2016 Volume 81 Issue 3 Pages 391-412
Based on my own experiences of committed anthropological fieldwork among the Aytas in western Luzon and the Ifugaos in northern Luzon, the Philippines, I propose the idea of an “anthropology of response-ability.”
After the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo—the biggest in the 20th century—in western Luzon in 1991, I engaged myself in rehabilitation work and projects through a small Japanese NGO that was working for Ayta eruption victims. The Ayta are Asian-type Negritos living in and around the Mt. Pinatubo area with whom I lived for twenty months in the late 1970’s for my Ph.D. research. During ten years of committed engagement through NGOs and aid agencies since the eruption, I came to recognize that anthropology and anthropologists could and should contribute much more to urgent issues and problems for mitigation and alleviation.
An “anthropology of response-ability” is a type of public anthropology, but the focus of concern is much more on field-site issues through collaboration with local people rather than on issues and problems in our home countries.
