Social-ecological Memory in Koreas Traditional Village Landscapes: Ethnographic and Spatial Approaches

Abstract

In nurturing resilience in social-ecological systems (SESs), memories of ecosystem stewardship practices that are retained by actors of SESs—referred to as social-ecological memories (SEMs)—play vital roles, particularly relevant in the face of change. This dissertation investigates the ways in which SEM is created, mobilized, and manifested to cope with disturbances and changes by employing various social and ecological resources while maintaining the systems identity, also referred to as resilience. It proposes SEM as a person-practice-place complex with crucial individual components. In other words, SEM that nurtures social-ecological resilience involves (1) memory carriers as the primary agents of SEM (person)

(2) ecosystem stewardship practices based on local observations and experiential knowledge that has undergone a learning-by-doing process (practice)

and (3) physical sites in which the person has experienced and learned through practice about ecosystem management, complex systems thinking, and the link between nature and humans. In this regard, this dissertation explores the characteristics of each indicator of SEM with individual cases concerning Koreas traditional village landscape (KTVL) and highlights their implications in the context of social-ecological resilience. Landscape here is understood as a unit of SES that is significant for its adaptive qualities. This adaptation is a feedback loop comprising the potential of the land and the ways in which humans make a living from it based on their knowledge systems and cosmologies. Additionally, I focus on traditional ecological knowledge as a type of SEM that has undergone vigorous trial-and-error over time, because in certain circumstances there is a reluctance to innovate and adapt in the face of change within an SES. In studying SES concerning KTVL, I use both autobiographical and historical memories as sources for analyzing the SEM. For instance, in Chapter Three, I use Park Wan-suhs novel Who Ate Up All the Shinga? as an example of autobiographical memory to analyze aspects of ecoliteracy and place attachment as reflected in SEM. Ecoliteracy is defined as ecological knowledge with regard to the names of living and physical components, practices of the resource management system, and landscape management systems. Worldviews and cosmologies that are closed related with person-place attachment are also delineated. These observations exemplify how memories of person-practice and person-place interactions are manifested in forms of ecoliteracy and place attachment. The study also shows how SES in relation to KTVL is highly influenced by village landscape management practices within a watershed. In Chapter Four, I explore the role of SEM in fostering the adaptive capacity of a community through its synergy with other sources of resilience such as leadership, and with cross-scale and cross-level interactions. The result of ethnographic study conduced in a rural area in South Korea indicates that SEM concerning village landscape configuration is reinforced through land use changes and scale-related issues brought about by top-down policy processes. Although the evidence used here focuses on villagers attempts to cope with flood damages, it demonstrates the importance of SEM in allowing for community-based resilience practices. In Chapter Five, I draw on historical records as types of historical memory to define the social-ecological identity of KTVL with emphasis on Koreas traditional village grove and to assess the current spatial identity of the landscape. With the analyzed spatial identity, I was able to locate potential traditional village grove sites in KTVLs that are not in the current governmental data. Although cognitive dimensions of SEM highlight the place-based values of physical environments, based on an SES framework, this dissertation claims that person-practice-place dynamics are also manifested through the spatial characteristics and spatial resilience of a place. It concludes that person-practice-place interactions are central to SEM, which plays a critical role in allowing for ecosystem stewardship in various regions. Institutions to support SEM-based stewardship activities and conservation strategies to protect physical sites in which SEM is accumulated and stored are needed for the maintenance, transmission, and mobilization of sources of resilience.