With the “Hear, Here” series, we aim to facilitate conversations around new research in the humanities. Faculty fellows at the Institute for the Humanities will discuss a part of their current project in a short talk followed by a Q & A session.

About the talk:
In everyday conversation and environmentalist discourse alike, “upstream” and “downstream” are metonyms that reference not only one’s location along a river, but also one’s position vis-a-vis relations of causality, responsibility, and vulnerability. These idioms take on heightened stakes in Mindanao in the southern Philippines, where the particular cultural geographies of the “upriver” (sa-raya) and “downriver” (sa-ilud) challenge commonplace metonymic associations. By recounting the disparate ways that Indigenous Lumad, Christian migrant, and Muslim Moro communities explain the development of “itchy water” in the rivers bordering Mindanao’s plantation economy, I argue against what I call the “upstream/downstream imaginary,” inherited by many environmentalists. I do so to make two points: first, there are never only two sides in the story of pollution; and second, ecological recompense is never only a one-way street.

Alyssa Paredes is a 2024-25 Steelcase Faculty Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology.