Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-25T04:01:18.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remembered resilience: oral history narratives and community resilience in agroforestry systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2018

Sarah Osterhoudt
Sarah Osterhoudt*
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Sarah Osterhoudt, E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, I consider how local oral history narratives provide smallholder farmers with both material and symbolic resources in adapting to climate change. I draw from the case study of an agrarian village in Madagascar that was struck by a destructive category 3 cyclone. In the weeks following the storm, oral history knowledge occupied an increasingly visible role within the community, as younger farmers interacted with elders to hear tales of past storms. Through these shared accounts, people discussed specific techniques on how to cope with environmental uncertainty. They also created a sense of shared history, which provided individuals across generations an entry point into the local historical record. Overall, the process of sharing oral history accounts can contribute to community resilience, with resiliency encompassing not only technical or ecological factors, but also the more affective realms of shared legacies, hope and belonging.

Keywords

Agroforestryclimate changecollective memoryoral historyresilience
Type
Commentary
Information
Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems , Volume 33 , Special Issue 3: Themed Content: Ag/Food Systems and Climate Change , June 2018 , pp. 252 - 255
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, D (2009) Enduring drought then coping with climate change: lived experience and local resolve in rural mental health. Rural Society 19(4), 340–352.Google Scholar
Barnes, J, Dove, MR, Lahsen, M, Mathews, A, McElwee, P, McIntosh, R, Moore, F, O'Reilly, J, Orlove, B, Puri, R, Weiss, H, and Yager, K (2013) Contribution of anthropology to the study of climate change. Nature Climate Change 3, 541–544.Google Scholar
Basso, KH (1996) Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. Santa Fe: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, M (1977) The past and the present in the present. Man (1977), 278–292.Google Scholar
Cashman, KV and Cronin, SJ (2008) Welcoming a monster to the world: myths, oral tradition, and modern societal response to volcanic disasters. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 176(3), 407–418.Google Scholar
Crate, SA (2011) Climate and culture: anthropology in the era of contemporary climate change. Annual Review of Anthropology 40, 175–194.Google Scholar
Cruikshank, J (2001) Glaciers and climate change: perspectives from oral tradition. Arctic 54(4), 377–393.Google Scholar
Cutter, SL, Burton, CG and Emrich, CT (2010) Disaster resilience indicators for benchmarking baseline conditions. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 7(1), 1–22.Google Scholar
Donovan, K (2010) Doing social volcanology: exploring volcanic culture in Indonesia. Area 42(1), 117–126.Google Scholar
Dove, MR (2008) Perception of volcanic eruption as agent of change on Merapi volcano, Central Java. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 172(3), 329–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enarson, E (1998) Through women's eyes: a gendered research agenda for disaster social science. Disasters 22(2), 157–173.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hewitt, K (1983) Interpreting the role of hazards in agriculture. In Hewitt, K (ed.). Interpretations of Calamity from the Viewpoint of Human Ecology. Boston: Allen & Unwin, pp. 123–139.Google Scholar
Janif, S, Nunn, P, Geraghty, P, Aalbersberg, W, Thomas, F and Camailakeba, M (2016) Value of traditional oral narratives in building climate-change resilience: insights from rural communities in Fiji. Ecology and Society 21(2), 7.Google Scholar
Lambek, M (2002) The Weight of the Past. NY: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lauer, M (2012) Oral traditions or situated practices? Understanding how indigenous communities respond to environmental disasters. Human Organization 71(2), 176–187.Google Scholar
McAdoo, BG, Dengler, L, Prasetya, G and Titov, V (2006) Smong: how an oral history saved thousands on Indonesia's Simeulue Island during the December 2004 and March 2005 tsunamis. Earthquake Spectra 22(S3), 661–669.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendelsohn, R, Dinar, A and Dalfelt, A (2000) Climate Change Impacts on African Agriculture. Washington, District of Columbia: Preliminary Analysis Prepared for the World Bank, p. 25.Google Scholar
Mercer, J, Dominey-Howes, D, Kelman, I and Lloyd, K (2007) The potential for combining indigenous and western knowledge in reducing vulnerability to environmental hazards in small island developing states. Environmental Hazards 7(4), 245–256.Google Scholar
Nightingale, AJ (2016) Adaptive scholarship and situated knowledges? Hybrid methodologies and plural epistemologies in climate change adaptation research. Area 48(1), 41–47.Google Scholar
Oliver-Smith, A (1996) Anthropological research on hazards and disasters. Annual Review of Anthropology 25(1), 303–328.Google Scholar
Osterhoudt, SR (2017) Vanilla Landscapes: Meaning, Memory and the Cultivation of Place in Madagascar. New York: New York Botanical Garden Press.Google Scholar
Sloan, S (2008) Oral history and hurricane Katrina: reflections on shouts and silences. The Oral History Review 35(2), 176–186.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed