Social Memory in the Mekong’s Changing Floodscapes: Narratives of Agrarian Communities’ Adaptation

Rural adaptation encompasses place-based perceptions, behaviors, livelihoods, and traditional ways of life associated with local environments. These perceptions, norms, and practices are disturbed by coupled environment-development externalities. This study employs the Vietnamese Mekong floodplains...

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Published inHuman ecology : an interdisciplinary journal Vol. 50; no. 5; pp. 879 - 893
Main Authors Tran, Thong Anh, Rigg, Jonathan, Taylor, David, Miller, Michelle Ann, Pittock, Jamie, Le, Phong Thanh
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.10.2022
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Adaptation
Agrarian society
Anthropology
Climate change
Collective memory
Community
Economic development
Environmental impact
Environmental Management
Floodplains
Floods
Focus groups
Geography
Human ecology
Human-environment relationship
Hydroelectric power
Hydrology
Memory
Narratives
Norms
Qualitative analysis
Resilience
Rural areas
Rural communities
Social Sciences
Sociology
Human–environment interactions
Social memory
Vietnamese Mekong Delta
Community resilience
Transformative adaptation
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Summary:Rural adaptation encompasses place-based perceptions, behaviors, livelihoods, and traditional ways of life associated with local environments. These perceptions, norms, and practices are disturbed by coupled environment-development externalities. This study employs the Vietnamese Mekong floodplains as an exemplary case to illustrate how floods impact agrarian communities and how they have experienced flood alterations driven by hydropower development and climate change in recent years. Drawing on thematic and narrative analyses of qualitative data (focus group discussions and interviews) collected in three agrarian communities in the Vietnamese Mekong floodplains, sources drawn from various news outlets, and academic materials, we argue that disrupted flood environments in the floodplains have triggered affective flood reminiscences, catalysing shifts to incremental and transformative adaptation to achieve resilience. We build a nuanced understanding of how social memory helps to enhance human–environment relationships in response to highly complex hydrological dynamics in the delta.
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ISSN:0300-7839
1572-9915
DOI:10.1007/s10745-022-00362-0