Mountains of Blame: Climate and Culpability in the Philippine Uplands (Culture, Place, and Nature)

Review\n"[A]n important study that contributes to the recentring of climate-change narratives, from those of international policymakers, post-colonial states and lowland populations to those of upland groups most vulnerable to human-induced climate change that is not of their own making."―South East Asia Research\n"Brings into question commonly held beliefs about indigenous people's roles in and vulnerabilities to climate change."―Cynthia Fowler, Wofford College\n"A nuanced account of local understandings of climate change, grounded in history, culture, place, and the international climate-change context. This book is an important contribution to ethnography of Palawan and the Philippines more broadly."―Hannah Bulloch, University of Otago\nSwidden agriculture has long been considered the primary cause of deforestation throughout Southeast Asia, and the Philippine government has used this belief to exclude the indigenous people of Palawan Island from their ancestral lands and to force them to abandon traditional modes of land use. After adopting ostensibly modern and ecologically sustainable livelihoods, the Pala'wan people have experienced drought and uncertain weather patterns, which they have blamed on their own failure to observe traditional social norms that are believed to regulate climate―norms that, like swidden agriculture, have been outlawed by the state.\nIn this ethnographic case study, Will Smith asks how those who have contributed least to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation have come to position themselves as culpable for the devastating impacts of climate change, examining their statements about changing weather, processes of dispossession, and experiences of climate-driven hunger. By engaging both forest policy and local realities, he suggests that reckoning with these complexities requires reevaluating and questioning key wisdoms in global climate-change policy: What is indigenous knowledge, and who should it serve? Who is to blame for the vulnerability of the rural poor? What, and who, belongs in tropical forests?\nBook Description\nExplores the unsettling phenomenon of indigenous self-blame for climate change