FARM AND FAMILIALISM IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: GENDER AND GENERATIONAL RELATIONS IN MALAYSIAN AND PHILIPPINE VILLAGES

Abstract

"Why are people staying in rural places?

Studies have predicted that globally, small family farms will slowly disappear but contrary to this, they remain to be present and operating in Southeast Asia albeit varying circumstances. I argue that the nexus of family history, practices, ideologies, and strategies produces a kind of Southeast Asian familialism which determine the persistence and transformation of the farms in the region.

I identify this familialism as knitted and kaleidoscopic. It is strongly knitted from different generational and wide kin relations, and it is kaleidoscopic because it brings in different family members, from different conjugal units to cohort of siblings altogether. The characterization is based on three specific conditions. First is being a multi-generation family, second is the presence of not just the grandparents, but also of extended kin in the said unit, and third is the bilateral kinship relations between husbands and wives."