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On the Road to Tribal Extinction

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 finelytuned 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 FC

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 expansionand 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, thereis 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...