TY - JOUR
T1 - Remembering and forgetting floods and droughts
T2 - Lessons from the Welsh colony in Patagonia
AU - Griffiths, Hywel
AU - Tooth, Stephen
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank colleagues for comments and suggestions received following talks at Aberystwyth University, the RGS-IBG Annual Meeting in 2013, the Annual E.G. Bowen Memorial Lecture in 2014, and the International Conference of Historical Geographers in 2015. We also thank Antony Smith for assistance with the production of figures, Ceris Gruffudd for making links to residents of Welsh Patagonia, and Teithiau Tango Tours for making travel arrangements. This research would not have been possible without the hospitality, enthusiasm and assistance of residents of Welsh Patagonia. Finally we thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the manuscript. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We are very grateful to the British Academy/Leverhulme and Sir Ernest Cassel Educational Trust Grant for funding research in Welsh Patagonia through the award of a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SG122351 Remembering a hydrographic society: flooding, drought, adaptation and culture in the Welsh colony of Patagonia, Argentina).
Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We are very grateful to the British Academy/Leverhulme and Sir Ernest Cassel Educational Trust Grant for funding research in Welsh Patagonia through the award of a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SG122351 Remembering a hydrographic society: flooding, drought, adaptation and culture in the Welsh colony of Patagonia, Argentina).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
PY - 2021/4/1
Y1 - 2021/4/1
N2 - Sustainable flood memories – defined as those formed of folk memories of flooding, flood heritage and other local, lay knowledges – have been identified as having great potential for increasing community resilience to floods. Focusing on the social and cultural aspects of flood and drought memory, we present the findings of archival research, interviews with residents of the Welsh colony in Argentine Patagonia (Y Wladfa in Welsh), and critical textual analysis of museum spaces. This analysis enables reconstruction of flood and drought history over the ~150 years of the colony, provides insights into the impact, emotive power and perception of floods and droughts, and highlights the ways in which lay knowledge and flood and drought memories are transmitted vertically and shared horizontally in material and immaterial ways. We argue that specific thresholds of memory exist, as related to flood/drought magnitude, duration, social impact and memorialisation, which ensure that some events are encoded, transcribed and transmitted through the collective memoria of a community, while other events may fade from memory. Ensuring long-term sustainability of the Welsh-language community, and integration of these flood/drought memories with those from other cultures and languages, will help develop community resilience to 21
st century hydroclimatic changes.
AB - Sustainable flood memories – defined as those formed of folk memories of flooding, flood heritage and other local, lay knowledges – have been identified as having great potential for increasing community resilience to floods. Focusing on the social and cultural aspects of flood and drought memory, we present the findings of archival research, interviews with residents of the Welsh colony in Argentine Patagonia (Y Wladfa in Welsh), and critical textual analysis of museum spaces. This analysis enables reconstruction of flood and drought history over the ~150 years of the colony, provides insights into the impact, emotive power and perception of floods and droughts, and highlights the ways in which lay knowledge and flood and drought memories are transmitted vertically and shared horizontally in material and immaterial ways. We argue that specific thresholds of memory exist, as related to flood/drought magnitude, duration, social impact and memorialisation, which ensure that some events are encoded, transcribed and transmitted through the collective memoria of a community, while other events may fade from memory. Ensuring long-term sustainability of the Welsh-language community, and integration of these flood/drought memories with those from other cultures and languages, will help develop community resilience to 21
st century hydroclimatic changes.
KW - Patagonia
KW - drought
KW - floods
KW - forgetting
KW - memory
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096855468&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1474474020963135
DO - 10.1177/1474474020963135
M3 - Article
SN - 1474-4740
VL - 28
SP - 341
EP - 361
JO - Cultural Geographies
JF - Cultural Geographies
IS - 2
ER -