Presentation short abstract

This paper examines how riparian villages of the San Roque Dam in Northern Philippines negotiate the loss, persistence, and reconstruction of livelihoods in dam-affected ecologies

Presentation long abstract

The San Roque Multi-Purpose Dam in the Agno River—the largest dam in the Philippines—has operated since 2003, reordering hydrological regimes, forest ecologies, and livelihood practices across upland Benguet and lowland Pangasinan. For the Philippine government, the completion of the country’s largest dam marked a defining moment in its pursuit of hydraulic modernity. Yet for riverine and agrarian-dependent communities, its persistent and lingering impacts continue to shape possibilities for making a living.

This paper examines how altered river flows have transformed three long-standing livelihood practices—farming, fishing, and gold panning—once bound together by the Agno’s hydrological pulses. Drawing on ethnographic research in the riparian villages of the Agno River, I trace how households negotiate the loss, persistence, and reconstruction of livelihoods in dam-affected ecologies.

I advance the concept of rhythmic livelihoods to describe how households adapt to disrupted agrarian livelihoods introduced by the dam. I suggest that rather than passive victims of livelihood change, villagers act as rhythmic actors who improvise, diversify, and endure in their livelihood activities amidst disruptions. While the dam’s water repatterned agrarian lives, livelihood and subjectivities, local resource users learn to engage in a politics of rhythm and find ways to attune and rework their livelihood activities. I argue that the livelihoods of the rural poor in the shadow of dam-induced transformations are not necessarily extinguished but are reworked and reconstructed—unevenly, precariously, and creatively—through everyday negotiations with water and power.