The Philippines

Fragile Networks

Feminism, Futurity, and Ecological Change

The First 1000 Days is generally framed as a problem of malnutrition, mobilizing micronutrients at different time points to produce optimally development bodies. In the Philippines, the vision of what is required to cultivate health and prosperity for future generations also involves a complicated entanglement of health infrastructure, ecology, and women’s rights. In the design of First 1000 days interventions, multilateral governance utilizes the charismatic potential of the framework to ensure adequate funding is procured while local health practitioners write in the needs of their specific communities and prepare contingency plans to continue the work should the framework loose its value to the politicians and policy makers. This study seeks to follow the “first 1000 days” health framework in the Philippines as an object embedded within a fragile network where bodies, environments, and visions of the future interact with resilient institutions, connected by relations between materialities and sociopolitical phenomena.