THE PROBLEM OF OCCUPATIONAL PRESTIGE RANKINGS: FARMING IN THE PHILIPPINES.

The occupational prestige of farming is particularly important in underdeveloped countries, because typically more than half of the employed population of these countries are engaged in farming and because urban industrial centers necessarily draw a large proportion of their populations from the farming areas. The real sense of the prestige of farming is the major factor in the subjective experience of mobility as seen by people in underdeveloped countries. As a part of the larger study on occupational mobility, the author made a research on occupational prestige in the area of Dumaguete City, Philippines. The research method employed by the researcher is mainly interview regarding occupational affiliation in the city. In analysis of the meaning of prestige ranking of a particular occupation, the author related its prestige positions to attitudes and characteristics presumed to be connected with the concept. One of the most useful is a measure of perceived social mobility for persons who have intergenerational mobility, then education and occupational aspirations. As a result, the author concluded that relatively high prestige attributed to farming is not reflected subjectively in the three measurement basis stated above. In a word, the prestige attributed to farmers appears to be anomalous. This could be explained by peculiar connotations attached to farming and farm which is highly related to the prestige of the occupation. If the function could be identified with other terms, perhaps the anomaly would disappear.