Format/Structure

Panel with 5 presentations and a more informal discussion after.

Long Abstract

Global and regional political-economic forces are accelerating agrarian-forest transformations across insular Southeast Asia—processes by which social relations, economies and ecologies shift from rural and agricultural to industrial, commercial, and urban systems (Dressler et al., 2017). These changes are driven by the expanding power and authority of state and non-state actors, stricter control over land and forest use, increased mobility, and the deepening reach of markets and infrastructure into the region’s remaining forest frontiers. As these dynamics converge, Indigenous and local people must navigate and make a living within contested spaces of opportunity and constraint—what Schatz et al. (2025) call ‘marginal ecologies’. While some frame this shift as marking the ‘end of the peasantry’ and the onset of ‘deagrarianisation’ (Bryceson 1996; Rigg et al. 2018), our panel examines how rural households sustain livelihoods in highly fragmented, residual forest landscapes. From harvesting bird nests in karst caves and peeling cashews to circular migration into plantation zones, smallholders continue to forge diverse livelihood strategies in residual forest pockets. Wedged between expanding towns, infrastructure, and extractive industries, we critically examine how gender, generation, and geography shape the constraints and possibilities facing resource-reliant rural communities across the forest frontiers of Indonesia and the Philippines. We engage the following questions:

• How do the rural poor make a living on exhausted lands and forest fragments with declining agroecological diversity? How are gender, property and market relations implicated in these changes?

• What do rural youth think of their options? What is lost and gained through the trajectories they pursue? Among those who stay, how do they and their families creatively diversify their livelihoods to make a living?

Taken together, this panel will demonstrate the diversity and creativity of rural smallholders as they negotiate livelihood opportunities and constraints in fragmented forest landscapes.

This Panel has 6 pending paper proposals.
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