Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore how the war on drugs in Manila reconfigures sociality and enforces new forms of oppositionality in intimimate relations.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I explore how the war on drugs in Manila reconfigures sociality and enforces new forms of oppositionality in intimimate relations. I do so through revisiting longitudinal ethnographic material from a poor, urban neighbourhood in Manila. I argue that the war on drugs has pitted residents against each other and residents against state through ever-present death. Whereas policing has always oscillated between violence and accommodation, manageable through money, relations and cunning, the war on drugs has rendered these tactics less effective. Hence, local state officials and residents struggle to find new forms of social equilibrium that might secure both in a volatile and increasingly violent sociality.