Ifugao (ethnic group)
The Ifugao is an ancient Malay ethnic group that lives in the inaccessible Filipino Cordilleras on northern Luzon in the Philippines and belongs to the Igorot . The self-designation "Ifugao" means something like "people of the earth".
Information about the number of its members varies between 80,000 and 190,000. The Ifugao traditionally practiced soil construction. They created a system of sloping terraces with canals for artificial irrigation, which they had used for growing wet rice for more than two thousand years. Because of their often very small area, the individual terraces had to be worked on with digging sticks. The rice cultivation was supplemented by the cultivation of camote ( sweet potatoes ), mung beans and cereals.
The political, social, and economic organization was based primarily on bilateral kin groups without formal leadership. The settlements of five to ten buildings were scattered over large areas, each in the vicinity of the terraces to be cultivated. Animals (especially chickens and pigs) were mainly kept for religious ceremonies and sacrificial rituals. The priests of the Ifugao reported of more than 1500 different gods who were assigned to different areas of life such as rice cultivation, headhunting , individual diseases. The Ifugao had no writing - myths were passed down orally. In the 20th century, the Americans stopped traditional headhunting. Even today, the Ifugao live largely isolated from the Christian majority in the Philippines.
"Non-destructive-aggressive societies"
The social psychologist Erich Fromm analyzed the willingness of 30 pre-state peoples, including the Ifugao, to use ethnographic records to analyze the anatomy of human destructiveness . He finally assigned them to the “non-destructive-aggressive societies”, whose cultures are characterized by a sense of community with pronounced individuality (status, success, rivalry), targeted child-rearing, regulated manners, privileges for men and, above all, male tendencies to aggression - but without destructive ones Tendencies (destructive rage, cruelty, greed for murder, etc.) - are marked. (see also: "War and Peace" in pre-state societies )
literature
- Barton, Roy Franklin: Ifugao Law. In: University of California Publications: American Archeology and Ethnology Vol.15, No.5. Berkeley: University of California Press 1919
- Conklin, Harold C .: Ethnographic Atlas of Ifugao. A Study of Environment, Culture and Society in Northern Luzon. New Haven / London: Yale University Press 1980
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erich Fromm: Anatomy of human destructiveness . From the American by Liselotte et al. Ernst Mickel, 86th - 100th thousand edition, Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-499-17052-3 , pp. 191-192.