Harold C. Conklin

The Study of Shifting Cultivation

SINCE THE NEOLITHIC, extensive areas of forest land have been farmed every year under conditions of shifting cultivation (which can be defined minimally as any continuing agricultural system in which impermanent clearings are cropped for shorter periods in years than they are fallowed). Today, the total area of such swidden farming has been estimated at 14 million square miles (36 million square kilometers), inhabited by 200 million people (FAO staff 1957: 9). In vast tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia, and the New World, shifting-field cultivation is coextensive with agriculture. In Southeast Asia, for example, Dobby estimates that it accounts for one third of the total land area used for agricultural purposes (1954: 349). And in some regions, it has been estimated that the practice of this form of agriculture is more common at present than it was a century ago (Leach 1959: 64). Despite the apparently widespread character of this type of land use, the associated critical limits and significant relations of time, space, technique, and local ecology have rarely been stated explicitly; the varying methods and consequences of shifting cultivation-for man, plants, and soils-are only beginning to be under-

Linguistic Play in Its Cultural Context

1. Methods of modifying the normal patterns of speech for purposes of entertainment or concealment are perhaps universal. Where such practices abound in both type and incidence, one may assume that considerable cultural importance is associated with the contexts in which they occur, and that the statuses of the most frequent users are also of particular significance. The following is a brief analysis of the linguistic and sociocultural aspects of such a situation recently noted in the Philippines1 among the Hanun6o. 2. The most common form of salutation in Hanun6o2 consists of a request for betel chew ingredients. One of many ways of expressing this greeting is an indirect statement like