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

Political Geography 73 (2019) 123–137

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

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Wolfram H. Dressler School of Geography, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

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 practices strive to optimise upland life in contrasting yet reinforcing ways to powerfully reorder the world of Pala'wan uplanders towards modern ideals and existence. In doing so, I examine how a small, curious upland item—the customary Tingkep basket—has come to mediate such biopolitical endeavours in the uplands of southern Palawan, the Philippines. Through the Tingkep's ‘lively character’, I explore how NGOs valorise custom and tradition to optimise the Tingkep's livelihood potential for forest conservation, and how Seventh Day Adventists prohibit myths, rituals, and livelihoods that support Tingkep world-making for proselytization. I describe how these actors' efforts to condition and discipline Pala'wan bodies and behaviours 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.

1. Introduction Acts of governing upland peoples and landscapes increasingly reflect biopolitical endeavours in the few remaining frontiers of Southeast Asia. Indigenous uplanders—ostensibly beyond the state's purview—are now subject to an influx of governance schemes that reform life and livelihood toward outsider ideals of how to be and live life (West, 2006; Li, 2005, 2007). Diverse non-state actors have taken on governmental legitimacy, authority and practices to engage and discipline the indigenous poor, using varied techniques and logics to re-create and optimise their bodies, livelihoods and landscapes. In these settings, upland peoples now negotiate contrasting yet intersecting governance practices that reassemble ancestral lands into newly ‘governable and administrable’ spaces (Dean, 1999, p. 29) that optimise indigenous existence toward a modern socio-spatial order. These intensifying developments transform the character of upland peoples and landscapes into complex, structured territories wherein governance, livelihoods and ways of life are co-constituted (West, 2006; Li, 2005, 2007, 2010). In much of the region, marginal upland spaces have become recentered as sites of social experimentation and enrolment among the indigenous poor who broadly live beyond the state's purview (Scott, 2009). In many respects, hinterland spaces have emerged as focal points of oversight and reform in the broader imaginary of non-state actors (Korf & Raeymaekers, 2013). In this paper, I examine a peculiar hinterland conjuncture on the

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frontier island of Palawan, the Philippines, where non-state entities and practices converge to reform how the indigenous Pala'wan reproduce themselves by way of custom and livelihood. I show how localised forms of biopower reflect intersecting social relations involved in disciplining the indigenous social body (by optimising its capabilities, usefulness and docility) and facilitating regulatory control over life and biological processes (Lemke, 2011). By focusing on the small upland item —the customary Tingkep basket— I examine how the convergence of biopower, materiality and social relations reforms the lives and livelihoods of Pala'wan in the Matalingahan Range of southern Palawan. Co-constituted through humannonhuman relations, the social life and materiality of the Tingkep mediates biopolitical reforms of Pala'wan bodies, livelihoods, and landscapes as its meaning, value and agency changes along circuits of exchange, social relations and varied places (Appadurai, 1988; Miller, 2005; Bennett, 2009). While often incomplete and resisted, this paper shows how biopolitical interventions reform the socio-material character of Tingkep, life and livelihood with detrimental impacts and outcomes for Pala'wan who become entangled with the motives of non-state actors. As an extended case, this paper examines how the governance practices of the European Union (EU) funded Palawan Tropical Forest Protection Programme (PTFPP),1 Conservation International, and the Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) converge to produce biopolitical influences among the Pala'wan in southern Palawan. Focusing on how these upland interventions work through the Tingkep's socio-material

E-mail address: [email protected]. Broadly ‘para-state’ in form and function, the PTFPP operates and functions in line with an NGO, and so is clustered under the broader heading of ‘non-state’.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.01.006 Received 18 July 2018; Received in revised form 25 November 2018; Accepted 9 January 2019 Available online 02 March 2019 0962-6298/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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I present a three-stage narrative. First, I describe the Tingkep's socio-material character, ritual substance, and role among the Pala'wan. Second, I extend this analysis to the Tingkep's use in, and optimised production for, the PTFPP and CI's (tourism) craft production scheme that generates income for ‘sustainable livelihoods’ aimed at curbing swidden. Third, I examine how, in the same upland space, the SDA attempt to unmake Pala'wan life and livelihood by removing ‘the grip of the devil’ from Tingkep custom and livelihoods by reframing upland life toward a moral, religious modernity. Mediated by the Tingkep, I explore how the Pala'wan negotiate these biopolitical pressures by expressing contrasting ideas, beliefs and practices on how to live in this intersectional space. I conclude by showing how these biopolitical practices carry out de facto state roles to ultimately engender limited social resistance while undermining the autonomy of indigenous uplanders.

character, I explore how these NGOs (incl. para-state extensions) re-make the character and livelihood potential of the basket to optimise forest conservation and how missionaries un-make the life and livelihoods that support Tingkep world-making to optimise proselytization. I describe how PTFPP and CI interventions valorise the practice of making Tingkep and its supply chain (for tourism) to augment livelihood incomes and discipline farmers to curb shifting agriculture (swidden). I then examine how the PTFPP intersects with SDA interventions to limit Pala'wan engaging in Tingkep myth, ritual and crafting by reconfiguring their beliefs and resource uses. I explore how these actors and their social practices assign contrasting meanings to the Tingkep in order to reform Pala'wan understandings of the basket, themselves, and society. Bridging scholarship on biopolitics (Foucault, 1978) and materiality (Bennett, 2009; Gell, 1998; Miller, 2005), I describe how the Tingkep's lively character intersects with and influences other social worlds as such governance unfolds. I examine how aspects of the Tingkep ‘act as quasi agents of forces with trajectories, propensities or tendencies of their own’ (Bennett, 2009; viii) as biopolitics and Pala'wan lives intersect with, shape and are shaped by the basket's character over time and across space. Drawing on a humanist approach to materiality, with insights from ‘new materialism’ (Bennett, 2009), I aim not to ‘overcome’ the ontological divisions between human and nonhuman things per se-–at least not in any indivisible ontological sense that only privileges the non-human. Rather, I foreground how the Tingkep's ontological and socio-material vibrancy entangles with and influences the human and nonhuman worlds that it encounters. In doing so, however, I show how the Tingkep's vitality manifests as agency, not in any inherent sense, from an ontologically bounded world, but as forged relationally through intersecting human (ascribed, assigned) and nonhuman (embedded, endowed) worlds. Ethnographically, I examine how the Tingkep both bridges and mediates human-nonhuman relations. In this sense, the agency of Tingkep—the socio-culturally [and biophysically] mediated capacity to act (Ahern, 2001, p. 11)—derives from human and non-human relations that are constituted in the relational contexts of different worldviews (Miller, 2005). In varied settings, the basket consists of signifiers and characters that have no clear socio-cultural and ecological boundaries. Its socio-material character comprises different non-timber forest products, resin smoke, and ash – soot remnants. Soaked with the blood of animals, it holds tobacco, rice and powerful talisman. Its woven skin signifies forest natures and super-human natures. It invokes female forest spirits and mediates complex healing rituals. It is entangled with other beliefs, conditions and technologies that try to control and optimise how Pala'wan life and livelihood centres on the basket. The Tingkep's character is thus deeply personal, but also intensely public in nature as the biopolitics of governance influences indigenous worlds on Palawan Island (West, 2006; Li, 2007, 2010, 2016) (Plate 1).

2. Methods This study took place over three months in 2013, with a 2 day follow up visit in November 2018. Following a multi-sited, mix-method approach, I worked across two uplands areas in the Matalingahan Range known by the Pala'wan and NGOs to have expert Tingkep weavers: Marenshewan, Bataraza and Kamantian, Brookes Point. Here, I primarily cover Kamantian because of the area's deep history of Tingkep weaving and trade amid intensifying conservation and missionizing. In Marenshewan, I completed 20 key-informant interviews on the CI initiative, the Tingkep and Pala'wan livelihoods. In Kamantian, I completed 40 key-informant interviews and 20 oral histories on the Tingkep's place in Pala'wan life and livelihood. The oral histories narrated how the Tingkep's character articulates with social life and livelihood. I spoke at length with elderly female Tingkep weavers to understand the socio-cultural and material dimensions of the crafting process, the uses of certain basket types and sizes, and the basket's myth and ritual. Drawing on literature and interviews, I then examined how PTFPP and SDA governance intersects with the world of Tingkep among the Pala'wan in Kamantian, the main case. Interviews were conducted in Tagalog or Pala'wan (with a translator). Thirty households across Marenshewan (10 hh) and Kamantian (20 hh) then completed livelihood questionnaires (a near-complete sample) to estimate the income generated from Tingkep sales relative to other livelihood pursuits. I also interviewed traders, regular buyers and sellers (suki), and shop owners who bought, sold and collected the basket for NGOs and souvenir shops in Puerto Princesa City (PPC), Palawan's capital. I then used another questionnaire to examine key Tingkep ‘supply-chain’ information. Open-ended questions covered how souvenir shop owners advertised and represented the baskets in their shops and to tourists themselves. I thus worked between the uplands, lowlands and the city. My recent visit to Kamantian verified key findings and tied-up any loose ends. Informed consent was given in each study location. 2.1. The biopolitics of governing life and livelihood When combined with material studies, Foucault's notion of biopolitics offers a powerful conceptual frame to examine how acts of governing by conservationists and missionaries converge and affect the worlds of the Pala'wan and Tingkep in similar yet contrasting ways that reproduce moral ideals and modern objectives. In the History of Sexuality, Foucault’s (1978) broader framing of biopolitics involves the historical processes by which life emerges as the centre of political strategies––a form of biopower exercised in the interest of life itself (Lemke, 2011, p. 33). In the context of the modern nationstate and increasingly non-state actors, biopower amounted to invoking not the pre-modern sovereign's prerogative to “take life or let live” but instead the capacity to “make live and to let die” (Foucault, 1978, p. 138).

Plate 1. Vital matter: the Pala'wan Tingkep, fastened to roofing. 124

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Foucault (1978) explains further that in ‘concrete terms this (bio) power over life evolved in two basic forms […] linked together by a whole intermediary cluster of relations’ (139): discipline and regulatory controls. The first form is the ‘procedures of power that characterized the disciplines’ of the individual–or the politics of disciplining the human body. In Foucault's words, this ‘anatomo-politics’ reflects biopower's focus on ‘the body as machine: its disciplining, optimising of its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility [and] its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls’ (139). Rather than explicit suppression, disciplining by biopower increases the human body's productivity while also weakening the social body to ensure acceptance and pacification of collective populations. In the uplands, then, the more indigenous peoples acquiesce to such mechanisms, the more their bodies and actions serve to maximise socioeconomic efficiency (Lemke, 2011, p. 36). The second form involves biopower's focus on regulatory controls – a biopolitics of the population. Regulatory controls focus on the species body at the level of population, over the ‘mechanics of life’ and the basis of biological processes. This concerns broader normalized regulations over health and diet to birth and life expectancy—supervised and affected by routinized interventions and regulatory controls on populations (Foucault, 1978). Beyond disciplining and supervising, regulation and controls define a technology and control aimed at establishing ‘an overall equilibrium in society that protects the security of the whole from integral dangers’ (Foucault, 2003, p. 249). While Foucault noted that ‘disciplines of the body’ and ‘regulations of the population’ reflected the poles around which the organization of power of life unfolded, he also pointed to how both work through individuals' bodies and the socio-political form at the level of population. Biopower thus facilitates control of ‘the human as individual body and at the human as species’ level simultaneously, re-creating new bodily forms in and of populations (Lemke, 2011, p. 37). Non-state actors have thus become biopolitical masters, experts in disciplinary and regulatory governance in spaces broadly beyond the reach of the state. As the PTFPP, CI and SDA demonstrate, biopower's disciplining and regulatory processes converge to govern the personal and intimate of the human body (who am I and what must I become—the social body), culturally important materials, and the political economy of humans and society (Berlant, 1998). Although not a totalising force, biopower's sphere of influence draws together the intimate and personal to influence how humans ought to be and live life ‘optimally’ in line with modern societal norms and presuppositions. This includes distant upland settings, where non-state actors exercise biopower by reforming personal, intimate material objects in order to remake and optimise ways of life. At a broader level, then, I focus on how biopolitical forms yield biopower in ways that involve reformulating individual sovereignty through subjugating life to new forms of political knowledge, regulatory controls, monitoring, organising and optimisation. Biopolitical practices of power and knowledge assume responsibility for life processes, undertaking controls to modify them, make them grow, and order them to flourish (Lemke, 2011). A non-state biopolitics emerges as a constellation of power in which normative, moral and modern notions of being human coemerge to structure political and economic actions and goals to govern people's lives instrumentally, particularly those deemed poor and vulnerable (Fletcher, Dressler, Anderson, & Büscher, 2018). Biopolitical processes thus partly constitute processes of ‘social reproduction’ among the Pala'wan in the context of uneven agrarian change. Drawing on Katz (2004, 19), I characterize social reproduction as ‘a broad range of practices and social relations that maintain and reproduce relations of production along with the material social grounds in which they take place’. Pala'wan social reproduction unfolds through individual, familial, kin relations, varied livelihood (e.g. mixed subsistence, cash cropping, hunting, collecting, and wage-labour etc.),

socio-cultural practices, political maneuvering and other everyday practices of upland life (MacDonald, 2007; Smith, 2015; Theriault, 2017). Crucial here is how the materiality of social reproduction, involving both human and non-human relations, mediates the biopolitics of governance and everyday life in upland settings (Bennett, 2009; Miller, 2005). In this sense, how material objects mediate and influence governance, life and livelihood reflects degrees of agency produced through the relationality of the human and non-human worlds in which objects are embedded and forged over time. In line with Ahren's (2001) understanding of agency – the socioculturally [and biophysically] mediated capacity to act – I use the term in a broad, open sense. Material agency includes the varying social actions of objects that emerge as they take on and influence changing identities, meaning, values, and functions by moving through changing social relations, production and exchange dynamics, and the political economy of rural and urban spaces (Hoskins, 2006; Miller, 2005). The relational agency of objects is forged by and further influences those who construct it, interact with it, use it or possess it in contrasting social worlds (Hoskins, 1998, 2006). The power of the Tingkep emerges as it takes on and shapes the personality and intentionality of its maker and user, the character of livelihoods and forest ecologies, and the intersecting ontological realms of human-nonhuman relations. The specific properties of the basket––its size, weave patterns, form and associated spirits––get caught up in other things to affect social and biophysical processes and ontologies. While I stop short at suggesting ‘vitality is intrinsic’ to the materiality of the Tingkep, I contend that the basket's vitality emerges within and through its socio-material elements in the context of different human and nonhuman relations (Bennett, 2009). Rather than being inert, the basket generates capacities to influence through the significance it takes on in different ontological spheres in upland and lowland settings. The Tingkep's story and power reflects similar dynamics in the region. The ways in which the identity, meaning and value of indigenous objects shape and are shaped by human-nonhuman relations is well documented in highland Southeast Asia (see Adams, 2005). As Milgram (2001) has shown for women's craft production in Ifugao, the Philippines, when local and indigenous lives are drawn deeper into capitalist relations, the socially embedded reproduction of certain material cultures, particularly appealing craft objects, may become socially alienated through circuits of commercial exchange (see also Grimes and Milgram, 2000; Webb, 2018). However, these authors also show that commodification processes revalue and alienate objects from indigenous social relations and worldviews in degrees rather than absolutes, influenced by places, peoples, and sociomaterial relations across time and space. How social and material worlds –and associated agency– emerge and diverge ontologically across space is thus best understood relationally; that is, in terms of how and why beliefs, meanings, and practices are ascribed, invested in or abandoned in terms of varied influences, constraints and opportunities. While the commodification of customary things is often partial, fragmented and potentially revitalising (see Salvador-Amores, 2011), as I show next, in cases where biopolitics powerfully converges in the uplands, the social and material dimensions of indigenous reproduction may become indivisible from the ontological basis of other corrosive worlds. 2.2. Biopolitical conjunctures — Pala'wan, Tingkep, missions and conservation Contemporary forest governance on Palawan Island reflects a combined legacy of colonial and post-colonial policies and practices, now entangled with global conservation discourses and initiatives. Since the Spanish (1565–1898) and American (1898–1935) colonial

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era, the Republic of the Philippines maintained colonial legal principles that placed all untitled lands in the public domain under state authority. Colonial–era ethnic and agricultural hierarchies informed land and forest use policy: lowland, predominantly Christian farmers were privileged as advanced agriculturalists, deemed to be closer to God, and typically secured private title, while indigenous swidden farmers, deemed backward and pagan, held usufruct plots on ‘public domain’ reserved as timberlands in the uplands (Dressler, 2009). Since independence in 1946, the central state retained property rights and management authority over forestlands, timber, and non-timber forest products (NTFPs), rendering indigenous peoples in upland areas as illegal occupants of state land. Against this backdrop, notions of the primitive, ‘upland pagan’ persisted and, reproducing the uplands as marginal spaces, informed where state and non-state actors travelled to reform life and livelihood. Ferdinand Marcos' regime (1965-1986) further centralised forest and land use governance to curb swidden and forest uses in the uplands and invest in commercial agriculture in the lowlands (Vitug, 2000).2 After Macros's reign in 1986, then-President Cory Aquino's constitutional reforms advocated devolved forest governance recognizing indigenous peoples' rights to land, livelihood and custom in ‘ancestral domains’ (Vitug, 2000). Decentralized upland programs continued to proliferate (e.g., the 1995 Community-based Forestry Management Agreements) but only offered partial recognition of upland peoples' usufruct holdings on the proviso they curb swidden and optimise livelihoods through sedentary practices (Dressler & Pulhin, 2010). Moreover, the (now ‘extended’) National Integrated Protected Areas Act of 1992, 2018 ostensibly involves indigenous peoples in protected area management, and the Indigenous Peoples' Right Act of 1997 afforded them de facto and de jure land rights through Certificates of Ancestral Domain Title (CADTs). As I show, however, these laws and programs progress essentialized notions of indigeneity and agriculture into conservation and development in the uplands of Palawan.

Palawan a Biosphere Reserve in 1990, with zoning and management schemes supporting the Palawan Integrated Development Project (PIADP). The PIADP (1982–1990) aimed to economically ‘develop’ indigenous communities and ‘arrest environmental degradation’ on Palawan through forest stabilisation projects (ADB 2002, 4). In 1992, this initial work produced a Strategic Environmental Plan (SEP) under the auspices of the EU-funded Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), which, while receiving nominal state funding, worked at arm's length from central state agencies. Drafted into law, the SEP launched the Environmentally Critical Areas Network (ECAN) (PCSD 1992). A graded zoning scheme, the ECAN divided the island into resource use areas with increasing levels of restrictions on activities along the coastal–mountain gradient, culminating in a no-touch core zone at higher elevations (Dressler, 2009). Although difficult to enforce, this zoning system reflected the PTFPP's biopolitical ‘operating space’ for rendering upland peoples and landscapes legible and manageable. In 1995, the PCSD began the seven-year Palawan Tropical Forest Protection Programme (or PTFPP). Although a para-state entity, the PTFPP broadly functioned as an NGO, supporting the SEP and ECAN zoning by implementing ‘alternative livelihood’ initiatives to stabilise Pala'wan swiddens and curb deforestation in the Matalingahan Range, southern Palawan. Along this mountain range, interventions unfolded in the ‘traditional’ (at 100 m asl) and ‘controlled’ use zone (100–500 m asl) to prevent swidden and NTFP harvesting from encroaching upon the buffer zones' restricted use area (500–1000 m asl), and the upper forests of the ‘no-touch’ core zone (1000 m asl). In this socio-spatial mix, the traditional use zone hosted agroforestry, contour farming, nursery production, livestock rearing, informal education centres, health services, anti-burning initiatives, and environmental awareness campaigns––interventions designed to stabilise swidden and protect older forests at upper elevations (Smith & Dressler, 2017). In these spaces, the PTFPP often worked through Pala'wan community leaders—such as the balyan (spiritual mediums, healers) and panglima (customary leaders, arbitrators)—to facilitate biopolitical ‘information-education-communication’ (IEC) campaigns on forest protection, conservation and catchment management in upland villages (sitios). Charismatic and invoking custom, panglima brokered the delivery of programs in villages through, and often leveraged by, the legitimacy of customary authority and political status with next-of-kin, NGOs and state actors. They often, for example, hosted ‘community radio’ programs to convey moral messages directly in villages and town about the poor practice of clearing and burning older forests (Smith & Dressler, 2017). These governmental efforts supported the PTFPP's objectives of ‘adding value’ to those livelihood activities, particularly NTFP-related, already generating an income from sales in lowland markets. The PTFPP soon worked through local leaders to push for added-value handicraft production that would ultimately feed into rural-to-urban (tourism) supply chains. One basket especially—the charismatic Tingkep—was pivotal in leveraging for ‘sustainable livelihoods’ schemes among the Pala'wan. In 1996, the PTFPP-initiated ‘Tamlang Catchment Management Plan’ drove an infrastructure and Tingkep production initiative in Kamantian, providing Pala'wan with additional income with the aim of curbing swidden and rehabilitating the ‘seriously degraded catchment’ (PTFPP, 2002a, p. 3). Almost a decade later, the Palawan chapter of Conservation International, working further south in Marenshewan, Bataraza, implemented similar schemes through Community Conservation Agreements (CCAs) with local panglima, ‘tribal council’ and families. CI selected Marenshewan on the premise that old growth forest was threatened because “kaingin [swidden] was deviating from the

2.2.1. Palawan, and PTFPP biopolitics Palawan's frontier status, natural wealth and aesthetic beauty drew corresponding struggles among local peoples, state and non-state actors to preserve, appropriate and control its natural resources (Eder & Evangelista, 2015). The 1970s and 1980s saw Christian and Muslim migrants leave the country's conflict-ridden areas to settle the island's central and southern lowlands. Starting with swidden, most transitioned into paddy rice (basakan) and copra plantations, extending upland into indigenous spaces (Dressler, 2009)—co-mingling with Pala'wan and other groups. While central Palawan was subject to greater levels of in-migration and resource extraction, the island's south experienced less extractivism, retained extensive forest cover, and hosted uplanders less integrated in lowland political economies (Eder & Fernandez, 1996; MacDonald, 2007). In the 1980s and 1990s, the post-Marcos era ushered in international and domestic NGOs with a mandate to redress forest exploitation and champion indigenous rights to land and livelihoods on the island (Vitug, 1993).3 Amid rising environmentalism, UNESCO declared 2 In time, PD 705 led to the formulation of various forest land occupancy program such as Forest Occupancy and Management (FOM) in 1975, Communal Tree Farming (CTF) in 1978, and Family Approach to Reforestation (FAR) in 1979. While these programs were seen as the forerunners of community forestry, they did more to regulate swidden famers' freedom than offer livelihood support (Dressler, 2009). 3 Major social and environmental movements soon reached the national and international level and ultimately led to a nation-wide logging ban in 1993 under Fidel Ramos' administration (1992–1998). One campaign was particularly instrumental in curbing deforestation. By generating a million-signature petition, the Haribon Foundation—an influential environmental NGO from Manila—successfully lobbied the preceding Aquino government to declare a logging ban on Palawan for twenty-five years (Vitug, 1993). A protracted and acrimonious debate between local environmentalists and Alvarez (and his

(footnote continued) companies) quickly surfaced in national newspapers. Each side expounded on and upheld their respective positions: ecosystem integrity and land rights versus “sustained” employment, respectively. 126

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traditional practices … [and so] is a major threat to the remaining intact forest in the […] strict protection zones”. To counter this, farmers were paid as “community rangers [who] in coordination with the local peoples would monitor the area to ensure old growth forest and threatened species would not be cleared for swidden and harvested for consumption or sale.” In addition to paying Pala'wan farmers to plant tree crops in swidden fallows as the PTFPP typically did (CI factsheet, undated, p. 1), the CI incentivised the Agreement by facilitating the weaving and trade of Tingkep in the community. In these spaces, Pala'wan livelihoods were being optimised for ‘sustainability’ through the Tingkep itself. It was in Kamantian, in particular, where the Tingkep's character and meaning—imbued with spirits and forest patterns—drew families together to nourish the basket's vitality in myth and ritual, and where they would soon produce more baskets for markets owned by others. In time, the Tingkep's livelihood uses and customary capacities were remade as exotic ‘heritage products’ for touristic consumption. Yet just as the PTFPP was re-making Tingkep custom to incentivise sedentarism, the SDA was busy unmaking Pala'wan life and livelihood through its own biopolitical logic.

ascribe agency exclusively to the Divine. As Howell (2009) notes, ‘the radical ‘disenchanting’ of the material world … ’ was the ‘defining project of modernity’ in such missionary work in the Philippines (258). Among many missions, the Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) became prominent in the remote southern uplands of Palawan, and known locally for assertive proselytization. Infiltrating Pala'wan domesticity, the SDA worked through upland life to discipline body and soul over several decades. 2.2.3. Biopolitics, living the SDA way on Palawan Based in American Baptist ideals, the SDA emerged from Millerite Evangelism in the United States in the 1830s (Bull & Lockhart, 2006, p. 4).4 Following a Millenarian tradition, SDA beliefs dictated that Sabbath be held on Saturday and that disciples abandon practices that ‘polluted the soul’ (i.e., smoking, drinking, eating (certain) meats, etc) so they may transcend to Heaven, ‘the Sanctuary’ (Bull & Lockhart, 2006). As the ‘medical missionary people of the world’ (Bull & Lockhart, 2006, 14), SDA missions spread across Southeast Asia to establish elaborate camps with hospital services, living quarters, and churches in upland areas. Given the Philippines' colonial ties with America, SDA missions soon expanded in the country's frontier, including southern Palawan. The SDA have been on Palawan since the 1950s, and established their Kamantian camp in the early 1990s (∼1991–1994).5 Initiated by an SDA member and then taken over by a Pastor and his wife for the last two decades, the mission now regularly hosts Adventist Frontier Missionaries (AFM); young, ambitious American volunteers called Frontier Adventists who replenish the Kamantian camp to fulfil ‘God's mandate’ to ‘Reach the Unreached for Jesus’ (Guerrero, 2010).6 With sermons in Pala'wan dialect, the AFM practice is drawn to where ‘Satan's presence’ is considered strongest amongst Pala'wan who uphold custom, including Tingkep making, myth and ritual. Anticipating the 2nd Advent of Christ, the pastor and young missionaries work patiently to expunge customary beliefs and practices. In Kamantian, AFM missionizing involves various biopolitical technologies, disciplining and conditioning practices: linguistic and translation work, individual conversions and in-depth conversions of Pala'wan trainees and, ultimately, establishing local leadership to maintain the mission. Known as the AFM Church Planting Model, this biopolitical approach works recursively to overcome ‘paganism’ and ‘animism’ in ‘God's Church’ through long-term, village-based engagement guided by the Pastor and his wife. By studying Pala'wan language, livelihood and culture, the Frontier missionaries aim to first identify and meet community needs and concerns so as to draw Pala'wan into the ‘positive’ aspects of their faith (e.g., medical care, livelihood ‘support’, labour opportunities). Through Church assemblies and prayer, they introduce more Pala'wan to the faith to become disciples, identifying those among them with leadership traits. Potential Pala'wan leaders are then approached and nurtured through ‘leadership development’ and told to spread the faith through kin relations—a strategy similar to that of the PTFPP. Those Pala'wan devoted to the faith become chosen ‘future leaders’ who endear themselves to the Adventist missionaries, spending considerable time by their side and expressing devotion. Next, the most prominent among the Pala'wan SDA leaders become entrusted as ‘maturing disciples’ to continue the upland mission. Finally, other ‘follow-up’ initiatives support the SDA mission with financial assistance and communication with senior leaders who visit the camp.7 Overall, this process serves to perpetuate the cycle of recruitment and socialisation of Pala'wan ‘believers’, and the proliferation of SDA

2.2.2. Evangelical biopolitics in the uplands As a state extension, the Catholic Church led proselytizing efforts along geographical, agricultural and ethnic lines throughout the Spanish colonial period, and had secured broad oversight of more ‘accessible’ lowland peoples, land and agriculture (Dressler, 2009). In response, many indigenous peoples retreated to, or remained in, highland areas to avoid proselytization and state pressures (Scott, 1974). Yet the Spanish state and Catholic churches' efforts to control and proselytise had little traction in the southern islands of Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago and Palawan. Powerful Sultanates of Maguindanao, Cotabato and Sulu, emerging from the region's Islamisation in the late 1300s, retained control of southern regions through religion, trade and tribute since at least 1511, repulsing Spanish efforts to missionize and colonise their territories (McKenna, 1998). The Sulu Sultanate's territory covered the Sulu archipelago, northeastern Borneo and southern Palawan. Affiliated with the Sultanate, Muslim Tausug emerged as ‘trade intermediaries’ in southern Palawan in the 1770s. Working between the Sultanate, the British and Chinese merchants, lowland Tausug drew on indigenous labour to acquire forest, marine and agricultural products to feed the broader ‘Sulu Zone’ trade network (Warren, 2007, 137). In many respects, Tausug traders and political figures were more interested in controlling indigenous labour so as to maintain their ‘exchange portfolio’ than governing and remaking uplanders (Smith, 2015). After 1898, lowland Tausug and their allies also drove back American colonial efforts to control trade and missionize. Catholic influence in the southern uplands was thus relatively minor, with Pala'wan melding aspects of Islam with customary beliefs. Evangelical Baptists soon tried to change this. While Christian settlers and missions only established themselves in southern Palawan in the 1950s, it was after American colonial rule and independence in 1946 that Protestant churches fixed their gaze upon the ‘untamed’ and ‘uncivilized’ uplands (Howell, 2009). American Protestant churches, in particular, sought to missionize the Philippine frontier for religious and nationalistic purpose (Clymer, 1980), claiming that “Philippine Catholicism [had] produced only superficial Christians … [with] little more than a veneer over a culture that remained, in important respects, heathenish” (41). Protestant Baptist missions believed they had fertile grounds to expand their evangelical mandate into the Philippine uplands (Clymer, 1980; Arcilla, 1998). In areas where both Catholic missionaries and state interventions were ‘unsuccessful’, over the decades, Protestant missions executed assertive biopolitical campaigns of ‘supervising, punishing, conditioning, and correcting’ indigenous uplanders' customs and beliefs (Paredes, 2006, p. 522). In most cases, indigenous subjects were forbidden from melding older beliefs and practices with their new faith (Paredes, 2006). Baptist reformists retained Calvinist recognition of purification that involved the separation of the material and spiritual domains in order to

4

Lead by William Miller, ‘Millerite’ preaching spread throughout New England at this time, warning of the ‘destruction of the world and … coming of the Messiah’ (Bull and Lockhart, 2006, 4). 5 http://pam.adventist.ph/about-pam/history/accessed September 15, 2017. 6 www.afmonline.org accessed September 15, 2017. 7 Every year a new crop of young AFM, typically American, come to work in the Kamantian area. In online blogs they write about their experiences of ‘watch [ing] for the transformation of God … surely working in their lives and in their homes … [to see] another witchdoctor being converted” (accessed Sept 18, 2016, http://afmonline.org/post/eyewitness). 127

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churches in the southern uplands. In the context of PTFPP governance, the mission reinforces adherence to faith through disciplining technologies, conditions, and strictures to constrain (so as to optimise) life and livelihood among many and to generate resistance among few.

Palawan. In Kamantian and the Tamlang watershed, the main study site, I speak of the Pala'wan Mekagwaq-Tamlang of Brookes Point—one of several subgroups (MacDonald, 2007) (see Map 1). Located about 60–80 km south, lies the minor study site, Marenshewan, Bataraza Municipality, where several Pala'wan household clusters exist (of unknown subgroup origin). Despite ethnolinguistic differences, the following describes the broader, shared human-nonhuman relations of Pala'wan and how they inform the Tingkep's place in upland life amidst biopolitical reform (Plate 2).

2.3. Pala'wan livelihoods and Tingkep vitality Numbering approximately 50,000, the indigenous Pala'wan live in the valleys, mountains and, increasingly, lowlands of southern

Map 1. Kamantian, Brookes Point, Palawan.

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they apprehend and practice swidden and other activities (MacDonald, 2007; Smith, 2015). In addition to humans, certain Pala'wan still ascribe the qualification ‘taw t’ (variously spelled Taw, Tao – a human, person) to various superhuman (non-human) agents that Pala'wan address in their rituals (e.g., Master of Rice, Empu't Paray) (MacDonald, 2007). These non-human agents may hold human characteristics, such as the emotional qualities of distress and madness (MacDonald, 2007). Belyan mediate such non-human relations by apprehending (in trances or dreams) guidance from spirit-beings on whether to clear older forests for swidden and or harvest non-timber forest products (NTFPs) for making Tingkep from the sacred forests (Lihien) in which deities reside (MacDonald, 2007). The forest landscapes from which the Tingkep is drawn are full of invisible human-beings difficult or impossible to comprehend; they may reside in odd rocks, forest thickets, fallows and large trees (balete, ficus spp) often standing alone in cleared fields. Such nonhuman entities (lenggam - evil spirits, Gila'en - the mad one, tawa't lingeb—invisible people of darkness) belong to the underworld and roam freely in older, darker forests. Drawn from these human-nonhuman relations in forest settings, the Tingkep mediates social relations across individuals, kin and community among the Pala'wan. Among many Pala'wan, the core of human and non-human relations—including the forest spaces from which Tingkep emerges—is the notion of Kurudwa (soul or life force) that enlivens and animates all living things (MacDonald, 2007). Kurudwa reflects a person's spiritual aspects that survive death and continue to existence. Found in various parts of the body, the kurudwa reflects the multiplicity of the soul, which may leave the body during dreams and trance. The Kurudwa transcends the human body as a vital force (and principle) that enlivens both plants and animals (MacDonald, 2007). It animates non-human entities with degrees of agency—including talisman (mutya) placed in Tingkep—and provides a source of consciousness and volition (MacDonald, 2007). Kurudwa has a presence in forests, fields and fallows: various insects (e.g., louse) and animals (e.g., white chickens) that roam fields may represent the human soul (MacDonald, 2007, 125). While a growing number neglect kurudwa, to many (middle-aged, elderly) Pala'wan it still reflects the multiplicity of life, spirit and materiality that saturates the ontological realm of forests from which the Tingkep is sourced and embedded. 2.3.1. Tingkep origins and forest assemblages There is no one story of Tingkep origins. Rather, Pala'wan elders offer various narratives that converge on shared characteristics concerning the basket's origins, meanings, materiality in ritual and livelihood. Tingkep origins centre on the World of the Creator (Empu) long inflected by Jesus, tawa't gebaq (invisible people of the forest) or tawa't lingeb (people of darkness), other spiritual deities (e.g., diwata, Linamin ät Kundu) and key forest species. Pala'wan narratives of Tingkep origins relate to Empu but also tell of how tawa't gebaq mediate and facilitate Tingkep powers across corporeal and spiritual worlds. In cautious voices, elderly Pala'wan tell of a lone, crazed, invisible entity with human-like characteristics who wanders through the forests day and night to produce the basket in terms of what is seen and experienced. This malevolent entity resides in older forests and shape-shifts from human-like figures to an anthropophagous beast with a long tail and sharp fangs. Although younger Pala'wan seldom recall his name, older balyan and weavers refer to this shape-shifter as ‘gila’ (crazy) or ‘gila-Gila'en’ due to his crazed, twisted fate. Noting that the Gila-en's madness leads him to wander through the forest, he receives signs from Empu about designs from complex forest patterns and which plant materials to weave the baskets with. As the Gila'en gazes into the forest, he finds ways for the baskets to take on certain weaves, patterns and colours. Older Pala'wan thus regard Gila'en with deep fear and respect (Plate 3). Other elderly Pala'wan suggest the Gila'en writes these designs into the landscape and directs elders to carefully follow them and teach others over time. Others had designs emerge in their dreams. Caution is due. While Gila'en conveys to others what he conceives and does, the

Plate 2. Kamantian and surrounds.

Broadly, changing Pala'wan cosmologies and beliefs organise the world into various intersecting realms: elements of monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam) coexist with a powerful human, corporeal, material realm and a non-human, invisible spiritual realm of malevolent and benevolent spirits (Empu’ Banar and various diwata, deities) who dwell within and beyond the visible landscape (MacDonald, 2007). The supreme-being (Pala'wan God), Empu—whose emphasis is privileged but typically coexists with Christian and Islamic religious figures—oversees the various masters and deities of natural processes and spiritual phenomena residing in the heavens (MacDonald, 1993, 2004). Each realm manifests in and influences natural phenomena, livelihoods and forest materials drawn on for Tingkep making. In this way, the Tingkep is embedded in and mediates complex cosmos, fluid customs and changing practice relationally. Pala'wan forest landscapes, materiality and livelihoods are co-constituted in ritual practices and myth that connect changing non-human and human worlds. In particular, the construction of personhood informs Pala'wan relationships with the non-human world, especially select animals (e.g., wild boars) and plants (e.g., rice), and further influences how

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material assemblages inform the composite, Tingkep. Scanning the forest with Gila'en, the weaver looks for bamboo and rattan species for the body and skin, and rattan for the exterior braces of the basket. Supple but strong bamboo species such as busneg and binsag are stripped and shaven down (meglegis) and ‘decored’ for the soft pith (embukan). Next the strips are woven together with either a single (sembatu-sembatu) or double overlapping weave (dwa-dwa) of two colours (with busneg blackened with resin [saheng or alamciga] soot, smoke or charcoal) as the basket's skin, Bilug ät Tingkep. Weaving continues until the desired height of the basket is reached (NTFP-EP, 2008, 23). Made of robust rattan, such as arurung and lebsikan, the basket's four legs (tiked) serve as sturdy braces, running along vertically to the mouth of the basket. An internal set of braces (patideg), run parallel to the tiked, towards the end forming the basal cross-base (sulambew), made of palm (betbat) or rattan (NTFP-EP, 2008, 23). A final, upper brace (sabet) runs horizontally around the upper section of the basket. The stitching (pengma) of the braces consists of the strong, fibrous nito vine, which fastens the woven skin to the braces, base upper and rim (semalang) of the basket (to which the ‘lid’ or takep of the Tingkep is attached). The upper semalang is made of softer wood (enapung), bamboo (bikal and binsag) (NTFP-EP, 2008) and harder rattan (parasan) at the basal semalang of the basket. Together, each frame creates a strong structure that allows the Pala'wan to use the basket for varied, interrelated purposes from carrying forest objects during and after the hunt (e.g., birds, bats and herbs) to associated talisman, and ritual healing practices (Plate 4). The basket's skin is alive. Master weaver, Perla Abnang describes how Gila'en and the ancestors forge other weaving patterns from unique forest flora and fauna including, among many, Mata puney, Mata ulèd, Bangbabang, and Duen Emagas:

Plate 3. Pala'wan elders showing their craft.

female elder, Hamma Tiblic, warns ‘that if you follow the designs in your dreams then you must do them well, or you will become possessed by gila and go mad’. The Gila'en was born insane, so he creates baskets with madness. The weaver thus knows they must craft with care, or they too will go insane; if they do not complete baskets or weave them improperly, the Gila's insanity transfers to the weaver. Consistently weaving seven or more baskets well allows for good fortune to replace insanity. Learning how to craft Tingkep remains a serious social affair. As elder Dionysia Itom stresses, “the Gila said this is the only Tingkep you must follow; don't ever laugh while doing it, make it one by one, two by two until you have learned, and then you can pass it along to the present generation.” Abiding by the Gila'en remains important; if one fails to listen to him, questions him, or looks him in the eye when doing so, one will fall sick or transform into a beast, be eaten alive or have one's soul claimed. Here corporeal, superhuman and cosmological worlds constitute basket, maker, and future maker in ways that reaffirm Pala'wan ontologies. 2.3.2. Constructing patterns of nature While the name Tingkep is derived from the shortened form of tinakep (covered) or pinegtakep (used to cover), referring to the cover and closing over the basket's base (NTFP-EP, 2008, 20), complex socio-

Plate 4. Tingkep structure and materials.

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“ …. the Mata Puney – ‘the eye of the puney bird (dove)‘ … It is from the Gila'en who looked into the trees and saw a Puney Bird—a bird with shiny green and blue feathers with a curious eye. As the bird always looked the Gila'en in the eye, he saw a cross in the middle of it and said ‘weave this’ …” Mata Puney

Here, the Mata Puney contrasts with another weave pattern resembling the eye of the ground worm, Mata Ulèd. Abnang suggests it came from “where ancestors lived. They would watch the worms eat their cassava and its leaves and copy the worm's eyes as it ate their root crops”.

Plate 5. Kudyapi, Long-necked, two stringed lute.

and constitutes the human-nonhuman worlds of Pala'wan––offering some certainty to a world being partitioned and reformed (Plate 5). In other cases, the spiritual and everyday uses of Tingkep converge with sourcing a livelihood from forests, particularly during the hunt. Pala'wan hunters carry powerful amulet/talisman (mutya, Tag.) in smaller Tingkep sashed around their neck. The mutya draws game closer or strengthens the hunter during a pursuit, increasing chances of a successful hunt. Mutya are valued things such as pearls, gems or dried faunal parts (e.g., wild pig hair, bird feathers). Also known as ebet, these objects ward off evil spirits, prolong life, or cause immediate death. Overall, then, the Tingkep's form, character and meanings influence Pala'wan life and livelihood across familial relations in Kamantian, Marenshewan and beyond. In time, however, the socio-material basis of Tingkep in Pala'wan life mediated convergent biopolitical efforts to remake and unmake upland lives and livelihoods through the basket and associated social relations, sometimes weakening such efforts but often being subjected to and corroded by them.

…. the Bangbabang - ‘is the wings of the butterfly (bangbabang)‘. “We got this one from our ancestors who copied the big wings of the bangbabang butterfly. They saw the butterfly sip the nectar from the flowers in the forest.” Bangbabang (or Binengbavang)

Many other designs also stem from forest fauna and flora, such as the Deun Emagas design from the leaves of the emagas palm tree.

2.4. Damned in-between: the biopolitics of governing from above and below

Deun Emagas

2.4.1. Re-making Tingkep and ‘sustainable’ upland livelihoods Since the 1990s, the Pala'wan no longer just wove Tingkep for livelihoods and customary practices but increasingly as souvenirs to meet the rising demand from domestic and international tourists.9 In the early 1990s, (footnote continued) of the sweet fragrance of ruruku (Sanning tag, basilica). Linamen's power penetrates the Tingkep and animates the figurine (with Parina sp (Poaceae) also being burnt to attract her) (Revel-MacDonald, 1977). In this instance, only smaller, well-worn Tingkep can be used, as the smaller size, lid and smell of infused blood from forest game contains the anger, movement and escape of Linamen (who does not recognize foreign containers such as plastic buckets) Once Linamen is drawn inside the Tingkep, the balyan performing the ritual brushes ruruku on the head and body of the figurine as a blessing to Linamen ät kunduq. Soon the sound of the Kudyapi and Pagang fills the house by others playing the instruments. In that moment Kundu ät Tingkep unfolds in earnest with the balyan asking the figurine to dance the kunduq (Revel-MacDonald, 1977). Here the figure dances to the left and right without touching the floor, swaying in the air, but may then rap the floor in time to the ritual tune pägkulintangan (Revel-MacDonald, 1977). Without the Kudyapi playing and directional chanting, the Linamen (and basket) is unlikely to dance; the Kudyapi must be played continuously–making the basket, spirit and music an inseparable, vital force. 9 While the baskets can be woven at almost any time, most are woven during the rainy season when less time is spent in swidden fields, and usually in the warmer afternoon when other forest uses and farming are less desirable. Typically, it would take an expert weaver in Kamantian less time, say 3–5 days to weave smaller Tingkep (with less material, area in construction), and anywhere from 7 days to weave a larger Tingkep, or Tabig. Only medium or larger

The Tingkep's vitality also extends to the ritual practice, Kundu ät Tingkep, across certain households and communities. A ritual for varied purposes, the Kundu ät Tingkep draws family, kin and others together in the largest room of a family's house, or big house (kalang banwa), for specific situations and circumstances. Using a smaller, older Tingkep, dressed as a figurine, Balyan call upon the female forest spirit (Linamen, residing in sacred lihien forests) to answer questions of familial or community concern over which uncertainty remains (e.g., health, love, marriage, ideal hunting grounds, and weather). At full moon, the music of the Kudyapi (the twostringed lute) and the pagang (bamboo zither), the sweet smell of ruruku (Sanning tag, basilica) and parina (Poaceae) accompany the ritual to beckon linamen inside the basket and fulfil the ritual—only smaller Tingkep can be used so as to contain linamen's strength. 8 In this space, the Tingkep mediates 8 In detail, the Tingkep figurine dances as the balyan invokes Linamen ät Kunduq. The balyan calls in chanting prayer for the female forest spirit, Linamen ät Kunduq. Linamen is the powerful, beautiful and dangerous lady of the forest who, hearing the invocation, is drawn to and moves inside the figurine because

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In addition to inducing Tingkep value chains, the PTFPP also funded and managed key infrastructure in Kamantian, building a bunkhouse for visiting officials, a clinic for ‘traditional healing’ and a school house (accredited by the Department of Education) involving ‘alternative learning systems’ (literacy etc). The PTFPP applied for timber permits and certification for the entire infrastructure, which ultimately supported Tingkep sales and other livelihood support systems put in place (e.g., goats, chickens etc). Sofrano, his family and friends were charged with maintaining the infrastructure. Some years later, the NGO, Conservation International (CI), pursued a similar campaign farther south in Marenshewan, Bataraza. Here, a CI staff member facilitated the trade of Tingkep by bringing baskets from the uplands for sale in shops in PPC, while also having farmers plant fruit trees in fallows. As with the PTFPP, CI helped expedite the production and sale of the baskets, working independent of and in line with Pala'wan suki. In doing so, they hoped that the baskets could generate additional income for Pala'wan so as to offset the impact of not clearing forests for swidden—as enshrined in the Community Conservation Agreement between CI and Pala'wan in Marenshewan. CI and PTFPP thus followed a similar logic of weaving more, planting more tree crops in fallows, and cutting less older forest for swidden. In both areas, however, the planting of high value trees in swiddens simply stopped farmers from using fields again (for fear of burning trees and due to poor soil fertility), causing them to clear new tracts of old forest with fertile soils in the interior. The same Pala'wan farmers whose swiddens were being spatially constrained by planting trees in fallows were now ramping up Tingkep production to meet the tourism industry's rising demand for the baskets.

only a few itinerant traders such as Eliza Salazar and Irma Abueg from Puerto Princesa City (PPC) and Manila travelled to purchase Tingkep from Pala'wan weavers in Kamantian, Brookes Point, and Marenshewan, Bataraza. They sold the baskets to the few souvenir shops in PPC at the time. Since the early 2000s, however, the nature and scale of weaving Tingkep changed dramatically. Pala'wan weavers produced more and more baskets for 1) NGO programs that enhanced production and sales with souvenir shops to raise cash incomes to supplement livelihoods in order to stabilise swidden in support of forest conservation; and 2) as souvenirs for traders who provided Pala'wan with much needed cash by increasing sales to the now numerous souvenir shops catering to the burgeoning tourism industry in PPC. Many Pala'wan households were now harvesting NTFPs and crafting Tingkep more intensively as commodities to be sold in urban markets, alienating the basket from customary practices. In the Kamantian area, the weaving of Tingkep as souvenirs began in earnest when, in 1996, the Pala'wan broker (and buyer), Sofrano Aguilar, had learned from earlier traders and the PTFPP how to buy and sell Tingkep in the area. Initially, Sofrano and his mother (an expert Tingkep weaver) sold baskets to Eliza the trader, who had established an expansive Tingkep sourcing area in the south. The baskets were sold in Eliza's own store, the Kamantian Handicraft Shop, which she branded as a ‘cooperative’. As the terms of trade with Eliza soured, Sofrano soon traded the basket on behalf of his own people in Kamantian. Building on what he had learned from Eliza and other traders, and now the PTFPP's assistance, Sofrano took over her ‘Tingkep territory’. With a PTFPP satellite office in Brookes proper, fellow Pala'wan and then PTFPP staff member, Artisa Mandaw, were mandated to implement the programme's ‘Tamlang Catchment Management Plan, with Kamantian emerging as a key project launching site. Facilitating a “Livelihood Appraisal and Product Scanning” (LAPS) initiative, Artisa and other staff identified (largely by visiting Sofrano's house) the Tingkep as a potential ‘heritage product’. According to Artisa, ‘Sofrano's Tingkep's were just idle’. Step by step, she worked with Sofrano to develop the weaving and marketing side of the Tingkep, matching ‘local skills and designs to the market’. Negotiated by Artisa, Sofrano soon met Pesti the owner of ‘Culture Shack’, a souvenir shop in PPC to do the ‘very first costing, sizing, and texture analysis of the Tingkep ever’. In turn, Pesti helped Sofrano set a up a bank account, secure a registered licence, and expand his trade beyond Kamantian. Through PTFPP support, Artisa then requested the well-known Robert Lane of ‘Galeria de las Islas’ to come to Brooke's Point to help enhance the quality of the basket. In time, Sofrano learned how to identify the bestquality weaves for orders from other weavers in Kamantian and beyond, and, in one bold move, took a bus loaded with Tingkep to the Culture Shack. Sofrano soon offered Pala'wan weavers cash advances for baskets on behalf of the PTFPP (and Petsi) and other souvenir shops in the city, further developing his own supply chain between weavers and shops in PPC. As part of the PTFPP Catchment Management Programme, PTFPP extension officers continued to promote Tingkep and other handicraft production among uplanders in Kamantian. A PTFPP ‘Community Microproject Implementation’ (2002b) report reveals that ‘marketing is important for the sustainability of projects … ’ and that ‘a range of suggested basket sizes is indicated [but that it is better] to pursue a small range of higher quality goods which have a high demand’ (30). The Tingkep fit this description, with PTFPP focusing on enhancing weaves, producing varied patterns and ensuring the supply of smaller baskets. Amid supporting Tingkep weaving as a financial incentive to clear less forest for swidden closer to the Catchment's core zone, the PTFPP also distributed tree seedlings. Nudged to produce more Tingkep, Pala'wan farmers planted more tree crops in mature swidden fallows (following the logic that Pala'wan who planted valuable trees in swiddens, would be less inclined to clear and burn their fallows).

2.4.2. Souvenir supply chains and Othering With increasing tourism, more souvenir shops opened in PPC to sell the now coveted Tingkep. Representing it as traditional, authentic and exotic, both NGOs and souvenir shops helped stoke tourism demand for the basket. Working on set contracts drawn informally between souvenir shop and trader, Sofrano, other traders and local suki commissioned and collected significant numbers of different sized Tingkep from Kamantian and surrounds. As connections with souvenir shop owners expanded in PPC, traders visited Kamantian and areas nearby every few months to collect their orders, often securing up to 30 or more baskets from one village. Held in a small thatch hut (kubo) ‘storehouse’ near Kamantian, the stock of baskets was replenished regularly (Plate 6).

(footnote continued) sized Tingkep and Tabig are made for household, domestic purposes such as storing rice, root crops or cloths in the home, whereas the smaller-sized Tingkep are now increasingly made as ornamentals or as souvenirs for tourism sales.

Plate 6. Weaving smaller Tingkep for traders. 132

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In Kamantian, Sofrano worked with Pala'wan families who showed an interest and had reputations as expert weavers. In 2013, he tried paying all Pala'wan in Kamantian the same price of P70, 100, and 200 (∼USD 1 = P 45) for small, medium and large Tingkep, respectively. He then sold the same sized baskets to souvenir shops with a modest mark-up of about P100, 150, and 300, with the trader receiving the difference. Souvenir shops, however, sold the baskets for double the initial purchasing price (e.g., small Tingkep sold between P300-350) (Plate 7).

inability to meet demand: “If they have food they stop making baskets. If they have hunger and expenses, then they make baskets. We only get half our orders. But this reflects the original Pala'wan way of life, and not the civilised Christian way – but …. we still value the traditional aspects of the basket.” 2.4.3. Livelihood pressures and outcomes While no Pala'wan family only ever focused on weaving Tingkep, engaging in diverse activities for subsistence (e.g., swidden, hunting, honey harvesting etc) and cash income (e.g., rattan, almaciga resin, wage labour etc), many women and children did spend considerable amounts of time weaving baskets for bulk orders, particularly during the ‘less busy’ rainy season. Based on a questionnaire (30 hhs, 10 of whom wove consistently), for example, some families had their children and cousins weave up to 250 small Tingkep baskets to meet large orders. The year of weaving paid off: these households earned an annual average income of P4, 844 (USD100.00) producing smaller Tingkep—the most frequently sourced basket for souvenirs.13 Overall, the average income from Tingkep sales across all weaving households was P3,518. This peso amount was higher than the average annual income from the labour-intensive harvest and sale of NTFPs (e.g., Almaciga resin (272 kilos) averaged P2,680 and honey (5 gallons, 22 kilos) averaged P360 among weaving households in 2013) (Plate 8).

Plate 7. Pala'wan trader selling larger Tingkep in city.

Pala'wan families also received cash advances for medium (10 or so) and larger-sized (20–30 plus) Tingkep orders that helped cover livelihood costs, particularly sundries and rice at the end of the swidden season. Pala'wan households, typically families with several young children, often spent their advances quickly, only to request more advances on the promise to weave more to repay initial instalments. Few, however, achieved this. While mothers and daughters (and sometimes fathers) produced more baskets on an advance-basis, the more families went into debt, with some owing as much as P1,000. As Pala'wan families struggled to repay their debt, Sofrano and other traders' debt also grew and ate into their capital, especially when shops that had placed orders failed to pay them. 10 11 In time, the traders suggested they could no longer offer advances to weaving families in Kamantian and so avoided buying baskets from those families who could not repay their debts. Many families remained indebted and tied to Pala'wan brokers who managed the trade.12 In cases where mothers laboured to produce more baskets to cover debt, time was likely taken (or displaced) from other livelihood activities. During a peak in Tingkep sales, it was Christian Filipino souvenir shop owners who often spoke disparagingly about the Pala'wan

Plate 8. Producing many smaller Tingkep for sale in the city.

Far from the PTFPP's (and CI's) ‘Sustainable Livelihood’ ideal, then, the intensive nature of Tingkep production made it increasingly difficult to locate the key NTFPs needed for weaving near homes (e.g., buldung, rattan, Calamus spp), requiring that weaving families travel further to find suitable materials to meet orders. Interviews with weavers suggest that those producing Tingkep intensively went so far as to hire other Pala'wan to collect NTFPs further upland. The need to travel further to collect materials also arose from the difficulty in accessing NTFPs from nearby lihien (sacred) forest in which various deities reside.

10

In some instances, the suki and trader will collect many baskets and drop them off at shops without being paid, hoping that they will be, the next time around. 11 Some traders and shop owners even suggested that while the baskets are still sought after in Puerto Princesa City, they no longer readily buy the baskets due to an oversupply of stock and lower rate of clearance. Apparently, the Tingkep market had saturated, with fewer potential purchases in Kamantian. 12 Other Pala'wan also work as part-time brokers to collect Tingkep for traders and skim a small cut per basket they collect. In other cases, it is local Panglima who, wearing two hats, work as Tingkep brokers (suki and direct trader), collecting and directly selling as many as 30 baskets directly to shops in PPC. Some even established their own mini-monopoly. Mamang Sumbar, a panglima from Bataraza, established himself as the exclusive buyer from certain families and also prohibited them and other weavers from selling their baskets in the local market.

13

However, those weavers to whom I spoke suggested these values were higher than normal, with larger bulk orders raising their return on a one-off basis. While most households produced smaller baskets, the few who had produced (5 hhs) medium to (5 hhs) larger-sized baskets earned P1,380 and P28,960 in 2013, respectively. 133

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Only by performing the ungsud ritual and gaining permission from the spirit world was it possible to access materials in lihien forest. Multiple initiatives aiming to ‘enhance’ Pala'wan livelihoods through intensifying Tingkep production and otherwise drew the Pala'wan and Tingkep further in line with lowland market relations, leading to alienating impacts and outcomes. The conditions of such production thus took the Tingkep's embedded character further from familial relations and deeper into the commodity relations of lowland areas.

Tingkep to carry smaller game (birds, Palawan flying squirrels, Hylopetes nigripes etc) with mutya powers, many were prohibited from eating wild pig and small riverine species. Others suggested they were forbidden to eat any meat whatsoever. Denying the Pala'wan the right to hunt and collect with Tingkep, took away important sources of animal protein (in a starch heavy diet), constrained investing in and sharing of hunting knowledge and practices to younger Pala'wan, and denied the cultural symbolism of Tingkep and potency of mutya during the hunt. Second, the SDA forbade revered balyan from engaging in customary rituals (e.g., Tingkep ät Kundu), applying customary healing (with ruruku) and mythos, and reflecting on legends and heroes.14 In each instance, the social nourishment of Tingkep was cut short, affecting ritual obligations and beliefs. Third, Pala'wan were not allowed to construct, use and exchange customary materials, including the use of gongs (agung) for ritual dancing (tarek) and use of the two-stringed lute (kudyapi) and pagang (bamboo zither) for the Tingkep ät Kundu ritual. No longer could these instruments accompany singing for courtship and other matters of social reproduction. As Rio Ugatan noted:

2.4.4. Unmaking Tingkep, optimising (social bodies) the SDA way As NGOs and traders were busy working from Kamantian and surrounds to valorise Tingkep as the means of optimising tradition and livelihood sustainability, the SDA mission expanded its own structure by claiming and building on PTFPP infrastructure. As the PTFPP neared completion in 2002, the pastor and wife took control of the bunkhouse, clinic and school as their own. With their own literacy and religious program already running well before the PTFPP, the SDA harnessed other biopolitical materials to further weave evangelical aspirations into Kamantian to reform Pala'wan life and livelihood, and the Tingkep's place therein. In 2013, while the pastor and his wife were on ‘sabbatical’, several young American Frontier Adventists managed the SDA camp with a Sabbath school, church, small hospital, living-quarters and a helicopter with landing strip. Crucially, refusing Pala'wan elders' initial requests for a formal high school (after the PTFPP learning centre closed), the SDA decided to build a secondary school and dormitory for Pala'wan children to live at during the week, much to their parents' disapproval. Moreover, the hospital offered ‘free’ medical services as incentives to draw Pala'wan closer to the faith. The young missionaries were quick to point out how their treatment of Pala'wan inflicted with cholera had brought their ‘ignorant pagans’ closer to the Church and God. In 2012, several Pala'wan reportedly succumbed to cholera from water contaminated by leaving the deceased to decay near a stream that served as a source of water. While the AFM's online account narrated the story somewhat differently, it was clear they celebrated their ‘biopolitical moment’ in treating the cholera as a way of bringing once reluctant Pala'wan leaders closer to ‘God's watchful eye’: ‘in the past [they were not] receptive to the clinic or the church, but this cholera epidemic has opened a door … Out of a bad situation, God has provided an opportunity to read the village … for eternity” (sourced March 16, 2017, http://afmonline.org/post/cholera). The AFM camp also established its own livelihood-trading system in Kamantian. Pala'wan disciples worked on SDA-owned paddy rice plots in lowland areas and various wage labour jobs. Their daily wage was P100 per day, much lower than the standard P200 (including lunch) for manual labour, and they were compelled to buy rice from the SDA paddy fields upon which they worked (at prices higher than lowland rice granaries)—similar to the PTFPP practice of sedentarising and drawing Pala'wan livelihoods into lowland agrarian labour relations. Moreover, Pala'wan disciples laboured without pay in cleaning and minding the Sabbath school and church. The trading system, schools and religious infrastructure reflected an autarkic ‘evangelical ecosystem’ in Kamantian. Together, the AFM and Pala'wan disciples ensured that the ‘ecosystem’ supported proselytization and, crucially, that the disciples could replicate the structure over time and space. This biopolitical process and its outcomes thus involved the deeper sociospatial reformation of upland life and livelihoods toward lowland existence. SDA religious doctrine further established local strictures to forge optimal social bodies in Kamantian. First, the mission disciplined Pala'wan to avoid certain types of ‘unclean’ meat. Such meats included wild or domestic hoofed species, marine and riverine species with scales and fins, and certain fowl. Broadly pushing Pala'wan toward a vegetarian diet was (and remains) deeply problematic. Customarily engaged in hunting and gathering for important animal protein, often using

“They forbid us from making offerings to our rice god. This is different from their culture. We cannot mix with them.” Another elder, Pandig Miksan, noted that: “We make lut-lut, but they don't let us eat it because [the rice is mixed with] fish, and they say that fish with scales shouldn't be eaten. We can't even eat chicken …” In detail, Ramog Kulibit explained defiantly: “If we make offerings with Tingkep, they tell us that our Gods are not the true Gods and that's why meat should not be eaten. But we are the same as they are. We call on our God, and they call on theirs too. We cannot stop the missionaries, but we still teach our young how to make lutlut. They will sustain the practice.” Breaching these SDA strictures resulted in punitive sanctions: publicly confiscating objects of play (volleyballs, basketballs) and (the mentioned) traditional materials needed for Tingkep rituals. Using a loudspeaker and word-of-mouth, the AFM ensured that the broader community was well aware of such disciplining. In other cases, Pala'wan who failed to attend church services were noted of (names listed), charged a penalty fee (∼P20.00) and tagged as ‘backsliding’ from the faith. However, disciplining every Pala'wan to adopt SDA biopolitics and abandon Tingkep world-making was far from straightforward. Many resisted by expressing concerns about the SDA presence in their lives. Farther from the SDA camp, at least five or more Pala'wan families considered the SDA faith to be incompatible with their way of life. As elder, Ramon Drago, bluntly noted: “No. I won't join their church. They prevent us from eating what we want to, and they may stop us from doing uma [swidden]. Many Pala'wan deliberately kept their families at a distance from the SDA-outpost. Unlike the SDA disciples across the way, these few households had not become “true believers” (Paredes, 2006). Most of these families rejected Adventist strictures with everyday expressions of discontent or slightly more overt actions aligning with Pala'wan customs, beliefs, identity and practices. Households farthest from the SDA camp, in particular, continued to invest in Tingkep practices and worlds such as Tingkep ät Kundu to refract SDA biopower. While long syncretic itself, these elders and others still embraced the Tingkep's generative power to hunt for meat, recite for ritual healing and invest in belonging. While some of these families had participated in the PTFPP programme, 14 Only those ritual practices and ceremonies that relate to the Tingkep are considered in detail here. It goes well beyond the scope of this paper to go into further detail of the myriad other ritual practices (see MacDonald, 2007).

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in which weaving Tingkep likely evoked cultural pride among them, desires to maintain Tingkep worlds and disdain for the SDA preceded NGO interventions. Pala'wan thus negotiate a complex, intersectional space involving the governing of life, livelihood and Tingkep world-making. Multiple biopolitical constraints, pressures, and influences—the planting of saplings, bulk production of baskets, debt, new diets, hygiene, heaven and hell—all converge at the confluence of forest governance and missionizing. Ultimately, despite a few stoic Pala'wan ‘non-believers’, these biopolitical conjunctures have induced disciplinary logics, techniques and incentives that re-make and un-make Pala'wan culture, livelihoods and lifeways through Tingkep on the basis of optimisation—optimisation that powerfully undermines indigenous autonomy.

souvenir shop owners) marked and elevated the customary, traditional character of the baskets in general, and valorized the authenticity of smaller Tingkep in particular as ideal, portable exotic indigenous souvenirs. Maintaining the intricacy of the weaving by upholding ‘quality standards’, advocating for the production of smaller sized-baskets, and stressing key weaving patterns such as mata punay, meant that sellers and buyers could easily identify the Tingkep as being ‘truly’ Pala'wan—an authentic ‘heritage product’. In this way, shops had an easier time branding Tingkep in line with the broader reputation of the ‘authentic’ customary weaves of Pala'wan. In the process of Othering the basket, the income generated from Tingkep production was to supplement livelihoods and offset the need to expand swidden in upland areas—the a priori assumption being that swidden is unsustainable. By working through customary leaders as project brokers, the PTFPP (and CI) ensured that Pala'wan who sold Tingkep were also enrolled in projects to become forest stewards, plant durable tree crops in fallows to hinder further clearing, and better align with program objectives and ECAN zoning. As NGO interventions and tourism demand have increased Tingkep production and income for some Pala'wan families (without excessive debt), these same families faced challenges in weaving customary baskets for growing external markets, shop owners and touristic desires for authentic, exotic objects. In particular, as Pala'wan weavers produced more baskets for tourism supply chains ostensibly in support of conservation, they ironically overdrew NTFPs from nearby forests for production and spent more time reproducing the baskets as commodified, ‘income objects’ in higher volumes than investing in its customary character—one of non-human patterns, powers and worlds. As Pala'wan women and children wove more often, their ability to invest in other livelihood activities was likely reduced (or displaced). The practice of NGOs valorizing the Tingkep's character has thus partly imbued it with new monetary meanings that has given the basket a modern opaqueness that drives marketisation and sedentarism upland in ways divorced from the basket's older worlds. While older ‘antique’ baskets used in ritual and hunting are sourced for ‘boutique’ souvenir shops somewhat less frequently, with mostly newer baskets being made for ‘standard’ souvenir shops, the overall rise in Tingkep production and exchange disembeds the basket from social reproduction with corrosive consequences over time. In the same upland spaces, the SDA have worked to develop a complex biopolitical regime and belief system, complete with infrastructure, technologies, and monitoring systems. Here, a rather foreign set of social relations has reproduced and embodied dominant beliefs, thoughts and practices to control and supplant a relatively sovereign people and their customary practices. The Adventist frontier mission of conditioning and disciplining Pala'wan as disciples through new ideals and incentives was both insidious and comprehensive. In a manner similar to the PFTPP and CI, the SDA (and AFM) have drawn on a ‘Church Planting Model’ to proselytise through those Pala'wan who showed leadership aptitude, less reluctance and growing desires to be part of the SDA and spread its faith within and beyond Kamantian. The process of enrolment and indoctrination was sustained through explicit, integrated incentives (health care, promotion in rank), conditionalities (dietary restrictions, labour in sedentary agriculture) and penalties (verbal reprimands, confiscating objects of play, Peso payments etc) that aimed to discipline and rework Tingkep's vital role in mediating Pala'wan social relations, reproduction and lifeways. For example, the uses of Tingkep in the hunt, from holding game to mutya for power, became less significant as SDA doctrine delegitimised the non-human realm of forests and livelihood. Just like the PTFPP, the SDA facilitated this biopolitical process on an intimate, interpersonal level and in the public space of the community. The SDA's disciplining and punishment cut across the private and public spheres of Pala'wan life to broaden and reinforce local recognition of and adherence to the SDA's legitimacy and authority in Kamantian. Making known, for example, the confiscation of volleyballs

3. Discussion and conclusion Beyond the state's purview, diverse biopolitical interventions increasingly govern the indigenous poor with the aim of remaking life and livelihood in line with an optimal, modern existence (West, 2006; Li, 2007, 2016). Non-state actors continue to discursively and materially classify, delimit, and reorder the uplands in terms of categories of difference and ideological control; that is, as borderless, untamed, primitive spaces in need of moral reform (van Schendel and De Maaker 2014; Eilenberg, 2016). Now more than ever, different governance agendas and programs aim to overcome the apparent ‘indeterminacy’ of non-state spaces through technologies, conditions and incentives to nurture and optimise facets of indigenous life (Grove, 2014; Li, 2007; Paredes, 2006). As shown for the Pala'wan, civil society actors with seemingly contrasting ideals and objectives draw on similar biopolitical logic curiously fixated on upland life and livelihood; such logic aims to discipline the indigenous body and self through social and material relations that align with multiple, long-term interventions of reform (Foucault, 1978). Taking on governmental roles and responsibilities, NGOs, missionaries and other actors work through indigenous identities, subjectivities and customary practices —involving the personal things that matter—to reform life, livelihoods and landscapes together. In upland settings, governmental biopolitics reproduces itself through intimate spaces and valued things, reforming how indigenous peoples reproduce themselves socially, biophysically and materially through new logics, ideas and conditions. While often partial and resisted, as biopolitics works within and through upland life and livelihood, the prospect for indigenous ways of life to endure lessens considerably over time. Although the PTFPP, CI and SDA draw on seemingly different governance agendas, their interventions in southern Palawan intersect and powerfully align to reform Pala'wan ways of life through the Tingkep toward a modern socio-spatial order. The PTFPP, CI and SDA reproduce biopolitical spaces by way of social rule and experimentation, by drawing on the perceived legitimacy and authority of interventions to infiltrate, inspect and monitor Pala'wan life and Tingkep world-making to reform indigenous existence. In time, SDA, PTFPP and CI practices intersected to coproduce social and biophysical rules of how to be, live and reproduce with and through Tingkep in delimited upland spaces. Ultimately, then, such biopolitical interventions influence how the Tingkep both mediates and constitutes social reproduction, where its remaking (as a commodity) and unmaking (as a sanctioned object) draws beliefs and livelihoods toward contrasting modern ideals. In conjunction with incentives and zoning regimes, PTFPP governance has aimed to remake and leverage the traditional, customary character of Tingkep through and in support of sustainable livelihood initiatives to reduce swidden in Marenshewan and Kamantian. Crucially, the PTFPP and CI worked through select Pala'wan to further incorporate Tingkep baskets into tourism supply chains, finding financial and social incentives for weavers to add value by making more, better-quality baskets. As NGOs often do, both organisations (and 135

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and basketballs and the seizing of gongs and other musical instruments (Kudyapi) from Pala'wan elders and Balyan for going against SDA strictures manifests in deeply personal (shaming) and intensely public (humiliating) ways that discipline Pala'wan to align with SDA faith. Acts of imposing dietary restrictions, prohibiting rituals (Tingkep ät Kundu), and using Pala'wan as cheap labour converge as symbolically potent strictures that both delegitimise and undermine familial reproduction and older ways of being. At the intersection of PTFPP and SDA governance, in particular, we see how biopower reproduces through a relational dialectic of ‘entrustment and coercion’ maintained through the intimacy of close interpersonal relations between the governed and those governing (Berlant, 1998, p. 21). Here, the efficacy of biopower depends on how trust and legitimacy in close-knit upland settings extend outward into the public realm as the basis of control and sanctions over time. In upland settings, the biopolitics of governance works insidiously through Pala'wan social relations and reproduction at the individual and community level– biopower powerfully reforms customary beliefs, livelihoods, and Tingkep worlds to discipline from above, below and in between. Although biopolitical governance reproduces powerful impacts and outcomes, these are also refracted through the human and non-human relations of the Tingkep and Pala'wan. Many Pala'wan families countered the PTFPP's (CI's) and SDA's biopolitical efforts in subject formation. Several families rejected their strictures by invoking Tingkep practices and meanings by hunting with the basket to eat forest game, by using mutya (often pig's hair) for vital courage and strength, by continuing to clear and burn forests, by performing Tingkep rituals, and by speaking out against SDA rights violation––by enabling Tingkep vitality, these few Pala'wan reaffirmed the legitimacy of their own worlds and that of the Tingkep. Working through Tingkep, Pala'wan resistance emerged as a matter of degree rather than kind. In many respects, it reflected a continuum of, on the one hand, subtle ‘everyday politics of … adjusting and contesting norms and rules regarding authority over, production of, or allocation of resources … in quiet, mundane and subtle expressions and acts … ’ (Kerkvliet, 2009, p. 232); and, on the other, somewhat more overt expressions of discontent and cultural practices involving the Tingkep (Scott, 1990). Pala'wan expressed regular discontent over specific interventions, particularly irregular purchases, low prices and debt from Tingkep trading, strictures against clearing forests and hunting for meat, but also engaged in overt customary practices, including clearing and burning forests, invoking Tingkep ät kundu (with loud agung) and hunting and killing game with the power of mutya in the basket. Indeed, using the required smaller, older Tingkep with ruruku to call and contain Linamen to answer important life questions with others reaffirms identity and belonging through the basket's vital matter, partly refracting convergent biopolitical pressures. The basket's lively character thus constitutes the vital force of invisible spirit worlds, rituals and ceremonies, which, underpinning livelihood, anchors and facilitates social reproduction among Pala'wan amidst intersecting biopolitical pressures. In weaving, using and invoking the basket, families and individuals shape and are shaped by how the Tingkep deflects biopower and reaffirms ontological security. Despite investing in Tingkep practices as the means to refract biopower, however, most Pala'wan have little recourse against these biopolitical interventions. Situated at the confluence of such governance, Pala'wan families negotiate foreign beliefs and objectives through incentives, conditions and sanctions that aim to remake, unmake and optimise their bodies and behaviours. Despite the Tingkep's power, poor families remain damned in-between biopolitical regimes that rupture the social and biophysical basis of reproduction in upland areas. Although the Pala'wan are born within the political boundaries of the nation-state, they are not simply born as rights-bearers, where typically ‘the rights of man and nation’ are necessary and automatic (Agamben, 1998, 75). Instead, marginalised uplanders occupy the liminal, distant realms located between state and non-state spaces,

where citizenship and rights bestowed by the state (and its modern ideals) are slow, if ever, to emerge. Distant from state institutions that apparently grant ‘inalienable rights’, Pala'wan uplanders more often have rights bestowed upon them through the biopolitical motives of non-state actors whose social contracts and disciplining reforms and optimises indigenous existence. In working through the socio-material ‘things’ that matter, the non-state actors behind these schemes condition bodies and souls by imposing a perverse morality and modernity that violates the lives and livelihoods of indigenous uplanders. The story I have told here thus reflects a biopolitics of erasure through optimisation. Questions remain as to how such biopolitical practices might be avoided, better negotiated or further resisted by uplanders. Should the state insert itself more evidently in the uplands to reaffirm its ostensibly secular ‘social contract’ amongst its most marginalised citizens? Might this delegitimize the corrosiveness of non-state actors, or simply reinforce the injustices of sustained, overlapping biopolitical interventions? In all likelihood, state and non-state biopowers will soon envelop and unevenly incorporate most upland communities on Palawan (and much of Southeast Asia). Such a foreboding future urgently requires that uplanders becomes politically astute and empowered to better negotiate the litany of biopolitical regimes that will only intensify in coming decades. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.01.006. References Adams, K. (2005). Indonesian souvenirs as micro-monuments to modernity. In M. Hitchcock, V. King, & M. Parnwell (Eds.). Tourism in south-east Asia: Challenges and new directions (pp. 69–82). NIAS Press. Ahern, L. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–137. Appadurai, A. (Ed.). (1988). The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge University Press. Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford University Press. Arcilla, J. (1998). Protestant missionaries in the Philippines. Philippine Studies, 36(1), 105–112. Asia Development Bank (2002). (ADB) Project performance audit report on the second PIADP in the PhilippinesManila: Asian Development Bank. Bennett, J. (2009). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press. Berlant, L. (1998). Intimacy: A special issue. Critical Inquiry, 24(2), 281–288. Bull, M., & Lockhart, K. (2006). Seeking a sanctuary: Seventh-day adventism and the American dream. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Clymer, K. (1980). Religion and American imperialism: Methodist missionaries in the Philippines, 1899-1913. Pacific Historical Review, 49, 29–50. CI factsheet, undated. Conservation Agreements: Making conservation attractive to local resource users. Conservation International. Dean, M. (1999). Governmentality. London: Sage. Dressler, W. (2009). Old thoughts in new ideas: State conservation measures, livelihood and development on Palawan Island, the Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Dressler, W., & Pulhin, J. (2010). The shifting ground of swidden agriculture on Palawan Island, the Philippines. Agriculture and Human Values, 27(4), 445–459. Eder, J., & Fernandez, J. (1996). Palawan at the crossroads. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Eder, J., & Evangelista, O. (2015). Palawan and its global connections. Quezon City: Ateneo University Press. Eilenberg, M. (2016). A state of fragmentation: Enacting sovereignty and citizenship at the edge of the Indonesian state. Development and Change, 47(6), 1338–1360. Fletcher, R., Dressler, W. H., Anderson, Z. R., & Büscher, B. (2018). Natural capital must be defended: Green growth as neoliberal biopolitics. Journal of Peasant Studies, 1–28. Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality. New York: Vintage. Foucault, M. (2003). Society must Be defended. New York: Picador. Gell, A. (1998). Art and agency: An anthropological theory. Clarendon Press. Grimes, K., & B Milgram, L. (2000). Artisans and Co-operatives: Developing alternative trade for the global economy. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Grove, K. J. (2014). Adaptation machines and the parasitic politics of life in Jamaican disaster resilience. Antipode, 46(3), 611–628. Guerrero, A. (2010). Structure and mission effectiveness: A study focused on SDA missions to unreached people groups between 1980 and 2010 Dissertations. Paper 57. Hoskins, J. (1998). Biographical Objects. How things tell the stories of people's lives. New York and London: Routledge. Hoskins, J. (2006). Agency, biography and objects. In C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands, & P. Spyer (Eds.). Handbook of material culture (pp. 74–84). Sage.

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