Background

Dr. Novellino received a Masters in Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) in 1995, and a doctorate in environmental anthropology from the University of Kent. His dissertation research, Shamanism and Everyday Life. An Account of Personhood, Identity and Bodily Knowledge explores the perceived relationship between self and world and the dialectic of knowledge and bodily praxis amongst the Batak of Palawan, a vanishing society of hunter-gatherers and horticulturists in the Philippines.

Before his academic training, Dario Novellino worked as a free-lance photo journalist publishing extensively on national and international magazines in the field of indigenous rights and environmental destruction. His first mission brought him to the Arctic where he lived for several months with a community of Inuit Eskimos in the North West Territory (Canada). He has also published a book for Sperling & Kupfer editors and has co-authored an illustrated volume on threatened ethnic groups for Erizzo publishers, in Italy.

Since 1986, South East Asia has become the focus of his activities, and he has spent time with various indigenous communities such as the Hanunóo of Mindoro, the Bonei, Sakai and Minang Kabaw of Sumatra, the Ot Danum of Kalimantan, the Penan of Sarawak, the Batek of Peninsular Malaysia, the H'mong, Dzao, Gia-rai and Ba-na of Vietnam, and the Lisu of Northern Thailand. However, most of his anthropological research has been carried out in the Philippines where he has spent a total period of seven years with the Batak and Pälawan communities focussing on ethnobotany, local perceptions of the environment, rock art and technology, natural resources management, dynamics of change, conservation and indigenous rights.

 

In co-ordination with Philippine NGOs and and indigenous peoples' organizations, he has promoted a number of initiatives for the recognition of indigenous ancestral domain claims. In 1992, he served as a special consultant for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (Manila), and has been a long-term Visiting Research Associate of the Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC) of the Ateneo de Manila University. He is also responsible for setting up the South East Asia section of the first Paleo-Ethnobotanic Museum in Italy, at the University "Federico II" of Naples (http://www.ortobotanico.unina.it/Museo/Museo.htm)

Over the past years he has held positions as national councillor of the Friends of the Earth-Italy and consultant for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) of the United Nations, working in Indonesia and Northern Vietnam. For IFAD he has written:

• a report on the financial crisis in Asia and on the impact of El Niño and La Niña in Indonesia and the Philippines

• a review of 'Poverty Trends and Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam: existing policies and programmes'

• one socio-economic study on the ethnic minorities of Ha Giang Province (Northern Vietnam)

• an evaluation of development trends amongst the ethnic minorities of Ia Pia district, Gia Lai province (Central Vietnam)

• one report on decentralisation and deforestation in Eastern Kalimantan

• a concept paper on the Principle of 'Free Prior Informed Consent'.

In 1995 he was hired by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to produce a paper on 'social capital', which was published in 1997. In 1999, in co-ordination with the UK based Forest Peoples Programme, he has compiled a study on the impact of road construction and on the status of coastal resources in southern Palawan island. (pdf file)

Since 2005 he became increasingly disappointed and disenchanted with the strategic poverty-eradication approaches of UN institutions and, thus, decided to cease consultancy work for such agencies.

Aside from the research interests listed above, he would like to continue to support indigenous communities in Palawan in asserting their ancestral land rights against mining corporations and oil palm plantations. So far, some of the initiatives he has implemented to support indigenous livelihood in Palawan included the re-introduction of local crop varieties, small livestock raising, the creation of revolving funds for harvesting and processing non-timber forest products (NTFPs), and legal assistance for ancestral land claims.

 

 

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Recent Publications

Novellino, D. In press. From local struggles to global advocacy: mining expansion, and indigenous peoples responses on the "last frontier". In J. Eder and O. Evangelista (eds.) Palawan and its Global Networks. Ateneo de Manila Press: Manila.

Novellino, D. 2011. Towards a 'Common Logic of Procurement': Unraveling the Foraging–Farming Interface on Palawan Island (The Philippines). In M. Janowski and G. Barker (eds.) Why Cultivate? Anthropological and archeological perspectives on foraging-farming transitions in island Southeast Asia. McDonald Institute Monographs: University of Cambridge. (pdf)

Novellino, D. 2010. "From Indigenous Customary Practices to Policy Interventions: The Ecological and Socio-cultural Underpinnings of the Non-timber Forest Trade on Palawan Island, the Philippines" in Sarah A Laird, Rebecca J. Mc Lain and Rachel P. Wynberg (Eds) Wild Product Governance: Finding Policies that Work for Non-Timber Forest Products, pp. 183-197. Earthscan: London, Washington DC. (pdf)

Novellino, D. 2010. "The Role of 'hybrid' NGOs in the Conservation and Development of Palawan Island, the Philippines", co-authored with Wolfram Dressler. Society & Natural Resources Journal. Vol 23 (2):165 - 180 (pdf)

Novellino, D. 2009. "From Impregnation to Attunment: A Sensory View of how Magic Works". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI) (N.S.) 15, 755-776 (pdf)

Novellino, D. 2009. "From Museum collections to field research: an ethnographic account of Batak basket-weaving knowledge in Palawan Island, Philippines". Journal of Indonesia and the Malay World 37 (108): 203-224 (pdf)

 

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Current work

Dr. Novellino currently holds a Christensen Fund (TCF) grant on Linking Networks on Pastoralism and Mobile Production Systems. He also received an RAI (Royal Anthropological Institute) fellowship in 'urgent anthropology' and a grant from the Global Biocultural Initiative Program of the Christensen Fund (TCF). His project for the RAI, Enabling the 'Indigenous Voice': beyond technocratic solutions to forest conservation on Palawan Island (the Philippines) has interfaced with his TCF project, Developing local global feedback for policy advocacy on biocultural diversity.  In 2010, he received support from the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Researchto work onrecovering and digitalizing Batak oral narratives and living traditions. He has also advised the Global Diversity Foundation and worked with them on Anthropological Approaches to Advocacy and Traditional Rights.

In addition to this on-going interest in Palawan and Southeast Asia, Dr. Novellino continues to investigate the living traditions of the rural population (particularly the shepherds) of the Aurunci Mountains of central Italy, where he is based. His most recent project has yielded a number of publications on fibre plants and basket weaving:

• Catalogue: Baskets of the World (pdf file)
• An account of basket weaving and the use of fibre plants in the Mount Aurunci Regional Park (Central Italy) (pdf file)
• The role of Ampelodesmos mauritanicus and fibre plants in central Italy (pdf file)

 

Other recent research

In 2005 he completed a Wenner-Gren funded research project "Assessing the Dynamics of Local Knowledge Hybridization in the Context of Conservation Development Projects in Palawan (the Philippines)". In 2004 and 2005 he worked with colleagues on an ESRC funded project on anthropological methodologies and transmission of environmental knowledge.

 

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