Ecology, History, and Development: A Perspective from Rural Southeast Asia

The process by which different ecological conditions and historicaltrajectories interacted to create different social and culturalsystems resulted in major differences in economic developmentperformance within Southeast Asia. In the late 19th century,Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand commonly experiencedvent-for-surplus development through exploitation of unusedlands. Nevertheless, different agrarian structures were created.Indonesia's development was mainly based on the exploitationof tropical rain forest under Dutch colonialism. It resultedin the bifurcation of the rural sector between rice-farmingpeasant proprietors and large plantations for tropical exportcrops based on hired labor. In the Philippines, exploitationof the same resource base under Spanish rule resulted in pervasivelandlessness among the rural population. Relatively homogeneouslandowning peasants continued to dominate in Thailand, wheredelta plains that were suitable only for rice production formedthe resource base for development. These different agrarianstructures associated with different social value systems haveaccounted for differential development performance across thethree economies in the recent three decades.      

Technology and labor contract: Two systems of rice harvesting in the Philippines

Major changes in agrarian institutions in the Philippines, such as landtenure and labor-contract arrangements, are analyzed in terms of theories of contractual choice and social interactions. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that introduction of a certain technology (e.g., machine threshing of rice) reduces transaction costs involved in specific contractual arrangements (e.g., sharecropping), thereby making specific forms of economic organization (e.g., the rice hacienda) viable. Land reform (and also the green revolution) in the rice-growing areas of the Philippines again causes a change in harvesting technology. Through complex social interaction this gives rise to changes in labor contracts.