Keep an eye on my blog where I post about the project through Research Diaries

1. January 2025
2. Summer 2025
3. Spring 2024

January 2025

As of 18th of January 2025 we are back to Iloilo to do the second round of fieldwork and living! Same place, same people 🙂 Barangay Tambaliza sa Concepcion!

I am STILL in the middle of qualitatively coding 90 transcripts to create a grounded theory that might explain how the suki relationship functions and plays a role in the adaptive capacity of fishing households dealing with environmental and market changes. I will take the coding results back to all the participants to go through them and make sure they make sense.

My coding looks like this now, but a lot more messy!:

Now its time for behavioural economic experiments to understand better fishers responses to changes in their surroundings as filtered through the suki system, stay tuned for more, I will write some research diaries 🙂

Summer 2025

I had the chance to present some preliminary findings to Monterey Bay Aquarium, BFAR6 (The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) and UPV (University of the Philippines Visayas) who are collaborating on a project also based in Concepcion- but focused on blue swimming crabs. Patrick Co from Monterey found me online and messaged me to chat as part of their project work is looking at informality and the patron-client link in the crab value chain as they try to upgrade the chain and improve livelihoods for crab fishers. See some of my preliminary results I shared from our first trip in 2024 below(see my research diaries 1-4 for more info on the fieldwork)

Spring 2024

The first trip ended April 15th 2024 and consisted of cerca. 60 in-depth ordinary language interviews with fishers (men and women) about the suki-relationship, we asked them things like (in Hiligaynon):

• Can you tell me about your suki relationship, how does it work?
• What words/concepts do you associate with your suki relationship? [e.g. utang na-loob; huya]
• When and how did you first meet your suki?
• Can we talk about [a change event e.g. COVID 19] – what happened with your suki then?
• How do you feel about your suki relationship now? [state of the relationship, e.g. is there trust?]
• So, from your experience, is the suki system good or bad?
  • What makes a good suki relationship?
  • What makes a bad one?
• Some people say we need to do away with the suki system because it’s exploitative – what do you think about that?
• Let me ask you a big question, thinking back over our interview, what does your suki relationship mean to you?
• How did you find these questions – is there anything else I need to know about suki?

We then went back to a subsample of these 60 fishers, 30 of them and did dyadic interviews with them and their partners/husbands/wives to ask about household decision-making and what role the suki plays within this and dealing with change, we asked them things like;

• Can you talk us through how you make financial decisions in your household?
• [example] If you think back to the last financial decision you had to make, what happened?
• [if they didn’t mention utang and suki] If you have ever had an utang from a suki can you talk us through how you made that decision?
• [think about a change event that they might of mentioned before and ask about decision-making -related to that if relevant, ask COVID last resort]
  • What role did your sukianay play in these decisions related to [change event]?
• How do you feel about your sukianay and the role of sukianay in your financial decisions at home? [NB examples]?
• How do you feel about your sukianay when there has been a big change or shock or unexpected event for your household? [trying to get at the bigger or longer term decisions]

I will analyse these transcripts to present them back in conservational form February- March 2025