Paper short abstract:

This paper deploys the frontier concept to study the intersection between place-making, identity formation, and agrarian change in conflict-affected Muslim Mindanao, Southern Philippines.

Paper long abstract:

This paper deploys the frontier concept to study the intersection between place-making, identity formation, and agrarian change in conflict-affected Muslim Mindanao, Southern Philippines. The analytical value of the frontier concept is that it bridges the disciplines of social anthropology and human geography, thus enabling a richer analysis of the material effects that stem from geographic imaginations. To illustrate this argument, the paper utilizes the findings from an ongoing case study that follows the making of a banana plantation in a remote town in Muslim Mindanao. Development of the plantation, which represents to date the single biggest investment in Muslim Mindanao, began in the aftermath of the 2014 peace agreement between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The paper combines Tsing's take on the frontier as an 'imaginative project' (Tsing, 2005) with Massey's relational approach to space (Massey, 2005) to explore the material, discursive and affective construction of a "post-conflict" space in and through which the process of plantation-making unfolds itself.