8/14/2019 Mixed Forests Summary Eng
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SUMMARY
Mixed forests: Responses to landscape transformation in the
central
Japanese highlands
Eric John Cunningham
Department of Anthropology, University of HawaiiKyoto University
Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies
Takako Yamada lab
The miraculous rise of the Japanese nation as an economic
superpower has restructured
the social, cultural, and natural landscapes of the archipelago.
While economic, social,
and political capital has pooled in Japans megalopolises, the
nations natural resources
remain spread out across the archipelago. Forests, a staple
resource in the past, cover amajority of the interior of Japan.
However, in post-war Japan it has become
economically advantageous to seek timber and other resources
from foreign countries,thus most forestland in Japan today remains
largely untouched. This situation doesnt
bode well for the villages that dot Japans mountainous interior,
far from the economic
miracles occurring in the cities.
This study engages contemporary issues of social and
environmental transformation in
mountain communities in central Japan by combining a historical
ecology perspective
with a critical sensitivity to the pervasive influence of
asymmetrical structures of poweras recognized by recent work in
political ecology and an eye towards resiliency . In
order to understand the underlying causes of upland decline in
modern Japan, I willcombine local ethnography with quantitative
analyses of higher level processes toidentify factors driving
forest change through time. Also, I will attempt to situate the
historical development of modern forest landscapes and mountain
communities within
the context of larger political and economic spheres. In the
end, this study aims tosuggest possibilities for maintaining the
integrity of mountain communities and upland
landscapes in Japan and elsewhere.
In this research I draw on John Bennetts concept of adaptation,
which is defined as thepurposive manipulation of social and natural
environments by individual actors in their
pursuit to fulfill needs and obtaining what they want. Thus,
adaptation is described as a
tenuous state that emerges from interactions between actors,
institutions, and theenvironment. As a correlate to adaptation,
this research will also focus on resilience ,defined as a
measurement of the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed
before a
system changes its structure by changing the variables and
processes that governbehavior. Resilience will be measured through
the existence of ecological memory,
defined as natural capital, such as biodiversity, which can be
drawn on in response to
change; and through the existence of institutional memory,
defined as human knowledge
capable of dealing with change, such as ecological knowledge
.
