Analyzing the Social Formation of Buguias

The resulting social and economic structure of Buguias defies all conventional categories; however, all Cordilleran peoples have long been considered "tribal," based on their indigenous small-scale social organization, successful resistance to imperialism for several hundred years, sociocultural distinctiveness from the Philippine lowlanders, and retention of indigenous religion. This categorization is far from perfect; most Cordilleran groups have long been internally stratified, all were eventually brought under American political hegemony, and a large number have for some time been Christian.

The Benguet vegetable growers exhibit "peasant" characteristics as well, and several scholars refer to them as such (Russell 1983; Solang 1984; Wiber 1985). Powerful outside groups extract a large share of the gardeners' produce; labor-exchange practices coexist with wage work; and production is both for the market and for subsistence (see Wolf 1966; Shanin 1973; Scott 1976). The Benguet people have become subject to surplus extraction by both national elites and metropolitan states—a process that many scholars argue is sufficient to turn tribal peoples into peasants (Howlett 1973; Connell 1979; Howard 1980; Grossman 1984).

But the same vegetable growers have also been termed "petty commodity producers," a category related to, but not identical with, that of the peasantry (Russell 1989a; see Watts 1984:20). Unlike peasants sensu strictu , Benguet's rural (or "simple," or "petty") commodity producers cannot retreat to subsistence cultivation in the event of poor commodity prices. Thoroughly enmeshed in commercial relations, they have little to buffer them from the brutal backwash of commodity price collapses.

And finally, Buguias cultivators may even be called "capitalist farmers" inasmuch as they depend on wage labor (at least for portaging vegetables) and exhibit a (modified) capitalist economic logic. This latter attribute may be appreciated by substituting "the Buguias vegetable garden" for "the capitalist farm" in Wolf's (1966:2) classical definition of that economic form, yielding the accurate statement that "[the Buguias vegetable garden] is primarily a business enterprise, combining factors of production purchased in the market to obtain a profit by selling advantageously in a products market."

In short, Buguias vegetable growers can reasonably be classified as tribal cultivators, as peasants, as petty commodity producers, or as capitalist farmers. Each label points to important features of the community; none fully captures its present social and economic complexity. One must thus be careful in using and in interpreting such terms, for the mere act of labeling can create a fundamentally distorted picture.