Tessa Minter

Received sensitivity: adapting Ainsworth’s scale to capture sensitivity in a multiple-caregiver context

ABSTRACT A network of multiple caregivers contributing to the care of an infant is the norm in many non-Western cultural contexts. Current observational measures of caregiver sensitive responsiveness to infant signals focus on single caregivers, failing to capture the total experience of the infant when it comes to the sensitive responsiveness received from multiple sources. The current paper aims to introduce the construct of received sensitivity that captures the sensitivity that an infant experiences from multiple sources in cultural contexts where simultaneous multiple caregiving is common. The paper further presents an adaptation of Ainsworth’s Sensitivity versus Insensitivity observation scale to allow for the assessment of sensitivity as received by the infant regardless of who is providing the sensitive responses to its signals. The potential usefulness of the Received Sensitivity scale is illustrated by two case studies of infants from an Agta forager community in the Philippines where infants are routinely taken care of by multiple caregivers. The case studies show that the infants’ total experience of being responded to sensitively cannot be simply derived from the sum of individual caregiver sensitivity scores, demonstrating the potential added value of the new Received Sensitivity observation measure.

Limits to Indigenous Participation: The Agta and the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park, the Philippines

Increased attention for indigenous rights in relation to nature conservation has in the Philippines resulted in legislation formalizing indigenous peoples’ participation in protected area management. We discuss the implementation of this legislation, based on the case of the Agta inhabiting the Northern Sierra Madre Natural Park. The Agta are hunter-gatherers who settle along the coasts and rivers of northeast Luzon. Being indigenous to the park, they hold one third of the seats in its management board. However, our content analysis of this management board’s meetings, combined with qualitative observations of the Agta’s position in the park, show that their participation in its management is hampered by socio-cultural, practical, financial and political barriers. We demonstrate that formalizing indigenous participation in protected area management is not enough to break through existing power structures that inhibit marginalized stakeholders to defense of their interests in natural resources against those of more powerful actors.

Whose Consent? Hunter-Gatherers and Extractive Industries in the Northeastern Philippines

There is increasing international recognition of indigenous peoples’ right to influence development activities in their territories. Free, Prior and Informed Consent is the strongest available instrument to assert this right, and this article provides a case study on its implementation in the northeastern Philippines. Under the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997, extractive companies must seek consent from indigenous communities if these inhabit the proposed concession areas. The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, a government agency, facilitates this process. This article documents how extractive companies have obtained consent from the Agta, a resource-dependent indigenous group. The results, which cover the period 2003–2011, show that the implementation of Free, Prior and Informed Consent fails in terms of the process and its outcome. Consent is manipulated, the role of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples as facilitator is problematic, and the agreements are culturally inappropriate, weakly operationalized, and poorly realized.

Recognising land rights for conservation? tenure reforms in the Northern Sierra Madre, The Philippines

The legalisation of the customary land rights of rural communities is currently actively promoted as a strategy for conserving biodiversity. There is, however, little empirical information on the conservation outcomes of these tenure reforms. In this paper, we describe four conservation projects that specifically aimed to formalise land rights in the Philippines, a country widely seen as a model for the devolution of control over natural resources to rural communities. We demonstrate that these legalistic interventions are based on flawed assumptions, on: 1) the capacity of the state to enforce tenure; 2) the characteristics of customary land rights; and 3) the causal links between legal entitlements and sustainable natural resource management. As a result, these state-led tenure reforms actually aggravate tenure insecurity on the ground, and ultimately fail to improve natural resource management.

Data management in anthropology: the next phase in ethics governance?

Recent demands for accountability in ‘data management’ by funding agencies, universities, international journals and other academic institutions have worried many anthropologists and ethnographers. While their demands for transparency and integrity in opening up data for scrutiny seem to enhance scientific integrity, such principles do not always consider the way the social relationships of research are properly maintained. As a springboard, the present Forum, triggered by such recent demands to account for the use of ‘data’, discusses the present state of anthropological research and academic ethics/integrity in a broader perspective. It specifically gives voice to our disciplinary concerns and leads to a principled statement that clarifies a particularly ethnographic position. This position is then discussed by several commentators who treat its viability and necessity against the background of wider developments in anthropology – sustaining the original insight that in ethnography, research materials have been co‐produced before they become commoditised into ‘data’. Finally, in moving beyond such a position, the Forum broadens the issue to the point where other methodologies and forms of ownership of research materials will also need consideration.