He does not introduce the concept of adaptation at this point, but his list of possible indexes for assessing societal standards of living loosely suggests some additional criteria for evaluating adaptive success. This list includes not only such previously mentioned factors as nutritional status and demographic structure but also health status, crime, family stability, and relationship with the resource base.

Such “quality-of-life” criteria have the important advantage of being potentially measurable in field research. In practice, however (and in the case at hand), it may be difficult or impossible to assemble adequate longitudinal data on change in such social attributes as “crime” or “family stability.” But these are precisely the kinds of data that are essential if we are to rest an allegation of societal malfunction or adaptive disorder on more than condemnation of the present and idealization of the past. (In what society today are crime rates and family instability not said to be increasing?) Later in this volume, I attempt to build an inferential argument that factors not unlike increasing crime and family discord are in fact part of the general deterioration of the Batak lifeway. But I do not want the burden of proof that the Batak are in serious adaptive difficulty to rest on such allegations.

With the intent of keeping my own criteria for determining the presence or absence of adaptive disorder as broadly based as possible, I was initially attracted to Jochim's (1981:19) definition of human adaptation as “the possession of a valid set of solutions to a variety of problems.” His approach, which owes much to Dobzhansky (1974), calls attention to the strategizing or decision-making aspects of human adaptation and to the fact that diverse goals, only one of which is reproductive success, underlie that decision making. I find both emphases congenial. But like many an-

thropological usages of adaptation, it is not clear in Jochim's definition how to distinguish, in practice, adaptation-related behavior from all behavior. Thus, while adaptive failure would presumably occur when a people's solutions for dealing with life's problems were no longer “valid,” it is not readily apparent how to assess validity or how to distinguish problem solving from living.

I return in the conclusion to an emphasis on adaptation as successful coping with life's problems. For purposes of developing my empirical argument for the Batak case, considerations such as the foregoing led me to settle on a recent, narrower definition of adaptation articulated by Baker:

An adaptation is simply any biological or cultural trait which aids the biological functioning of a population in a given environment. Thus, it includes such aspects as a population's health, ability to feed itself adequately, functional capability in its physical environment and reproductive performance. This definition encompasses the more precisely defined forms of adaptation used in genetics and the adaptability responses which are denoted by such terms as acclimatisation. However, it stops short of encompassing sociocultural adjustments which do not have demonstrable effects on human biological functions. (1984:2)

In my view, this definition has the advantage of implicitly specifying what will be taken as evidence of adaptive failure: presumably, it occurs when a population's biological and cultural traits are inadequate to support its “biological functioning,” that is, to maintain its health, its subsistence, and its reproductive performance. These are the criteria by which I assess how well the Batak population is functioning (chaps. 4 and 5). Baker, furthermore, specifically juxtaposes against the concept adaptation the important concept stress. According to him “stresses are defined as those natural or cultural environmental forces which potentially reduce the population's ability to function in a given situation” (ibid.:2). This concept (developed in chap. 6) provides the crucial causal link, in my

analysis, between biological malfunction (my proximate evidence of adaptive difficulty) and wider patterns of cultural disruption. The significance of such disruption is visible, in turn, in a final important attribute of Baker's relatively strict definition of adaptation: it specifies that certain particular cultural traits are involved with adaptation, namely, those that demonstrably affect biological functioning. This precision orients my analysis of how the disappearance of certain traditional cultural institutions and beliefs that once functioned to contain stress has undermined individual coping abilities and Batak adaptive well-being (chap. 7).

Despite my attempt to be precise, some may find my definition of adaptation—and thus my criteria for assessing adaptive well-being—too broad. Those of sociobiological inclination might want to argue that my approach diverts attention from the central issue of reproductive success. Durham (1979:47), for example, believes that successful human adaptation would be measured simply by the long-term representation of an individual's genes in a population. I have sought to make my approach consistent with evolutionary biology by using the concept of human adaptation in a way that rejects “adaptationism” (Gould and Lewontin 1979) and allows for imperfect adaptations and even for extinction (Greenwood 1984:66–69). However, in my view, which I believe is shared by many of my anthropologist colleagues, there is more at issue in human adaptation than reproductive striving.

Indeed, some might argue that my approach to human adaptation is too narrow. My criteria for assessing adaptive well-being, it could be said, take no account of such uniquely human attributes as highly developed cognition and emotion and thus do not allow for a response, for example, to the question of how tribal peoples themselves may feel, regardless of their physiological or demographic circumstances, about their changing lives. Certainly, the presence or absence of subjective or psychological distress is another possible index of societal ill-health or malfunction, one that has, in

fact, also been employed by anthropologists. Savishinsky's (1974) study of the Hare Indians focused on the manner in which contact-related experiences have exacerbated endogenous social and psychological stress loads, with a heightened incidence of mental illness or psychopathology (as defined by the people themselves) being indicative of severe adaptive difficulty (pp. 217–219). Similarly, Bruner (1976:242), examining the kinds of adaptations that the Toba Batak have worked out with the modern world, takes their apparent “lack of internal stress” (i.e., psychological stress) as prima facie evidence that they are “successfully adjusting.” The use of the absence of psychological distress as a criterion for adaptive success offers the advantage of being relatively nonpaternalistic. According to this, in effect, if people are satisfied with their new lives, who are we to question their well-being?

But this reasoning conflates broader issues of adjustment (admittedly important in its own right) with narrower issues of adaptation, which, after all, has to do with persistence over time. If methodological problems could be overcome, however, increasing psychological distress would in my view be a legitimate, even desirable addition to the more biologically oriented criteria I employ here to establish the presence of adaptive malfunction. Further, I see it standing in the same relationship to my variables as the criteria I have employed, that is, like nutritional and demographic difficulties, psychological difficulties (were they present) would likely have antecedents in ecological disruption, social stress, and cultural change. As it happens, I believe that the Batak suffer from a certain psychosocial malaise, but I did not attempt to systematically document this belief in the field. Later chapters will, however, provide some inferential evidence to support it.

Some may find the evidence of adaptive breakdown I do present to be equivocal. The Batak may seem to be disappearing, it could be argued, but it has seemed so for years. Similarly, some Batak may be ill or undernourished, but

others are healthy and robust. That is precisely the point. The “disappearance” of the Batak has been protracted. In any one year, therefore, the circumstances of the Batak do not look so bad; to some, they might appear to be surviving or even adapting. I should perhaps point out that there is a timelessness to many studies of tribal societies which obscures the trajectories of change that such societies travel (and thus the historical and political economic factors that underlie these trajectories; see Love 1983:4). In my view, the emphasis in this work on the history of the Batak (or one hundred years of their history) is one of its great strengths. In any case, I hope that anyone doubtful of the evidence presented in chapters 4 and 5 supporting my argument that the Batak are in serious adaptive difficulty will withhold skepticism about the imminence of Batak disappearance until after consideration of the entire analysis.

Chapter 2 concerns the Batak as they were around 1880, on the eve of greatly intensified contact with outside peoples and with wider socioeconomic systems. While the Batak may have long practiced agriculture to a small extent and been in contact with trading populations in the Sulu archipelago for centuries, in 1880 they were still quite isolated in their traditional territory and firmly committed to a hunting-gathering way of life. The closing decades of the nineteenth century initiated a period of sustained migrations to Palawan by land-seeking migrant farmers from throughout the Philippines. Migration of lowland Filipino farmers, which greatly increased after World War II and continues to the present, would ultimately precipitate irreversible changes in Batak adaptation. But when these migrations began, the Batak, although not untouched, were still relatively undisturbed.

My reconstruction of Batak life one hundred years ago is only that. It is based on the earliest historical accounts of the

Batak, on comparative data from other, more isolated Southeast Asian Negrito populations, and on the oldest Bataks' personal accounts of “life in the old days.” These accounts are stereotypical at best and of uncertain date, but with caution, they can reasonably be projected back to the turn of the century. If these sources seem an unsatisfactory basis for an ethnographic account of a vanished lifeway, my approach is far more satisfactory than the commonly practiced alternative—taking the surviving hunting-gathering component of a foraging people's present lifeway, blowing it up to full size, and projecting it back into a timeless past as allegedly exemplifying a once-universal hunting-gathering way of life in some part of the world.

My particular concern in chapter 2 is to describe Batak demography, subsistence economy, and settlement pattern at the turn of the century. Whether my account applies equally well (or with equal error) to the Batak economy and settlement pattern at some other time in the past is a moot point. It is not my intention to present my account as some sort of timeless, “aboriginal” baseline from which the Batak departed only after millennia of stasis and isolation. Indeed, a second concern in chapter 2 is to explore the forces of change that had already shaped and altered Batak adaptation prior to 1880.

This provides the backdrop for chapter 3, which is a detailed account of how the Batak live today. I begin by examining the striking changes in Batak settlement pattern after 1880, as lowland colonization of Palawan progressed and as they added new subsistence activities or changed their emphasis on others. This is followed by an examination of the annual subsistence round today, using an array of quantitative data on contemporary patterns of mobility between various residential locations—settlement houses, agricultural field houses, forest camps—to establish the rhythm of economic life. Finally, I consider separately and in detail the various components of contemporary subsistence economy: shifting cultivation, collection and sale of forest products,

and wage labor. For each activity, I examine the characteristic patterns of time utilization involved and the typical caloric, protein, or cash returns.

The Batak's present-day subsistence stance exemplifies a type widespread among surviving Southeast Asian hunting-gathering populations, and in that sense, my account in chapter 3 is intended as a contribution to the ethnographic literature on the subsistence economies of such peoples. In my analytical emphasis, however, I depart from what I see as a common, but facile, assumption that the present-day “subsistence multidimensionality” of people like the Batak is evidence of their flexibility or adaptability. This is true of the Batak in the trivial sense that they have changed their use of time and resources in the face of changing circumstances, but such a characterization would divert attention from the distortions in Batak time allocation and resource use which are engendered by the political and economic pressures of a wider social system. This reasoning leads me to reject, for example, the view that Batak failure to farm more effectively stems from some covert cultural agenda, such as an alleged Negrito distaste for sedentary living or agricultural labor routines. Rather, I argue, continuing insecurity about land tenure and the threat of incremental alienation by lowlanders of any Batak agricultural improvements better explain the current state of Batak agriculture.

More broadly, however flexible or ingenious present Batak subsistence adaptation may appear, it is not oriented toward meeting some timetable or resource use optimal for the Batak alone but toward meeting the pressures and requirements of lowland Philippine society. The Batak do what they do because it is what they are allowed to do. Their subsistence system may seem flexible as a result, but, in fact, it is inadequate to their own subsistence needs. And while the Batak still survive, they are on the brink of physical and cultural extinction.

The evidence supporting this argument is presented in

chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 is concerned with adaptive difficulties at the population level. Based on a series of population estimates made since 1900, my own complete censuses of the Batak population in 1972 and 1980, and an analysis of fertility and mortality patterns, I argue that the core Batak population experienced a sustained decline from about 600 individuals at the turn of the century to less than 300 individuals in 1980. During this period, mortality was high at all age levels, and fertility was strikingly low. Women averaged only about four live births each on completion of their reproductive careers, not because they spaced their births but because many ceased childbearing altogether by their late twenties or early thirties.

Compounding (and in part concealing) the decline in the number of ethnic Batak was a dramatic increase, after about 1960, in the proportion of Batak who married outsiders. Indeed, by 1980, it appeared there would be few additional marriages between ethnic Batak. “Out-group” marriage, itself largely a consequence of prior depopulation and cultural disruption, has helped to stabilize the remaining population. But it has also accelerated the disappearance of characteristic Batak physical and cultural attributes; those who do remain are of increasingly ambiguous ethnicity.

Chapter 5 deals with the adaptive difficulties of individuals. The Batak have escaped the kinds of massive depopulating epidemics that have ravaged tribal populations in other parts of the world. But over time, small, localized epidemics of measles and influenza and a variety of chronic respiratory and gastrointestinal infections have taken their toll. I argue, however, that chronic undernourishment, rather than any unique genetic or physiological susceptibility, primarily underlies Batak problems with infectious diseases. A series of anthropometric measurements made over the course of a year show that many Batak are only at 70 to 80 percent of weight-for-height standards and, furthermore, that they undergo a famine season weight loss on the order of 3

percent. My interpretation of these data concurs with the appraisals of doctors and other trained medical personnel who have seen the Batak.

Taken together, chapters 2 through 5 document one hundred years of change in Batak demography and subsistence economy and, I believe, convincingly demonstrate that the Batak are in severe adaptive difficulty. Crucial causal links with respect to the behavior of individuals remain undeveloped, however. While such “involuntary” factors as high infant mortality rate and poor maternal nutrition help limit family size, some Batak deliberately restrict their own fertility and—the exigencies of poverty aside—are dilatory in caring for their living children. Again, even poor people are not helpless in the face of infectious disease, and the Batak's failure to mobilize the kinds of health and social support systems that are present among other tribal peoples must be accounted for. Similarly, although resource depletion and competition with neighboring peoples have certainly made the food quest more difficult (if the apparent ethnocentrism may be allowed here), the Batak could do better with their available resources.

These matters are taken up in chapters 6 and 7, wherein I relate the demographic and physiological evidence of adaptive difficulty (presented in chaps. 4 and 5) to wider patterns of social stress and cultural disruption attending the political, economic, and ideological intrusion of lowland Philippine society into Batak society. Sociologists and psychologists have placed more explanatory emphasis on the concept of social stress, and I begin chapter 6 by reviewing briefly the significance of this concept in these sister disciplines. In particular, I examine how the origins, mediators, and manifestations of social stress have traditionally been conceived, suggesting some modifications in these conceptual domains which make them more useful for anthropological purposes. I then describe how increasing stress levels have affected many traditional Batak social roles and relationships: those within domestic families, those between settlement neigh-

bors, and those between the Batak and outsiders. I support my claim of growing social stress among the Batak with comparative observations of stress in other tribal groups undergoing similar changes.

Chapter 7 is concerned with how stress adversely affects the Batak. I show how culture change and culture loss attending the partial incorporation of the Batak into lowland Philippine society have undermined Batak ability to cope with the (growing) stresses of everyday life. Distinguishing between social networks and ego resources for coping with life's everyday stresses, I argue that many traditional cultural beliefs and practices functioned to sustain such resources. As these beliefs and practices have declined, stress-coping resources and individual well-being have deteriorated apace. Thus, the demise of shamanistic curing ceremonies during the 1960s and 1970s reduced Batak ability to mobilize vital supernatural and social support in times of sickness. Similarly, cultural disintegration and an associated erosion of ethnic identity have undermined an important ego resource, self-esteem. I cite comparative data relating disruption of psychological coping resources such as self-esteem to low fertility, impaired recovery from illness, inadequate care of the young and sick, and disinterest in work and suggest that similar relationships may obtain in the Batak case. Batak, meanwhile, emulate the life-styles of neighboring lowland Filipinos, but they so lack the wherewithal that the major outcome, I show, is further erosion of their own social identities and the creation of still other patterns of stress.

Chapters 6 and 7 thus detail the ultimate consequence, for one people's adaptive well-being, of rising stress loads and, at the same time, decreased stress-coping capacity, namely, a perilous decline in individual and collective ability and motivation to cope with the exigencies of survival. These chapters support and flesh out, in effect, the popular notion that indigenous peoples can be so overwhelmed by contact with (and incorporation into) the outside world that they lose the will to live. 2

Chapter 8 places my findings on a broader stage—anthropological concern with the circumstances promoting the survival of tribal populations as distinct cultural entities. Briefly examining a series of apparently successful cases of adaptation and survival of tribal peoples, I explore the role that ethnicity and culturally constituted patterns of motivation play in helping such peoples resist marginalization to wider social systems. This exploration leads me to the notion of a “healthy society,” one whose members possess sufficient resources to cope, individually and collectively, with the variety of threatening environmental situations posed by everyday life. A tribal people's resources for this endeavor may range from ancestral lands to curing ceremonies, but an underlying sense of ethnic identity everywhere imbues these resources with an overall coherence and thus helps to provide tribal peoples with a purpose in life. The familiar observation that contemporary tribal peoples somehow (like the Batak) lack motivation stems in part, I argue, from the vulnerability of tribal peoples' ethnic identities—and hence the vulnerability of their sense of purpose in life—to deculturating change.

Excerpted from On the Road to Tribal Extinction: Depopulation, Deculturation, and Adaptive Well-Being Among the Batak of the Philippinesby James F. Eder, Jr. Copyright © 1987 by James F. Eder, Jr.. Excerpted by permission.
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