Post-disaster landscape

transformations and the

dilemma of nature-culture
Muzayin Nazaruddin
Doctoral student – Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu
Introduction

´ Landscape transformations are inevitable consequences of any

natural disaster; likewise, recovery and mitigation procedures often
involve landscape change.
´ On the one hand, the physical transformation of landscapes
generates new meanings and interpretations. On the other hand,
the existing entanglements with and memories about landscape will
guide the post-disaster reconstruction and relocation processes.
´ This article targets the interplay of natural phenomena,
governmental planning, and local perceptions in the transformation
of post-disaster landscapes.
Introduction
´ My presentation will focus on post-disaster landscape
transformations, which usually involve two (seemingly) contradictory
modes: integrating nature and culture or separating the two.
´ The dichotomy of the concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ has
received harsh criticism from several angles in the past decades
(e.g. Haraway 1985; Latour 1991; Descola 2013). However, I will
demonstrate how they have been adapted to certain practices
and hence cannot be simply explained away through conceptual
analysis.
´ Instead of treating such dichotomy as one kind of an ontological
state, the semiotic study of landscape should be fully aware about
the very diverse modes of relations between nature and culture in
different societies.
RQ and presentation structure
Research questions: how do the natural disaster and the
subsequent recovery processes transform and shape local
nature-culture relations? How are they embodied and
expressed in landscape transformations? How do these
landscape transformations stimulate further cultural change?

´ The empirical cases and methods

´ Theoretical frameworks
´ The first topic: post-disaster spatial categorization
´ The second topic: post-disaster human settlements
´ The third topic: disaster remembering and mitigation
´ Conclusion
The cases and methods

´ The Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004 - the biggest

natural disaster in modern Indonesian history.
´ The 2010 Merapi eruption - a major eruption of the 100-year cycle
(Surono et al. 2012).
´ The empirical data is based on longitudinal qualitative studies in the
aftermath of those two natural disasters: the 2004 tsunami in Banda
Aceh and Aceh Besar Regencies and the 2010 volcanic eruption in
Sleman and Magelang Regencies.
´ Series of ethnographic fieldwork: participant observations, semi-
structured and open-ended interviews, informal discussions, and
focus group discussions.
The 2004
tsunami

Image source: E.N. Bernard et al. (2006)

The 2010 Image source: TEMPO/Arif Wibowo

Mt. Merapi
eruption

Image source: BPPTKG

Theoretical frameworks: landscape
´ Landscape is a holistic, historical, lived, contested, and dialogical
phenomenon (Lindström 2011).
´ Holistic: ‘links both the physical expanse and the cultural ideas that a
perceiving subject or a society has about it’ (Lindström 2011, 15).
´ Historical: preserves traces from the past.
´ Lived: ‘It is the human body, its perceptive capacities as well as movement
that form the basis of meaning generation in the environment. […] we are
our body which lives the landscape, taking in its cues and being in inter-
action with all its semiosic processes’ (Lindström, Palang, and Kull 2019, 80).
´ Dialogical: landscape is a collective phenomenon bounded by power
relations and can be a crucial ideological apparatus (Duncan and Duncan
1998). Dialogue and communication that dynamically happen on different
levels involving multi-entities are the core semiotic processes in the
landscape (Lindström, Kull, and Palang 2011).
Theoretical frameworks: place

´ Any subject who is engaged with a particular landscape can

create smaller meaningful places within the landscape based on
their activities in and engagement with those places. In this sense,
landscape and place have similarities, as both are often shaped by
daily routines.
´ Yi-Fu Tuan (1979, 409): ‘People talk of the “spirit”, the “personality”
and the “sense” of place.’ Thus, place ‘is a small world, the node at
which activities converge,’ gaining its stable meaning for example
from repeated experiences or certain beliefs (Tuan 1979, 411).
´ Place as a small meaningful unit within the landscape in the eye of
its specific subjects. Therefore, different entities may have different
places within the same landscape or even diverse landscapes
within the same physical locations.
Theoretical frameworks: space

´ Space: a more abstract and objectified category, a product of the

work of a surveyor or cartographer whose objective is to represent
landscape, ‘to take instrumental measurements from a
considerable number of locations, and to combine these data to
produce a single picture which is independent of any point of
observation’ (Ingold 2000, 191).
´ Thus, compared to landscape as an experienced realm, ‘space has
somewhat more objectified and abstract nuance. Space implies
interval, measurability, and divisibility into quantifiable units’
(Lindström 2011, 28).
Topic 1: post-disaster spatial
categorization
´ The most common post-disaster spatial production is a clear-cut
demarcation of ‘disaster-prone areas’, which is commonly created
on the basis of previous disaster events.
´ On the one side, these official maps usually take into account the
human population within or surrounding the areas. However,
humans have been considered mainly as physical entities. On the
other side, the ways of living and landscapes as meaningful
environments of such human communities have been ignored.
´ Thus, the maps are constructed based on a perspective of the
separation of nature and culture: the disaster-prone area is where
nature is dominant, unpredictable, and hazardous. Humans should
avoid this area as they cannot control such kind of nature.
Mt. Merapi
hazard map

Image source: BPPTKG

The post-
tsunami
spatial
planning

Image source: the Regional Planning Agency of the Banda Aceh City Government
´ What would a perspective that stresses the ‘integration’ of natural
and cultural processes look like?
´ By definition, the demarcation of ‘disaster-prone area’ as the basis
for getting rid of humans from the area does not make any sense.
The only proper way to deal with such natural conditions is to
understand and adequately respond to them, to further integrate
humans with the environment.
´ Avoiding dangerous places due to the potential natural hazards
should be contextual, which is only possible if humans understand
the rhythms and specifics of the natural processes that influence
their lives.
´ On Mt. Merapi: when the volcano gets more active, the locals are
accustomed to reading environmental cues to interpret its
increasing activities.
´ Non-symbolic signs, i.e., iconic and indexical signs, have become the
basis of tight interrelationships between culture and nature (Maran
2020).
Space-place

´ The construction of ‘disaster-prone areas’ as a guideline for

planning policies shows that the government has taken the post-
disaster reorganizations as a matter of ‘space’. As a conceived
space, a disaster-prone area is a top-down process produced by
the government dictating their controls and narratives to the
society (Agnew 2005, 84).
´ On the other hand, human integration with the environment,
including its natural hazards, which the locals commonly
accentuate, shows that they perceive the post-disaster landscape
basically as a matter of ‘place’ which depends on ‘patterns of
activities, network connections, and the projection of feeling of
attachment, comfort and belonging’ (Agnew 2005, 84–85).
External-internal vision

´ These two stances can be also seen as external (other) and internal
(self) perspectives of the post-disaster landscape (Lindström 2014).
´ On the one hand, the government has built their image of the
territories based on their remote sensing and planning, usually
making use of scientific or technological apparatuses that do not
require a higher degree of interaction with the given landscape.
Thus, they are mapping the landscape, not knowing it (Ingold 2000).
´ On the other hand, the locals have perceived the landscape
through their everyday bodily sensing and acting. Landscape is not
only an economic resource that they know well how to exploit; but
also the ground, based on which their cultural identity is
constructed.
Mixing the perspectives: the government
´ Those two approaches or perspectives may possibly blend in the
aftermath of a disaster, resulting in a more complex combination. The
actors may dynamically shift their view at any post-disaster recovery steps
or specific moments.
´ The government’s policy about the ‘disaster-prone areas’ is sometimes
inconsistent and opportunistic.
´ In post-tsunami Aceh, the government still kept in mind the separation
perspective on nature-culture relations, but has been forced to
implement a kind of unwanted integration practices due to some
inevitable reasons.
´ On Mt. Merapi, the government has erased the existing hamlets within
the most vulnerable areas from the official map. Therefore, such hamlets
simply did not officially exist anymore. However, they managed
retribution for tourists who come to lava tour areas located within those
hamlets.
Mixing the perspectives: the locals

´ The locals’ responses to the demarcation of disaster zones are

diverse.
´ In post-tsunami Aceh, some communities, especially the seashore
communities whose livelihood relies on the sea sources, have
strongly shown their fidelity to their home place. However, some of
the locals, especially those who have lived in more urban areas in
Banda Aceh and whose livelihood did not rely on the surrounding
natural resources, have chosen to stay in the new regions far away
from the beach.
´ On Mt. Merapi, some of the local communities have decided to go
back to their original hamlets. Some others have accepted the new
settlement on the lower slopes and exploited their original hamlets
as livelihood resources.
´ During normal times, the engagements with daily places are much
more important compared to the abstract idea of disaster zones.
´ However, it does not mean that the locals are not aware of the spatial
categorization of disaster-prone areas. But, such awareness merely lays
as background during regular times. It becomes the foreground and
constitutes their practices and responses during the crisis, when the
volcano gets more active.
´ The external vision of landscape can be combined with closer
engagements with place. Integrating such different perspectives
allows the locals to freely activate particular perspectives and
dynamically shift between them depending on specific functions.
´ The contextualist-performative view (Thrift 1999): place is ‘specific time-
space configurations made up of the intersection of many encounters
between “actants” (people and things)’ (Agnew 2005, 92).
Topic 2: post-disaster human
settlements
´ Shaw and Ahmed (2010) have differentiated two types of post-
disaster housing: construction in the affected area and relocation or
development of new settlements outside the affected areas. As a
general trend, the government wishes and tries to build new human
settlements outside the affected areas (outside the disaster-prone
areas). However, in many cases, such a plan often fails due to many
reasons.
´ Some scholars have warned that building settlements in new places
is much more complicated than rebuilding the old sites, as it will
relate to economic and political aspects of livelihoods as well as
other social and cultural aspects (Oliver-Smith 1991; Quarantelli
1982).
Three post-disaster taskscapes
´ The implementation of disaster-prone areas may, in turn, affect the
broader reorganization of these three post-disaster taskscapes.
´ Housing: it is indeed the center of attention of any post-disaster
recovery programs, which has in turn marginalized other spatial
functions.
´ Working: the post-disaster economic recovery is mainly carried out
by the local people themselves and is not government intervention.
A critical issue usually neglected is that new post-disaster
settlements may raise new problems related to the survivor’s
livelihood. The new place to stay is far from the livelihood sources or
does not provide a place to work.
´ Homing: It is the most neglected one in post-disaster recovery
programs. ‘House’ differs from ‘home’ (Rykwert 1991). The former
refers to the physical function; the latter refers to the psychological
and social functions.
Post-disaster urban housing model
´ Post-disaster housing is usually built following modern urban housing
standards (Barrios 2017).
´ On Mt. Merapi: one family occupies 100 square meters of land and
is directly adjacent to the neighbour’s lands and houses. This is very
different from their home in their original hamlet, where one family
usually occupies a large area of land; the distance from one house
to another is quite big.
´ The government has built new houses, but they have neglected the
homes for the locals. Further, this housing model has created some
novel social problems.
´ Feelings of recovery through reconnecting with the places, the
home, the kinship, and the neighborhoods are fundamental homing
functions for any post-disaster recovery, which unfortunately is often
ignored by the government or donors (see Saul 2019; Browne 2015).
Redistribution of taskscapes

Type of activity Description

Returning People remain in their original places; the old place is
the place where to live, maintain social ties, and work as
well, just as it existed before the disaster.

Returning with the People stay in the old place but adopt new livelihoods.
new adaptation
Relocation People stay in the new place outside the disaster-prone
area but keep their former livelihood in the old site.
Relocation with the People stay in the new place, adopting new livelihood
new adaptation in their old place. Or, in contrast, people remain in the
old place but adopt new livelihood in the new location.

Total relocation People (have to) stay in a new place and (have to)
adopt new livelihoods as well.
Post-disaster cultural changes

´ This variety is a widespread phenomenon in the post-disaster

context but is rarely seriously taken into account in the recovery
processes.
´ A natural disaster and the following recovery processes may
produce a multiple-distracted landscape: working taskcapes in
specific places and living taskcapes in different places.
´ People have different landscape engagement levels in such a
multiple-distracted landscape, which will in turn create new
landscape boundaries.
Post-disaster cultural changes

´ This spatial segmentation of tasks brings along also temporal

segmentation. The apparent boundary between the residential and
working zones implies a clear boundary between working and non-
working hours.
´ This firmer time segmentation has further social consequences. Social
relations are more and more mechanical and contractual.
´ On the one hand, post-disaster human settlement is partly organized by
post-disaster spatial differentiation. Some areas are perceived as more
prone to disaster; others are safer for humans. On the other hand, the
post-disaster human settlement model will partly become the basis of
more complex cultural changes.
The gate of a new settlement area on Mt. Merapi (personal documentation)
Topic 3: disaster remembering and
mitigation
´ The dilemma of nature-culture separation or integration is also
represented in the practices of remembering past disasters and
mitigating future ones.
´ If the departure point is the integration of cultural processes with
natural ones, then it is highly likely that the way how to deal with
possible future natural disasters, and also how to remember past
disaster experiences, is by integrating emergency actions and
disaster remembering with the given landscape and cultural rhythms.
´ If the starting point is the separation of humans from certain kinds of
environments, it is highly likely that dealing with natural hazards
means establishing special sets of evacuation maps and
infrastructure. The separation perspective also tends to produce
special disaster memorials in the post-disaster landscape.
Separation - Evacuation routes Mitigation Disaster
integration infrastructure memorials
Separation of The evacuation New infrastructure Newly erected
humans from their route is separated dedicated for disaster memorials
former (different) from evacuation
landscapes everyday routines

Integration of the The evacuation The already The old parts of

disaster to the route is integrated established the landscape
ordinary with everyday infrastructure has maintain their
landscapes routines its original original meaning
function, which is or function, but
supplemented by acquire new
the new role as meaning as a
an evacuation disaster memorial
place
Evacuation routes and infrastructure
´ In Aceh, the evacuation map established by the government can be
recognized by its signifier in the form of signposts. However, the locals have
their own evacuation routes in mind, primarily based on their everyday
routines and familiarity with the surrounding landscape.
´ In Merapi, some evacuation routes mapped by the government are simply
not feasible due to the deplorable road conditions. Almost all local
communities create their own contingency planning, including evacuation
routes and infrastructure, based on their social capital.
´ In Aceh, in addition to some old buildings or places having the new
function as evacuation places, some specific new buildings dedicated to
evacuation have been erected.
´ In Merapi, there is no specific new building erected as the sole evacuation
place. All evacuation buildings are daily public infrastructures that function
as evacuation places during an emergency. When a new evacuation
building was developed, it would have other functions during normal times.
A Signpost of the tsunami evacuation routes and an evacuation building in Banda Aceh
(personal documentation)
Disaster memorials
´ We may find a similar tension between integrating disaster memories
with everyday routines and separating them from daily life with distinct
monuments or commemorations. In the latter case, the disaster
memorials are intentionally distinguished from the rest of the landscape,
emphasizing remembering the disaster.
´ The integration perspective merges the disaster memorials in the
landscape: all parts of the landscape can trigger disaster memory, but
at the same time, they can support disaster forgetting.
´ Some landscape features may have a more important function as
memorials; however, they fundamentally play their everyday roles and
are not separated from the rest of the landscape as distinct disaster
memorials.
´ On Mt. Merapi: The local myth of ‘big stones’.
´ Symbolic signs have their roots in indexical signs.
The tsunami museum and a tsunami pole in Aceh (personal documentation)
Disaster remembering rituals
´ Highlighting the disaster memory requires specific rituals distinguished from
everyday life. Meanwhile, disaster remembering practices can also be a
part of daily routines, even emphasizing disaster forgetting – not always
remembering the disaster.
´ This idea that disaster memories are often integrated with daily landscapes
and taskscapes is essential. The existing studies on disaster memory usually
emphasize the practices of disaster remembering as special events or
distinctive places separated from everyday life (e.g. Eyre 2007; Le Blanc
2012; Samuels 2012).
´ Following the French sociological tradition, especially the idea of collective
memory of Maurice Halbwachs (1980) and the body techniques of Marcel
Mauss (1973), Rafael Narvaez (2006, 54) argues that although ‘collective
memory gathers depth through rituality […]’
´ Thus, disaster remembering is not triggered by distinct disaster memorials or
deliberative commemorative rituals, but is also incorporated into ordinary
landscapes, daily tasks, and bodily practices.
Conclusion
´ Natural disasters and their subsequent recovery processes will
inevitably transform landscape in varying degrees. These post-
disaster landscape transformations might involve two (seemingly)
contradictory modes: integrating nature and culture or separating
the two.
´ This dilemma of nature-culture is manifested in post-disaster
landscape transformations, especially through three central
manifestations, i.e., post-disaster spatial categorization, post-disaster
human settlements, and disaster remembering and mitigation.
´ Two levels of dichotomy – two levels of interrelations
´ The first level: nature vs culture.
´ The second level: nature vs culture as a whole (modernist view) vs non
or pre-modernist view.
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