Abstract
THE three Ifugao autobiographies comprised in this volume were collected in the course of an ethnographical investigation, which lasted for the greater part of 1937, in the island of Luzon. They attain a new standard in the attempt to eliminate the point of view of the white observer in cultural investigation. The subjects, two men and a woman, were told to record matters which they considered of most interest and importance in their lives. The narrative was, of course, taken down by the author, as the narrators were both pagan and illiterate.. The result is significant in every sense. The topic which bulks largest is the pro-marital sexual relation, although for the woman, its special interest was its bearing on marriage and child-birth; but the influence of omens and the social ties of kinship and propinquity are also prominent in their influence on the course of events. Head-hunting figures repeatedly but it seems to be treated as of incidental, rather than of primary importance.
Philippine Pagans
The Autobiographies of Three Ifugaos. By R. F. Barton. Pp. xxi + 271 + 24 plates. (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1938.) 15s. net.
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Archaeology and Ethnology. Nature 144, 1077 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/1441077a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1441077a0