© Wilma A. Dunaway and Maria Cecilia Macabuac, 2023 | DOI:10.1163/9789004522657_007 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. CHAPTER 5 The World Does Not Weep for Us Semiproletarianized Households, Nonwaged Labor and Depeasantization Abstract We analyze the human and community impacts that have followed the transformation of a food self-sufficient region into a food extractive enclave. We examine how seafood exporters keep global consumer prices fictitiously cheap through two interconnected processes. On the one hand, seafood commodity chains structure mechanisms through which exporters derive hidden labor subsidies from peasant households. On the other hand, exporters keep prices low and profits higher by externalizing costs of production to fisher households through livelihood threats, depeasantization, low remuneration, debt bondage, degraded ecosystems and threats to human survival. As a result of hidden household subsidies and externalization of costs, the United Nations Human Development Indexes for our target fishery are among the worst in the world. Even though their communities are exporting vast amounts of farm pro- duce and seafoods, these peasants are 1.3 times more likely to fall below the food threshold than other rural households. Moreover, fishery restructuring has led to the alteration and intensification of women’s work in ways that threaten household survival and food security. Our government blames us for the environmental problems, tells us we are in the way of progress, and wants us to go into alternative livelihoods that will leave us even poorer. Fishponds and commercial trawlers are killing our way of life. The world has not mourned the deaths of so many of our small creatures and plants that were used to feed fishponds or destroyed in commercial nets. And the world will not weep if we small fishers starve. (Panguil Bay Fisherwoman) ∵ In the previous chapter, we examined the restructuring of Philippine fishing communities into food extractive enclaves, and we pinpointed the networks Wilma A. Dunaway and Maria Cecilia Macabuac - 9789004522657 Downloaded from Brill.com04/21/2023 02:15:46PM via free access