Fluent Essays

INSTRUCTIONSPrécis submission should be at least 1/2 page, double spaced (maximum of 1 full page). A précis is a text summary that illustrates the key points of the original text of the author, its tone, and its overall effect on the reader (was it informative, useful? Did it provide a good discussion about the theme/topic?). Not only summerize the articles but include your discussion, what you think about both articles. The shorter the summary of the readings, the better. Your writing space should be for discussion.How does the content connect to broader course themes? Current themes or social issues? Try thinking on a deeper level -- are there things the author should have included but didnt?Precis will be based on the two articles, Acabado 2017 and Acabado 2018 (Ive attached the two articles bellow).How you write your essay is up to you; you may structure it in any number of ways, so long as you identify key themes, synthesize ideas, and compare and contrast.The following points may help you write essays for this course.1. Consider beginning your essay with 1 introductory paragraph that summarize the themes of the reading (Acabado 2017 , identify key conflicts and disagreements, and outline the structure of your essay. It’s much easier to read than assignments that first summarize the readings and then discuss them on the last page.2. Focus on the content and argumentation of the assigned readings rather than on your personal reactions to them. These essays are designed to help you synthesize the readings and understand the week’s topics more deeply. That said, you are welcome to add your opinions to the essay, along with the rationale that underlies your opinions.3. Remember the rules of paragraph construction. Begin with a topical sentence that lets the reader know what the content of the paragraph will refer to. Short and snappy topical sentences catch the reader’s eye and provide a concise way of summarizing what is to come afterward.4. When reading your sources indicate in your notes what is a direct quote from what is a paraphrase of the material. Write down the entire reference to the work you are referencing including the page number. Direct quotes must be so indicated.5. Consider concluding your essay with a discussion of the themes in the articles, key points of tensions, ideas you have for resolution of these tensions, or new directions your own ideas are taking as a result of reading these articles.6. Include a References Cited section. All discussions of a person’s ideas or direct quotes from their work should include an in-text reference plus the page number (e.g., Relethford 1994:254). At the end of the paper you should have a References Cited section with the full reference to the work, including the author, date, title, publisher, and publisher’s location. See bellow attached citation guide. zones_of_refuge_final.pdf pericolonialism_offprint_2017.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 52 (2018) 180–195 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa Zones of refuge: Resisting conquest in the northern Philippine highlands through environmental practice T Stephen Acabado Department of Anthropology, UCLA, United States A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T Keywords: Resistance Habitus Agency Environmental practice Wet-rice Spanish colonialism Ifugao, Philippines Environmental practice in Ifugao, Philippines is considered to have anchored the successful resistance against Spanish conquest in the highlands of the Philippine Cordillera. The social practice associated with wet-rice production in the region is argued to promote community solidarity and cohesion, past and present. By looking at the wet-rice cultivation and its associated rituals, this paper contends that habitus played a major role in the perpetuation and preservation of Ifugao culture during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines. Recent dating of the Ifugao rice terraces suggests that the agricultural marvels were constructed as late as ca. 400 years ago. Previously thought to be at least 2000 years old, the recent findings of the Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP) show that landscape modification for terraced wet-rice cultivation started at ca. 1650 CE. The archaeological record implies that economic intensification and political consolidation occurred in Ifugao soon after the appearance of the Spanish empire in the northern Philippines (ca. 1575 CE). The foremost indication of this shift was the adoption of wet-rice agriculture in the highlands, zones that served as refuge for local populations. I argue that the subsistence shift was precipitated by political pressures and was then followed by political and economic consolidation. The imperial resistance was expressed through wet-rice agriculture; it also facilitated political integration. Using paleoethnobotanical, faunal, and artifactual datasets, this paper documents the process that allowed the Ifugao to resist conquest. 1. Introduction The archaeological dating of the Ifugao Rice Terraces, northern Philippines, previously assumed to be at least 2000 years old, strongly suggests that the agricultural marvels were constructed soon after contact with the Spanish at ca. 1650 CE. The lateness of the shift to wetrice cultivation indicates that populations from the lowland valleys moved into the interior of the mountain range to avoid Spanish cooptation. The movement would have been a conscious effort to resist conquest, which initiated other cultural processes that allowed the Ifugao to resist Spanish colonialism. As such, this paper links the late inception of wet-rice cultivation (and rice terracing) in the region as a response of populations coalescing in the mountain interiors to avoid direct Spanish control in the lowlands. Utilizing proxy indicators of identity maintenance, rituals for social solidarity, and crystallization of elite control of valued resources, this article forefronts indigenous strategies meant to withstand attempts by the Spanish to conquer them. As exemplified above, resistance to conquest and colonialism is expressed in various forms, but generally, the more overt forms, like armed struggle, are the narratives that make it to history books. In this work, I forefront an example where the fight against subjugation E-mail address: acabado@ucla.edu. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2018.05.005 Received 8 January 2018; Received in revised form 11 May 2018 Available online 05 June 2018 0278-4165/ © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. transpired as a consequence of the structuring mechanism of a unique environmental practice that allowed for the expression of cultural perpetuation and conservation in the face of a more powerful entity. Focusing on the Ifugao of the northern Philippines (Fig. 1), I provide a case study where the successful resistance to Iberian colonialism was played out through activities that solidified ethnic identity and catalyzed the consolidation of political and economic resources. The Ifugao inhabit the north central Cordillera in Luzon, Philippines. The term Ifugao also refers to the province. Studies on Iberian colonialism in the region primarily focused on archival documents, which expectedly had the more conspicuous lowland ethnolinguistic groups in the colonies as focal points (e.g. BarrettoTesoro and Hernandez, 2017; Blair and Robertson, 1903; Bjork, 1998; Skowronek, 1997, 1998). Discussions on resistance and identity have also been centered on lowland rebellions and the ability of Muslim groups to withstand Spanish attempts at conquest; other successful resistance movements, such as that of the Cordillerans, were relegated to footnotes, mostly attributing the failure of the Spanish conquest in the highland regions to marginal environments and difficult terrain, similar to Scott’s (2009) concepts of “escape agriculture” (p. 23) and “friction of terrain and friction of distance” (pp. 40–43). This work, thus, focuses Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 52 (2018) 180–195 S. Acabado Fig. 1. The Northern Philippines. Cordillera and Cagayan Valley Provinces are labeled. Inset: Banaue terraces. from wet-taro to wet-rice ushered in the needed political consolidation that allowed them to successfully fend off multiple attempts by the Spanish to place them under colonial control. They also established their settlements on areas with easily defended passes and narrow canyons. These shifts, including wet-rice cultivation, created a new Ifugao identity that united the taro and wet-rice producers. The highland location of the Ifugao and the rugged terrain were not a hindrance for conquest, as there were other Philippine groups whose settlements were comparable to those of Ifugao who were subjugated (i.e. the Lumads, various indigenous groups in Mindanao [Paredes, 2013]). I further argue that processes observed in Ifugao question the dominant narrative that describes the highlands as refuge against a more powerful entity. Elsewhere, I suggested that this process of hinterland consolidation could be investigated through pericolonial archaeology (Acabado, 2017: 3), an investigation of groups who were not directly colonized by a foreign force, but shows parallel culture change with groups who were directly colonized. This landscape change is attributed to a subsistence shift that was fueled by the intensifying ritual feasting that aimed to promote cohesion in the increasing Ifugao population. These social practices fit the concept that Bourdieu (1977, 1990) calls habitus. The concept is premised on the contention that people will replicate and intensify aspects of their culture to perpetuate social solidarity. Habitus is composed of active dispositions and inclinations that guide individuals to understand their world and respond to stimuli provided by their social environment (Bourdieu, 1990: 53). It is projected into the organization of the real world through practices, and it is absorbed by actors acting in the world that is organized that way, thus becoming a set of mental dispositions of social actors. Among the Ifugao, these dispositions are manifested materially in the landscape and their terraces. The repetitiveness of rice rituals as well as terrace construction, maintenance, and the agricultural practice itself, transforms the abstract structure into a concrete symbol. The connection of practice and habitus is acted out in the landscape; thus, rice production in the terraces and its associated rituals became the structuring mechanism for Ifugao solidarity. As a structuring mechanism, people act unconsciously to satisfy the norms. However, these unconscious acts came to play as active and conscious decisions in their resistance to Spanish domination, as an expression of affirming group identity. This paper, thus, looks at structure on non-Muslim Philippines that the Spanish were never able to change. In this paper, I contend that the Ifugao environmental practice during the initial periods of Spanish conquest of northern Luzon counters the arguments that people moved to marginal places that were not valued by the colonizers and shifted to less productive agricultural practices to avoid colonial attention. In contrast to upland agriculture in other areas of Southeast Asia where highland groups tend to practice swiddening, the Ifugao shifted to wet-rice cultivation soon after contact with the Spanish even though wet-rice was valued and taxed by the colonial administration. Keesing (1962) was the first to propose that the arrival of the Spanish in northern Luzon precipitated migration to the Cordillera highlands and encouraged the contruction and expansion of rice terrace systems in the region. This assertion is supported by early population estimates in lowland Northeastern Luzon, particularly, Fray Juan Campo’s list of 100 villages in Dupax Nueva Vizcaya in 1739 CE. When Fray Francisco Antolin surveyed the region in 1789 CE, only 40 villages remained (Antolin, 1789). Furthermore, the original Monforte expedition of 1660 CE listed 50 villages located higher on the Cordillera that still exist in the twentieth century (Scott, 1974: 175). Lambrecht’s (1967) lexical analysis of the Ifugao romantic tales, the Hudhud, also suggests that the ecological setting of the stories is in a lowland region that has considerable flat areas, which the highlands lack. Recent archaeological findings in the region support Keesing’s observation that the emergence of wet-rice cultivation in the region coincided with the the arrival of the Spanish in the northern Philippines (Acabado, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2017). This subsistence shift was accompanied by dramatic increases in ritual fauna (Lapeña and Acabado, 2017) and extra-local prestige goods (Yakal, 2017). These changes appear to have been a direct response of the Ifugao to the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in the northern Philippines in the late 1500s. I hypothesize that the lowland groups who moved up to the mountains were ethnically Ifugao who joined Ifugao small-scale settlements that were already living in the interior of the Cordillera. The latter were taro producers, but due to the influx of Ifugao lowlanders, who presumably brought with them the technology to cultivate wetrice, there was both demographic and social pressure to shift to wet-rice production. I argue that the ability of the Ifugao to shift their subsistence base 181 Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 52 (2018) 180–195 S. Acabado (habitus) (Bourdieu, 1977) and agency (Giddens, 1984) to explain how the subsistence shift became a fulcrum to resistance and how the terraced rice fields became the expressions of the Ifugao habitus. The concept of habitus is utilized in this case study to argue for cultural persistence and survival of the Ifugao amidst the political and economic pressures exerted by the Spanish because the fundamental underpinning of the concept is the goal of identity maintenance. In addition, practice theory complements habitus as it provides a reflection of why people do what they do (Ortner, 1984). In this case, the shift to wet-rice cultivation and the repetitive aspect of agricultural activities and its associated social practice reproduce Ifugao habitus and agency. Rice and rice production is replete with ritual feasting that facilitates the reinforcement of Ifugao social organization (Acabado, 2013; Conklin, 1980). The repetitiveness of these activities solidifies Ifugao cohesiveness and provides a guide to how individuals react to challenges, particularly, power shifts. I maintain that continuity of the Ifugao rice terraces and the structure that allowed the system to flourish were founded on the Ifugao’s ability to situate themselves into differential power relationships. Our ethnographic work in the last five years (Acabado and Martin, 2015, 2016) supports the contention that people make sensible choices, particularly on the maintenance of Ifugao identity centered on rice; even with the pressures of the market economy, contemporary customary rice production in Ifugao largely remains an activity driven by prestige rather than by market forces. The successful resistance of the Ifugao and other highland groups against the Spanish is the product of a long-term endemic process that started as early as 1350 CE. Macrobotanical and microbotanical data from the Old Kiyyangan Village suggest extensive deforestation and ecological change evident of taro cultivation (Peterson and Acabado, 2015). This is in contrast with lowland records wherein widespread agriculture was only employed under Spanish rule (Blair and Robertson, 1903). The highlanders’ shift to wet-rice cultivation, on the other hand, occurred soon after contact with the Spanish at ca. 1650 CE. This timing provides the backdrop for cultural perpetuation and preservation in the face of a colonial power. Eckert, 2008; Skibo and Schiffer, 2008; Yaeger, 2000). The basic premise is that practical knowledge is embodied in daily practice and that material culture, particularly ceramics, expresses these practices. In this paper, I operationalize habitus in a non-ceramic case study. However, as mentioned above, habitus is abstract and forms the unconscious social practices of cultures. Practice theory links the concept of habitus into an active and materially-supported approach in archaeological investigations since the former emphasizes how individuals react to challenges, particularly, power shifts. As such, practice theory gives primacy to individualism but in relation to the system. As Ortner explains it, practice theory helps to understand anything people do (1984: 149). This paper approaches the issue at hand that social agents do behave with explicit intentions and devises strategies to achieve those intents. However, these acts can be constrained by the doxa. To perpetuate and preserve culture in the face of colonialism, people act in ways that are consistent with maintaining their cultural identity. There are a variety of options available to colonized populations along a continuum of behaviors ranging from accommodation at one extreme to resistance at the other. As such, they either overtly resist conquest through armed confrontation or accede to the might of the conquering polity but covertly maintain their cultural identity through the continuation of foodways, burial practices, trading and exchange relationships, etc. Both approaches provide an avenue for cultures to maintain a certain degree of cultural survival in colonial contexts. In Ifugao society, the cultural perpetuation and preservation have been anchored on the importance placed on rice cultivation and its associated rituals. As argued in this paper, rice cultivation and its rituals are habitus and manifested in the terraced rice fields. Though rice cultivation is a mundane and daily activity, it becomes a massive and politically-charged ritual during prestige feasts. As the succeeding sections will show, the Ifugao rice fields encompass the spiritual, economic, and political realms. As a habitus, the seemingly mundane activities associated with rice cultivation reproduce the structures that organize Ifugao society, which allowed them to resist subjugation. 2. Habitus, Practice, and agency in archaeology 2.1. Colonial resistance in archaeology Archaeological investigations in the last three decades have highlighted the role of practice theory (Giddens, 1984; Ortner, 1984) in bridging the processual and post-processual divide in archaeology. This paradigm has actively utilized the perspectives of agency theory and habitus. Pauketat (2001) calls this shift historical processualism in his review of practice theory in archaeology. In addition, a number of archaeologists (e.g. Atalay and Hastorf, 2006; Dietler and Herbich, 1998; Dornan, 2002; Hegmon, 1998; Erickson, 2001; Joyce and Lopiraro, 2005; Knapp and Ashmore, 1999; Knapp and van Dommelen, 2008) have also provided a synthesis and application of habitus and agency in archaeology. I do not intend to rehash their work; rather, I provide a brief overview of habitus and agency as utilized by archaeologists and how they relate to resistance. The focal point of Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of habitus is the continuous enactment and representation of traditions, that either reinforce traditions or alter them. A primary concern for archaeologists is the understanding of causation and motivation for the cultural changes observed in the archaeological record. Pauketat (2001: 79–80) suggests that understanding such processes requires separating strategy from intentionality. Doing so takes away teleological explanations about human behavior (Pauketat, 2001:80). It also recognizes that human dispositions are founded on what Bourdieu (1977) calls doxa, commonsensical and/or unconscious forms of knowledge that affect how individuals view their respective roles in the community. A number of archaeological studies have focused on this aspect of human behavior where cultural identity is expressed in the production and consumption of material culture (e.g. Dietler and Herbich, 1998; Research on struggles against hegemonic entities demonstrates that such resistance occurs in situations of power inequality (e.g. Borck and Simpson, 2017; Fowles, 2010; McGuire and Paynter, 1991; Sassaman, 2001). The archaeological study of colonial resistance, on the other hand, took hold when archaeologists began to distinguish the symbolic nature of ostensibly utilitarian artifacts (Ferguson, 1991; Orser, 1991). These artifacts are argued to promote group cohesion and maintenance and/or reproduction of ethnic identity (Loren, 2000; van Dommelen, 1997: 309), as seen from ethnographic studies of resistance. Scott (1985, 1990, 2009), in his studies in Southeast Asia, has articulated the various forms of resistance, which are mostly invisible in the archaeological record, especially covert types of resistance. However, he provided the opportunity for archaeologists to seek indicators of resistance in the archaeological record. For instance, Orser (1994: 39; Orser and Funari, 2001) argued that slave-made pottery and tiny metal fist amulets could have contained muted messages of everyday resistance that are not readily interpretable as signs of resistance. Similarly, Ruppel et al. (2003) looked at hidden ritual spaces built beneath house floors by African slaves. Spielmann et al. (2006: 622) have also contended that the dramatic changes in the decoration of two ceramic wares produced by potters in the Salinas Region of New Mexico were expressions of resistance to Spanish missionary efforts to eliminate Pueblo religious practices. In Indonesia, Lape (2001) has documented how Banda peoples resisted Dutch policies through their food habits, although accounts describe that the Bandanese collaborated with the Dutch colonizers. His work emphasizes the complex nature of colonization process, which is sometimes overlooked by historians, particularly the ability of 182 Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 52 (2018) 180–195 S. Acabado demographic attribute and social organization required to militarily resist Spanish attacks. As an overt case of resistance, I view the agricultural practice of the Ifugao as the major contributing factor to the failure of the Spanish to subdue the Ifugao. indigenous peoples to maintain religious identity, continue long-term trading partnerships, and sustain local foodways (Lape, 2000a). Lape (2000b, 2001) argues that this resistance to hegemonic powers was at play during Islamization and then replayed during the Dutch conquest. In Ifugao, the agricultural practice during the colonial period produced social practices that reinforced community solidarity and a ... Purchase answer to see full attachment