To Inherit the Land: Descent and Decision in Northern Luzon

The people of the Philippine highland village of Sadanga employ a mixed subsistence system within which several types of land are cultivated in varying degrees of intensity. Similarly, their descent system is marked by a variety of descent rules ranging in exclusivity from the broadly bilateral to the narrowly focused paralineal. These two dimensions are, in principle, coordinate. The land least intensively cultivated & least valued is subject to a system of inheritance that employs the widest principles of descent. The land most intensively cultivated (the rice terraces) involves the option of limiting the field of heirs by exercising restricted descent principles. Changes in subsistence systems, eg, population increase & agricultural intensification, affect social organization. The complex of perceptions & decisions that comprise the subsistence strategy are useful indicators of how these processes are related. 1 Figure. Modified Author's Summary.