The ancestral sensorium and the city: reflections on religion, environmentalism and citizenship in the Philippines

Tremlett, Paul-Francois (2013). The ancestral sensorium and the city: reflections on religion, environmentalism and citizenship in the Philippines. In: Harvey, Graham ed. Handbook of Contemporary Animism. Durham: Acumen.

URL: http://www.acumenpublishing.co.uk/display.asp?K=e2...

Abstract

This essay is based on field research conducted in the summer of 2010 in the Philippines around the problematic of environmentalism, religion and citizenship. I argue that in order to understand the problematic of religion, environmentalism and citizenship in the Philippines one must study not places as such, but the representations and discourses – or place-frames – through which places are constituted and mobilized as sites for producing particular connectivities, relationships, embodied subjectivities and sensoria. As such, I contrast two Filipino place-frames: the first is the ‘ancestral domain’ while the second refers to the new gated, housing developments that are to be found in and around Manila – what I call a ‘mobile disciplinary’ place-frame. Both conjure spectral risks, imply ethically charged discourses of relatedness and connection and both also imply different sensoria of the body and its co-ordination, engagement and immersion in a world. Finally, I discuss the possibility of a ‘green’ citizenship in the Philippines in light of Beck’s notion of the ‘risk society’.

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