Dyadic Settlements and the Austronesian Logic of Breathing

Andrea Malaya M. Ragragio* and Myfel D. Paluga

University of the Philippines Mindanao, Philippines; *amragragio@up.edu.ph

This presentation connects with two of Victor Paz's abiding historical and archaeological interests: his

body of work on center/counter-center politico-settlement patterns in colonial Luzon, Philippines, and how continuities that link the past to the present may be identified under the broad ambit of “Austronesian language-based cultures” (Paz 2012). In his last book (2024), Victor opened this inquiry by considering the formation of native settlements to counter or oppose colonial-established centers (pueblos) in light of two important themes in the study of the Austronesian world: the pan-Austronesian linguistic category ili, or place of refuge, and the concept of founder cults as the ideological motivation underpinning Austronesian expansion. Using our own data of a comparable dyadic settlement pattern in colonial Davao in Mindanao, which we call “double-facing/trickster” settlement we propose as a cultural heuristic exploring the broader societal form of an Austronesian “logic of breathing” (ginhawa) serving as a durable imaginary for such “counter-center” settlements. We pick up where he leaves off to further flesh out this heuristic intersect of an Austronesian breathing-logic-made-into-social-“breaths”. We therefore finally also connect with a third abiding concern of Victor’s work and advocacy, which is to assert—as Victor always did—the continued salience of this approach of relating the past to the present via a set of keywords that revolve around Austronesian categories, which, in contrast to recent trends foregrounding themes of “decolonization”, “decoloniality”, and others, provides richer ways of understanding our shared heritage within the Philippine nation-state and other places under the Austronesian ambit.