Summary

This essay traces how vernacular spatial logics in Southeast Asia—expressed through myths, maritime movement, and ritual orientations—shaped understandings of sovereignty before the imposition of colonial borders. Drawing on the figure of the pearl as a model of layered accretion, it explores how societies in the Philippine archipelago organized space through concentric and relational forms rather than fixed lines. Mandala polities, pilgrimage routes, and sacred geographies offered alternatives to Western cartographic sovereignty. Even under colonial rule, these logics persisted beneath imposed regimes. By recovering these spatial paradigms, the essay offers a counter-history of the region that views the archipelago not as a closed nation-state, but as a shifting constellation of sacred, relational, and oceanic forms of belonging.

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