Governed from above, below and dammed in between: The biopolitics of (un)making life and livelihood in the Philippine uplands

Abstract

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 continue to fixate on the uplands to govern and discipline indigenous peoples' bodies, beliefs and behaviours in the service of outsider aims. Today, indigenous uplanders negotiate a range of non-state governance practices that aim to re-make and un-make life and livelihood through sustained discursive and material disciplining. Bridging Foucauldian biopolitics and material studies, I describe how the intersection of NGO (para-state) and missionary prac..