The Emergence of Rural-based Industries

Abstract

The previous chapter ended with the hypothesis that household and cottage industries in rural villages in the Philippines were destroyed in the process of integration of its economy into the vertical division of labour with industrial economies in the West under the colonial rule. Indeed, until very recently, it was usually difficult to find significant manufacturing activities in rice villages in the Philippines, with East Laguna Village being no exception. Growing urban economic influences, which accelerated in the late 1970s and operated throughout the 1980s, mainly as a force to pull labour out of the villages as well as to increase employment in service activities, such as sari-sari stores, and jeepney and tricycle driving within the villages.