1 R.L. Austin, ‘Effects of climate change and implications for land tenure: A community case study from Palawan Island, Philippines’, paper presented for the Center for International Environmental Law's contributions to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Bali, 3–14 Dec. 2007, p. 2.

2 Fabinyi, Michael, ‘The intensification of fishing and the rise of tourism: Competing coastal livelihoods in the Calamianes Islands, Philippines’, Human Ecology, 38, 3 (2010): 423CrossRefGoogle Scholar. R.L. Austin, ‘Environmental movements and fisherfolk participation on a coastal frontier, Palawan, Philippines’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 2003), p. 172.

3 Cohen, Erik, ‘Insiders and outsiders: The dynamics of development of bungalow tourism on the islands of southern Thailand’, Human Organization, 42, 2 (1983): 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Barangay refers to the smallest political administrative unit in the Philippine electoral system.

5 McCoy, Alfred W., ‘The social history of an archipelago’, in Philippine social history: Global trade and local transformations, ed. McCoy, Alfred William and Jesus, C. (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Lopez-Gonzaga, Violeta B., The Negrense: A social history of an elite class (Bacolod: Institute for Social Research and Development, University of St. La Salle, 1991)Google Scholar; Larkin, John A., Sugar and the origin of modern Philippine society (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 2001)Google Scholar; Aguilar, Filomeno V., Clash of spirits: The history of power and sugar planter hegemony on a Visayan island (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

6 The population of the island swelled from an estimated 50,000 around 1850 to more than 400,000 by 1900. The census data from 1903 suggest that Negros Occidental had a population of 303,000 and Negros Oriental a population of 151,000.

7 See, for instance, Firth, Raymond, Malay fishermen: Their peasant economy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966)Google Scholar; Jomo, Kwame Sundaram, Fishing for trouble: Malaysian fisheries, sustainable development and inequality (Kuala Lumpur: Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Malaya, 1991)Google Scholar; Lowe, Celia, ‘Global markets, local injustice in Southeast Asian seas: The live fish trade and local fishers in the Togean Islands’, in People, plants and justice: The politics of nature conservation, ed. Zerner, Charles (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Gaynor, Jennifer, ‘The decline of small-scale fishing and the reorganisation of livelihood practices among Sama people in Eastern Indonesia’, Michigan Discussions in Anthropology, 15, 1 (2005): 90–149Google Scholar; Eder, James F., Migrants to the coasts: Livelihood, resource management and global change in the Philippines (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2008)Google Scholar; Fabinyi, ‘The intensification of fishing and the rise of tourism’.

8 Fabinyi, Michael, Knudsen, Magne and Segi, Shio, ‘Social complexity, ethnography and coastal resource management in the Philippines’, Coastal Management, 38, 6 (2010): 617–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eder, James F., ‘Coastal resource management and social differences in Philippine fishing communities’, Human Ecology, 33, 2 (2005): 147–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Atkinson, J.M., ‘Afterword. By land and by sea: Reflections on claims and communities in the Malay Archipelago’, in Culture and the question of rights: Forests, coasts, and seas in Southeast Asia, ed. Zerner, Charles (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 235Google Scholar.

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11 Fabinyi, ‘The intensification of fishing and the rise of tourism’, p. 423; Eder, Migrants to the coasts, p. 55; Austin, ‘Environmental movements and fisherfolk participation’, p. 172; Ness, Sally A., Where Asia smiles: An ethnography of Philippine tourism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

12 Fabinyi, ‘The intensification of fishing and the rise of tourism’, p. 425.

13 Eder, Migrants to the coasts; Robert A. Randall, ‘Change and variation in Samal fishing: Making plans to “make a living” in the Southern Philippines’ (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1977), p. 17; Seki, Koki, ‘Wherever the waves carry us: Historical development of a Visayan fisherfolk's livelihood strategies’, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 28, 2 (2000): 135Google Scholar.

14 Yano, Takao, ‘The character of fisherfolk culture in Panay: From the viewpoint of fishing ground exploitation’, in Fishers of the Visayas: Visayas maritime anthropological studies 1: 1991–1993, ed. Ushijima, Iwao and Zayas, Cynthia N. (Quezon City: CSSP Publications and University of the Philippines Press, 1994), p. 44Google Scholar.

15 On just grounds: Struggling for agrarian justice and citizenship rights in the rural Philippines, ed. Borras, Saturnino Jr. and Franco, Jennifer C. (Manila: Institute for Popular Democracy, 2005)Google Scholar; Kerkvliet, Benedict J.T., Land struggles and land regimes in the Philippines and Vietnam during the twentieth century (Amsterdam: Wertheim Lecture Series, Centre for Asian Studies, 1997)Google Scholar; Michael Pinches, ‘A rocky road to the promised land: Squatters, oligarchs, and the state in the Philippines’ (n.p., 1986); Rutten, Rosanne, ‘Who shall benefit? Conflicts among the landless poor in a Philippine agrarian reform programme’, Asian Journal of Social Science, 38 (2010): 202–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Eder, ‘Migrants to the coasts’, p. 151; Cohen, ‘Insiders and outsiders’.

17 Jose E. Bersales, ‘Contested space: Tourism power and social relations in Mactan and Panglao Islands’, Philippine APEC Study Center Network, Discussion Paper No. 2003-7 (Cebu City: University of San Carlos, 2003).

18 Ibid., pp. 107–8.

19 Dressler, Wolfram, Old thoughts in new ideas: State conservation measures, livelihood and development on Palawan Island, the Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. Certain attributes of gender and age are also highly relevant for understanding social differentiation in the Philippines, but receive minimal attention in this article. See, e.g., Kelly, Philip F., Landscapes of globalization: Human geographies of economic change in the Philippines (London: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar; Eder, James F., A generation later: Household strategies and economic change in the rural Philippines (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999)Google Scholar; McKay, Deirdre, ‘Cultivating new local futures: Remittance economies and land-use patterns in Ifugao, Philippines’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34, 2 (2003): 285–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Eder, James F., ‘Of fishers and farmers: Ethnicity and resource use in coastal Palawan’, Philippine Quarterly of Culture & Society, 31 (2003): 207–25Google Scholar; Fabinyi, ‘Intensification of fishing and the rise of tourism’.

21 Fabinyi, ibid., p. 423.

22 Sama-Bajao people throughout the Southeast Asian region have long suffered from land bias in ideologies of property and tenure, but also from inherited colonial discourses that cast them as ‘nomads’ and primitivising discourses that accord them low status. Gaynor, ‘The decline of small-scale fishing’.

23 While the Spanish Laws of the Indies and supporting legal provisions did from the very beginning of colonial rule demand respect for pre-existing native conceptions of ownership, such as through clearing, occupation and cultivation, this did not transpire in ‘full law’ and had little practical significance as Spanish rulers and later governments promoted the Regalian Doctrine, also in cases where this doctrine clearly should have been exempted. Dressler, New thoughts in old ideas, p. 37; Lynch, Owen J. Jr, ‘The Philippine indigenous law collection: An introduction and preliminary bibliography’, Philippine Law Journal, 57 (1982): 274Google Scholar.

24 Kerkvliet, Land struggles and land regimes, p. 3.

25 Ibid., p. 5; Larkin, Sugar and the origin of modern Philippine society, p. 69. In Negros Oriental, which had become a separate province in 1890, large planters and the families that dominated the logging industry occupied key positions in the colonial legislature and bureaucracy. Close friends or relatives held positions in the judiciary.

26 Batongbacal, J.L., ‘The crowded shoreline: Review of the Philippines' foreshore and shore land management policies’, Philippine Law Journal, 76, 3 (2001): 329Google Scholar.

27 The Water Code of the Philippines, revised and consolidated 31 Dec. 1976 (Presidential Decree No. 1067). It is the Department of Works and Highways which issues permits for the construction of structures in foreshore areas. The basic rules on property and its uses, including the shoreline and the foreshore, are specified in the Civil Code. Batongbacal, ‘The crowded shoreline’: 329.

28 Batongbacal, ‘The crowded shoreline’: 328.

29 Ibid.

30 Kelly, Philip F., ‘Urbanization and the politics of land in the Manila region’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 590, 1 (2003): 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 I have used pseudonyms in order to protect the identities of those I worked with.

32 Eder, James F., ‘Political transition in a Palawan farming community’, in From Marcos to Aquino: Local perspectives on political transition in the Philippines, ed. Kerkvliet, B.J.T. and Mojares, R.B. (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1991), p. 163Google Scholar.

33 The Cebuano term lumad is used to refer to the ‘original people of the place’. People who claim to be lumad in Sibulan distinguish themselves from ‘migrants’ (langyaw) and ‘newcomers’ (bag-ong niabot). These terms are of course highly contested. As Cebuano-speaking Catholics, the ‘original people of the place’ in Sibulan can be said to be part of majority society, hence the meaning of the term lumad is in this article slightly different from the typical account of indigenous people who become a minority within a nation-state as migrants from the majority society settle on their lands. Since the 1980s, among Philippine specialists and activists, the term lumad is more commonly used to refer to the indigenous peoples of Mindanao.

34 D.B. Gatmaytan, ‘Issues in community resource management in northern Mindanao’, Southeast Asia Policy Research Working Paper No. 19 (Bogor: International Centre for Research in Agroforestry, Asian Development Bank and ASB-Indonesia, 2001), p. 18. See also Gatmaytan, D.B., ‘Ancestral domain recognition in the Philippines: Trends in jurisprudence and legislation’, Philippine Natural Resources Law Journal, 5, 1 (1992): 43–90Google Scholar.

35 For an excellent study of the complexity of land tenure and property relations in a different part of the world which has some resemblance to the material presented here, see Lund, Christian, Local politics and the dynamics of property in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

36 Although the extended bilateral network of relatives constitute a recognised group (the ego-centred kindred), an ideology of virilocality and the practice of tracing family names through the male line play into the familial politics of house-group formation and status distinctions within and between groups in the lowland Visayas. See Magne Knudsen, ‘This is our place: Fishing families and cosmopolitans on Negros Island, Philippines’ (Ph.D. diss., ANU, Canberra, 2010), p. 113 and Dumont, Jean-Paul, Visayan vignettes: Ethnographic traces of a Philippine island (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 153Google Scholar.

37 Nilo L. Ruperto, ‘Civil Case No. 544-06: Answer with Counterclaims’, Municipal Trial Court of Sibulan, Province of Negros Oriental, Republic of the Philippines.

38 Hansel T. Anito, ‘Complaint in Ejectment’, Municipal Trial Court of Sibulan, Province of Negros Oriental, Republic of the Philippines, 2005.

39 Planting of trees and other permanent crops commonly represent a claim to landownership. Dressler, Old thoughts in new ideas, p. 94; Melanie Hughes McDermot, ‘Boundaries and pathways: Indigenous identities, ancestral domain, and forest use in Palawan, the Philippines’ (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2000).

40 Both kin and non-kin are commonly asked to be sponsors at baptisms and weddings. Hart, Donn Vorhis, Compadrinazgo: Ritual kinship in the Philippines (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

41 Elgie Divinigracia and Rhapsody Dipaling, Minutes of the Philippine Reclamation Authority and Sibulan Local Government Unit Public Forum, 27 Oct. 2005, Municipality of Sibulan, Negros Oriental Province. The municipal government has since 2007 encouraged those who hold private title to land close to and into the sea to apply for foreshore leases.

42 Fabinyi et al., ‘Social complexity, ethnography and coastal resource management’, p. 624.

43 Austin, ‘Effects of climate change and implications for land tenure’.

44 McWilliams, Andrew, ‘Timorese seascapes: Perspectives on customary marine tenure in East Timor’, Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 3, 2 (2003): 25Google Scholar; Bailey, Conner and Zerner, Charles, ‘Community based fisheries management institutions in Indonesia’, Maritime Anthropological Studies, 5, 1 (1992): 1–17Google Scholar.

45 Cohen, ‘Insiders and outsiders’, p. 161.