Anthropology
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Fortiores 2030: A Design Anthropology Reflection on a Spiritual and Synodal Planning Process
Design Anthropology begins from a simple assertion shared by scholars such as Wendy Gunn, Ton Otto, and Anne Marie Kristensen: design is not only the creation of things but the shaping of human futures. It is a cultural process, a way communities collectively imagine possibilities, negotiate meanings, and embed their values into systems that guide Continue reading
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Paradoxes in the Natural Wealth of Lake Sebu
This is part of a broader study on “Climate Change Experience, Expressions, and Responses in a Tboli Community.” It is based on the understanding that indigenous peoples worldwide have been experiencing the impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather changes, longer droughts, and increasing rainfall, which cause floods and landslides. More especially to indigenous Continue reading
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Three Stories of Drought and an Analysis
Here, instead of a linear narrative, I follow the unrestrained telling of my informants, which skips back and forth in time, and blends the past and present together. These are three narratives from Mâ Ungkal, Wè Jenita, and Mâ Eko that I collected on three different occasions. Mâ Ungkal’s testimony of a childhood disaster came Continue reading
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The Stories of Nayo Lungan
Collected on 6 December 2014 in Lamkwa, Klubi, Lake Sebu, South Cotabato. Transcribed and translated into English from Tboli with the help of Bo-i Jenita Eko. Nayo Lungan, I would estimate, is in his late 60s (the Tboli do not reckon their birth years). These stories were collected late in the evening, in the gono bong Continue reading
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An Interview with Mâ Ungkal, Son of Kawit
Mâ Ungkal was about the same age as my late grandmother. I first saw him at the but bnek (Tboli planting ritual) that I attended in March of 2015. He told us stories of how they did the ritual and the planting of upland rice in the 1960s. That day in 2015, he had a smile that was reflective and nostalgic Continue reading
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Fatalism in a Hostile Geography? The Case of Albay in the Pacific Jinx
A Memory I remember very clearly, as if it was just yesterday, the howling wind outside, and a more terrifying sound that echoed inside the cavities of our house in Naga, Camarines Sur that 30th of November 2006. They were long howls, whistling as the 250 kph gusts meet trees, buildings and wreckage, the howling Continue reading
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On Anthropologists and Ethnic Conflicts
The traditional domain of the Anthropologist has been the small community, often in what has been coined as “indigenous peoples,” while his ethnography and holism in analyzing phenomena are his tools-of-the-trade that enable him to understand the “understanding of the other”. At present, there has been an increased interest in the social sciences in the Continue reading
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Exploring “Experience and Expressions” in Climate Change Anthropology
The truth is, I have never heard of Wilhelm Dilthey until I’ve read “The Anthropology of Experience” edited by Victor Turner and Edward Bruner – and I am a Philosophy major. In his introduction to the book, Bruner presented him as a German thinker when Kantianism was the trend in Philosophy. This is palpable Continue reading
Being Here, Now. 