May 10th, 12:30 – 1:20pm Research Talk via Zoom by Urban Design and Planning Fulbright Student Catharina Depari
Title: Traditional Ecological Practices Of Mount Merapi – Towards Panarchy-Based Resilience
Case Study: The Pelemsari Court-Village, Sleman, Yogyakarta
Supervisory Committee:
Professors Daniel B. Abramson, Robert Mugerauer, Michael K. Lindell, Celia Lowe
Abstract
Mount Merapi finally spewed lava and hot clouds avalanches on March 9, 2022, after threatening to erupt since 2020. No casualties are reported but about 253 villagers nearby the crater, fled their homes to the nearest shelters. Only four days before the eruption, abdi dalem (royal servants) of the Yogyakarta monarchy held the rite Labuhan Merapi to commemorate the Sultan’s ascension to the throne and appeal to their ancestral spirits. Led by the volcano’s gatekeeper, the parade, carrying tributes for the spirits, walked towards the sacred harbor Srimanganti located only about three kilometers from the crater. National security guards, from military soldiers to forest police, escorted the procession. The scene manifests a restoration of the long-ruptured relationship between the state and villagers that had long occurred since the colonial period.
For the close-knit community of the Pelemsari sub-village, this most recent volcanic activity unfolds the trauma of the 2010 eruption and disputes with the government. In 2011, a state-produced perturbance, namely the Sleman Regional Government’s relocation policy, enhanced their anxiety. Collectively, this community—mobilized by the Javanese principle sadumuk bathuk sanyari bumi dak bela pati arti (i.e., defending the ancestral land until the last breath)—independently planned for their own relocation while forcing the government to issue the certificates over their former lands. Further, when the Sultan ordered people living near the crater to evacuate during the 2006 eruption, most of the Pelemsari villagers chose to emulate their former gatekeeper, Marijan, who courageously stated that the Sultan talked not as a king but as a governor. The distinction between governor and king shows how Marijian delegitimized state authority by elevating the power of a more holy sovereign.
My research advocates the argument that rather than isolating the people from the place in which they had already been rooted around the volcano’s caldera, integrating panarchy and living with risk frameworks is an ideal approach for enhancing the sustainability of the Pelemsari villagers and Merapi. The logic underlying my argument is eruptions, unlike other hazards, are preceded by precursory activities and are low in frequency, allowing the inhabitants to develop hazard risk reduction strategies while optimizing the benefits of their volcanic environment. Based on the analysis conducted to date, I will discuss the characteristics and resilience of the Pelemsari’s social-ecological systems manifested through their ngarit-mugut (i.e., cutting-collecting grass) and dairy farming traditions. The questions that drive my research are: 1) what is the meaning of living with risks according to the villagers after the 2010 eruption; 2) how do those meaning-related insights influence their traditional practices; 3) how do these practices affect and are affected by other systems outside those of the sub-village, and 4) what strategies do these villagers develop to maintain the sustainability of the traditions in the face of uncertainty. To address these questions, I adopt hermeneutic phenomenology that relies on semi-structured interviews, cognitive mapping, and field observations.
This Research Seminar is via Zoom https://washington.zoom.us/j/93364032883