'MENSILSILPON ISNAN KA-IGOROTAN': A CULTURE-CENTERED STUDY OF MOBILE PHONE USE IN/BY THE INDIGENOUS APPLAI AND BONTOK IGOROT OF MOUNTAIN PROVINCE, PHILIPPINES

Abstract

The mobile phone?s development potential is heavily articulated owing to its domestication rate and extensive use. However grounded research in the remotest communities are still quite few. The dissertation offers an ethnographic account of this narrative.

The relationship of the mobile phone to development for the Igorot is predominantly social rather than economic. To the Igorots, gathering and sending news to family outside the ili (home village) has never been easier. The long hours of hike to get to the midwife, the closest to a doctor the community gets, to meeting her halfway makes the difference whether a pregnant woman and her baby survives or not.

The Igorot?s indigeneity is also tied to their mobile phone use. Language use is the predominant expression of this. Their social code `inayan? (taboo) as well as their traditional civic engagement in the form of galatis (volunteerism) or unpaid labor has also intersected with their use of the mobile phones. Community members share information and coordinate various community affairs, from major ones such as tearing down and constructing school buildings to more traditional tasks during weddings and deaths.