Everyday Peacescapes

Indigenous communities across Mindanao are often disproportionately affected by armed conflict and militarisation, their ancestral domains and livelihoods also increasingly threatened by extractive industries and the wider impacts of resource extraction. Amid these pressures, and efforts to sustain Indigenous knowledge systems and practices, this project explores the everyday dimensions of peace.

This project develops the framework of ‘peacescapes’, adopting a vernacular lens to explore peace as it is imagined and practised in people’s daily lives and in their visions for the future. With attention to cultural, cosmo-spiritual and eco-relational dimensions, it is guided by the following questions: What are local concepts and practices of peace? How are they continually (re)shaped, negotiated, challenged and contested amid broader social change? How are these grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems and practices? The project includes partnerships with a Mindanaon university and a local peacebuilding civil society organisation—collaborations based on an approach of shared learning between academic research and peacebuilding practice. The university partnership contributes to the project’s decolonising methodologies agenda, while the CSO partnership involves programme evaluation to support the organisation’s work. The project undertakes several months of fieldwork utilising methods of narrative-based interviews, transect walks, focus group discussions and a storytelling evaluation model. Key outputs will include a peer-reviewed journal article, an evaluation report and a joint workshop focusing on strengthening links between research, practice and grassroots advocacy.

• Primitivo III Cabanes Ragandang, Director Office of Research Dissemination (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise), Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT)

• Balay Mindanaw Foundation Inc.