Politics, Property and Law in the Philippine Uplands

Thomas S. Abler is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo and the author of A Canadian Indian Bibliography, 1960-1970.

The peoples of the Northern Luzon highlands in the Philippines have been
subjects of anthropological investigations since the United States
replaced Spain as the archipelago’s colonial ruler nearly a century
ago. The Ibaloi (the southernmost of these groups) have received far
less attention than their northern neighbors, the Kalinga, the Bontok,
and the Ifugao. This monograph is based on the author’s fieldwork
among the Ibaloi of Kabayan in 1983-84.

A distinction between the Ibaloi and their neighbors is that Ibaloi
society is divided into elites (the baknang) and commoners (the abiteg).
This stratification is complicated by the fact that members of either
group can use land law (as it has developed from Spanish through
American to its current Philippine national form) or claim rights based
on perceived traditional practice. Wiber’s study focuses on this
“legal pluralism” at Kabayan.

This monograph will be read with great interest by specialists in legal
anthropology. The applicability of definitions and models of legal
anthropologists, particularly those of George Appell, figure prominently
in the discussions. Nonspecialists will find much of value in the book,
but may well find themselves curious about ethnographic details beyond
issues of law and land.