Presenter: Marielle Marcaida, PhD Student, GWSS
Moderator:  Paul Jason Perez, PhD Student, iSchool

This study focuses on the embodied labor of the employees of Silingan Coffee, a café that caters to providing livelihood support to family members of extra-judicial violence, mostly mothers, widows, and sisters who lost their loved ones in the Philippine drug war.

The advocacy-driven cafe centers on telling stories of the drug war from the perspectives of the victims. Through the storytelling narratives of the women of Silingan Coffee, Marcaida examines their articulation of what it means to be a good “neighbor,” a central tenet to their human rights advocacy.

The ”neighbor” has been a subject long existent and discussed in religious thought and political philosophy. In the context of the mothers’ activism under the Philippine drug war, she analyzes how the “neighbor” serves as a metaphor of the humanitarian subject shaping political and social relations post-citizenship. 

This research was funded by the Peter Mack and Jamie Mayerfeld Fund and Southeast Asia Research Group (SEAREG)

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