An Intimate Journey

This work offers a comprehensive description of the lives of the Sama-Bajau people based on ongoing ethnographic research conducted by the author in Davao City, the Philippines, for over two decades. The Sama-Bajau have suffered stigmatization in Philippine society, even though the true picture of their lives, both as a community and as individuals, has been largely unknown to the outside world.

An Intimate Journey objectively portrays various aspects of the lives of six Sama-Bajau families, including economics, politics and religion, and at the same time reveals their inner worlds to the reader through the abundant inclusion of first-person narratives. Each chapter takes the form of a letter addressed to “absent others” – the dead and the unborn in the study field – as a story retold by the author to be passed down to future generations. The author hopes that this book will be read by not only those interested in Southeast Asia or the Sama-Bajau, but also those concerned with the question of the relationship between economics and ethics or care, as well as the question of the future direction of humanity and society.

More specifically, this relates to the risks facing the communities and individuals who tend to be considered “bottommost” according to the efficiency standards of the contemporary neo-liberal market economy, bringing to the fore the wisdom they use in surviving the challenges they face, how they should be understood and what actions should be taken to intervene in their circumstances.