Jandayan Island: Symphony of dry winds in a time without rain

This essay examines the narratives of residents of Jandayan Island in the province of Bohol in central Philippines. I highlight the social relations of actors and groups as they negotiate and broker the representation and control of the meanings of their place. The essay sifts through the individual and collective lives of islanders as they reflect and constitute the manifold interests that shape the biographies of their island. In this essay, the island is a work in progress in which shifts and transitions represent the tenuous processes of community formation in a milieu of varying interests and alliances

Community, marine rights, and sea tenure : a political ecology of marine conservation in two Bohol villages in central Philippines

This study focuses on communities in conservation in central Philippines, with reference to marine protected areas. It analyzes communities as intersections of multiple actors with stratified interests and power, involving complex processes of place-making, ecological knowledge, tenure, governance, markets, and negotiation with domestic and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). As rights to places are fundamentally at issue with protected areas, matters of tenure are central for the study. And because marine protected areas (MPAs) are community-based, questions of local empowerment have equal centrality.The ownership of rights to marine resources by village members is a necessary if not sufficient condition for the political empowerment of communities in conservation. The issue of property rights in the Philippines is irrevocably linked to issues of equity, as social actors confront prevailing unequal relations of power. The development of community commitment to the reconfigured arrangements of marine protected area establishment depends on substantial economic gains for marginalized villagers, an equitable distribution of those gain, the ecologically sound management of resources over which rights are negotiated and gains generated, and a socially meaningful realignment of relations of power among nested sources of authority.My analysis points to the advantages of a reinforced community property regime that would call for measures by the national government to enhance villagers' tenure over their settlements and community waters (katubigang barangay). Such a regime is no panacea for the manifold social and environmental challenges faced by communities, but it would enable them to engage more confidently and constructively with state, NGO and other interests in conservation, and to address the real or perceived threats of dislocation by externally proposed schemes.Two villages with MPAs in the province of Bohol in central Philippines serve as case study sites to explore intertwined social, economic and political variables that influence issues of conservation, equity and empowerment

Ang Dumaracol ng mga Kalamianen Tagbanua ng Hilagang Palawan: Isang Panimulang Paglalahad

This study is the first documentation of the long narrative song dumaracol of the Kalamianen Tagbanua of Northern Palawan on the islands bordering the towns of Taytay, El Nido, and Linapacan. The essay is the first in a multi-stage research that collects, records, documents, transcribes, translates into Filipino, and examines the said genre. In the song, Dumaracol is the name of the hero of the Kalamianen Tagbanua. The song narrates the life, love, and struggles of Dumaracol in establishing and maintaining their community against the slave-raiding Moro. The essay discusses the different versions of the song, but highlights that by Blas Juan, one of the contemporary leaders of the Kalamianen Tagbanua of Pical Island in Linapacan. The essay also presents the processes of the research documentation of the song. It identifies and brings to the fore various issues in the preliminary understanding of dumaracol

Seascape shadows: Life in the ruins of the edible bird's nest harvest in northern Palawan, the Philippines

The intensifying extraction, privatization, and conservation of maritime spaces are transforming seascapes globally. Amidst rapid coastal change and the ambiguous reconfiguration of oceans as frontiers are coastal dwellers who occupy the shadows of these seascapes. In contrast to the capture of high-profile marine species, the harvest of the edible nests of balinsasayaw (swiftlet, Aerodramus fuciphagus) remains largely concealed at the interstitial spaces between land, coast, and sea. In the Philippines, harvesters known as busyador negotiate social relations, political networks, and karst systems to extract these lucrative nests. Despite the nest industry growing in value in Southeast Asia, we show how the busyador struggle in precarious social relations and spaces peripheral to coastal governance in northern Palawan Island. Building on the concept of ‘seascape assemblages’, we emphasize the importance of the less visible human-nonhuman relations that shape the nest harvest and trade. We trace the marginal social histories of the balinsasayaw by highlighting the precarious nature of the harvest, revealing how the busyador are subject to unfair working conditions, dispossession, and violence. We argue that as state actors and local elites reconfigure oceans as frontiers for development and conservation, struggles over labour and tenure rights, livelihood opportunities, and justice at sea are disregarded