UGAT 41st Annual Conference: Keynote Address

KEYNOTE ADDRESS 
Of Forests and Gods: the biopolitics of (un)making life and livelihood in the Philippine uplands

Dr. Wolfram Dressler
University of Melbourne

Acts of governing upland peoples and landscapes increasingly reflect biopolitical endeavours in the frontiers of Southeast Asia - endeavours that aim to enhance and optimise the possibility of life. Beyond state schemes, actors in civil society fixate on the uplands to govern and discipline indigenous peoples' bodies, beliefs and behaviours in the service of outsider aims. Today, indigenous uplanders negotiate an increasing number of non-state governance practices that aim to reform life and livelihood through sustained discursive and material disciplining. Bridging Foucauldian biopolitics and material studies, in this talk I describe how the intersection of NGO and missionary practices strive to optimise upland life in contrasting yet reinforcing ways by reordering the livelihood practices and food choices of Pala'wan uplanders towards 'modern' ideals and existence. In doing so, I explore how NGOs reify Pala'wan custom and tradition to optimise livelihoods and food preferences for forest conservation, and how Seventh Day Adventists prohibit certain myths, rituals, and associated (customary) foods for locally situated proselytization. I describe how these actors' efforts to condition and discipline Pala'wan bodies, behaviours and diets powerfully intersect, reforming how uplanders reproduce themselves over time and space. I conclude by asserting that indigenous sovereignty over life and livelihood matters now more than ever as biopolitical interventions intensify and manifest in the uplands.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Wolfram Dressler is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. He works at the intersectionof anthropology, political ecology and agrarian change in Southeast Asia and the Philippines in particular.


UGNAYANG PANG-AGHAMTAO, INC. (UGAT)
Anthropological Association of the Philippines and
Visayas State University, Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines

41st Annual Conference
FOOD (IN)SECURITY: An International Conference on Anthropology of Food and Eating
07-09 November 2019
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines