Culture, heritage, memory: toward a resonant cultural solution for resettlement

Abstract

Resettlement—one durable solution to displacement—is hazardous and risks failure. Displaced people may lose their material base, skills and capabilities, and face sociocultural discontinuity, dissonance and the loss of identity. In this article, we introduce a new resettlement model that we call the culture, heritage, and memory (CHM) box. We conceptualize, define and explore this box in relation to resettlement discourse, policy, and several case studies. We argue that the rich anthropological resettlement discourse confirms the importance of culture in resettlement recovery, in contrast with international resettlement policies, which recognize culture, especially indigenous cultures, but not as a central concern or objective. Culture is overlooked in resettlement practice and deserves much wider recognition. Our case studies demonstrate the potential of the ‘CHM box’ to make these elements visible during the resettlement negotiation and participation process, and that this is essential to achieving the resettled groups’ own aims of culturally resonant resettlement outcomes. The CHM box unlocks a channel for communicating and engaging with affected people, and illuminates how the past, in an intricate and complex way, can be useful in the formation of the future.

Abstracto

El reasentamiento, una solución duradera al desplazamiento tiene sus peligros y corre el considerable riesgo de fracasar. Las personas desplazadas pueden perder su base material, sus habilidades y capacidades, y enfrentarse a la discontinuidad sociocultural, la disonancia y la pérdida de identidad. En este artículo, presentamos un nuevo modelo de reasentamiento al que llamamos caja de cultura, patrimonio y memoria (CHM box en Inglés). Conceptualizamos, definimos y exploramos este cuadro en relación con el discurso, las políticas y varios estudios de caso sobre reasentamiento. Argumentamos que el rico discurso antropológico sobre el reasentamiento confirma la importancia de la cultura en la recuperación del reasentamiento, en contraste con las políticas internacionales de reasentamiento, que reconocen la cultura, especialmente en las culturas indígenas, pero no como una preocupación u objetivo central. La cultura se pasa por alto en la práctica de reasentamiento y merece un reconocimiento mucho más amplio. Nuestros estudios de caso demuestran el potencial de la “caja CHM” para hacer visibles estos elementos durante el proceso de negociación y participación en materia de reasentamiento, y además que ésto es esencial para lograr los propios objetivos de los grupos reasentados de lograr resultados de reasentamiento culturalmente resonantes. El cuadro CHM abre un canal para comunicarse e interactuar con las personas afectadas, e ilumina cómo el pasado, de una manera intrincada y compleja, puede ser útil en la formación del futuro.

Implications

Culture in displacement and resettlement has been overlooked or politicized in policies, laws, and practice, jeopardizing resonant cultural solutions. We therefore introduce a new resettlement model: the culture, heritage, and memory (CHM) box, which can unlock a channel for communicating, engaging and negotiating with affected people to illuminate how the past, in an intricate and complex way, can be useful in the formation of the future.

Social Media Statement

A culture, heritage and memory (CHM) box for displacement and resettlement discourse, policy, and several case studies can enhance resettlement negotiations with people displaced by development to achieve culturally resonant solutions.

Keywords:

• culture
• displacement
• heritage
• memory
• resettlement

Palabras clave:

• cultura
• desplazamiento
• patrimonio
• memoria
• reasentamiento

Displacement—whether from conflict, disasters, climate change or development—is escalating globally (IDMC 2023; Cernea and Maldonado 2018. Economic development strategies largely favor people-displacing approaches of industrialization, resource extraction, special economic zones, urbanization and dam building (Partridge and Halmo 2021). The resultant land clearing, pollution and deforestation threatens ecosystems on which people depend, intensifying the impacts of climate change including further population displacement.

Resettlement is one planned solution to displacement (from whatever cause)—but there is a significant risk of failure (Brookings Institute et al. 2015; Cernea and Mathur 2008; Hay et al. 2019; Oliver-Smith 2010; Scudder 2005a, 2019). Achieving sustainable socioeconomic reintegration for displaced people poses multiple challenges, including those of recognizing and addressing the intangible cultural losses they face. Too often unarticulated and overlooked, intangible losses undermine well-being and add sociocultural dissonance to displacement, potentially compounding the socioeconomic challenge of reconstructing lives and livelihoods. We define ‘cultural intangibles’ as encompassing the beliefs, knowledge, practices, skills, language, representations, negotiations and identities which animate material sites, objects, places and processes, such as income generation.

We contend, in this article, that culture is downplayed and undertheorized in resettlement. Global development strategies lack cultural specificity. The Sustainable Development Goals 2030, associating culture with civilizations and heritage promotion, do not recognize the crucial link between culture and development. Country property and expropriation laws may, at best, recognize limited intangible losses though a solatium; they may not recognize customary land tenure, or culture and heritage; or provide opportunities for consultation and negotiation with the affected people (Tagliarino 2017). Resettlement has triggered anti-resettlement protests around the globe (Oliver-Smith 2010). Culture in practice may be politicized and deliberately dismantled (Wilmsen and Weber 2015).

International resettlement policies have been only partially successful in addressing cultural perspectives. Surveying 203 cases of resettlement mainly from development, Piggott-McKellar et al. (2020) found that culture was least reported, and, when reported, was reported least favorably, compared to financial, human, natural, physical and social asset categories. The authors recommended greater efforts to understand cultural needs, impacts and outcomes in resettlement.

To advance critical resettlement scholarship, we introduce in this article a new conceptual framework—the ‘culture, heritage and memory (CHM) box’—which we suggest would lead to better cultural understandings as a basis for resettlements that are dynamic, integrating and constructive. We elucidate the rationale for its application as a means of facilitating resettlement-related negotiations between affected people and project developers. We contend that strengthening and clarifying the rules, transforming (not simply adapting) the tone and quality of the conversations, and minimizing the existential uncertainty experienced by all parties, including affected people, in addressing culture enhances the resonance and likelihood that these subtle processes can be recognized and addressed.

In the following section, we provide a literature review of secondary sources problematizing culture in resettlement policy, planning, implementation and research. We find that the rich anthropological resettlement discourse confirms the importance of culture in resettlement recovery and deserves much wider recognition. We then set out the proposed methodology, including the rationale for our selection of case studies. We then formulate—as an exploratory model—the CHM box, for application to resettlement studies and practice through negotiations with resettlement-affected people. The CHM box provides a benchmark for review of international resettlement and related policies, based on policy documents and guidelines, and using this, we analyze several case studies.

Problematizing culture

Resettlement is potentially traumatic for the people being displaced. Ethnographic accounts attest that trauma intensifies a longing for refuge in familiar cultural practices, sites, objects and landscapes of meaning—but these may already be lost, deeply undermining a sense of identity (Aronsson 2002; Oliver-Smith 2010; Scudder and Colson 1982). This means that, in addition to material loss, displaced people face sociocultural discontinuity, dissonance, and the distinct challenge of reinventing their sociocultural identities in new places and spaces, often removed from familiar surroundings (Cernea 1997; Downing and Garcia-Downing 2009). Resettlement planners too often lack the concepts, language and strategies to engage with them on these issues.

Long-standing, rich social science discourse and explanatory model-building on cultural factors before, during and after development-based displacement and resettlement deserve wider recognition (Scudder and Colson 1982; Cernea 1997; Downing and Garcia-Downing 2009; de Wet 2015). Culture has been addressed mainly in terms of spatial and temporal orders and consequently as disruption and reconstruction. For example, Cernea (1997) proposed an Impoverishment Risk and Reconstruction (IRR) model identifying a set of resettlement risks to those affected, including risks of social disarticulation, and how they might be mitigated. Downing and Garcia-Downing (2009) proposed a model in which, given effective resettlement strategies, the original routine culture, becoming dissonant upon displacement, transforms into a new routine culture. Despite their insights, neither model has been mainstreamed in research nor adopted formally into multilateral financial institutions (MFI) resettlement policy.

Kircherr and Charles (2016) reviewed five well-known frameworks for examining the social impacts of dams and found limited spatial and temporal perspectives, an incomplete list of social impacts, and missing interlinkages between different impacts. Cultural and intangible impacts were not included in the review nor in the new framework they proposed. Smyth and Vanclay (2017), in contrast, address culture and religion as one set among eight sets of elements to be addressed to contribute to enhanced resettler well-being. Culture in resettlement may also be studied in terms of accessing land (Reddy et al. 2015).

In one perspective, escalating displacement shrinks an ‘enormous diversity of life ways’ down to a smaller set of ‘social, cultural and economic relationships that are compatible with the industrialized forms of production that form the basis of current development models’ (Oliver-Smith 2010, 8–9). When culture seems too distinct and, therefore, threatening, the state may deliberately use resettlement as a way of dismantling culture, severing people from their productive base, their house styles, settlement patterns, cultural sites, or landscapes of meaning through resettlement by refashioning displaced communities into a more acceptable form that serves state objectives (Rogers and Wilmsen 2020). Resettlement can be used to modernize, reorient, tame, suppress, subdue or transform ‘dissident’, ‘backward’, or ‘primitive’ cultural groups to fit within mainstream standards and thus reduce political risk and/or create new economic subjects (Wilmsen and Weber 2015). Resettlement can even be used as ethnocide (Barabas and Bartolomé 1973). Culture in this context is politicized, and despite its importance, it can divert attention from its more deeply rooted elements of collective formation.

Researchers warn of the danger of romanticizing culture, and of efforts to rebuild it just as it was without recognizing the transformative nature of resettlement (Hay et al. 2019). Regardless of the cause, planned resettlement—as part of a development project, used pre-emptively to avoid threats, or for people already displaced by other causes—may change displaced people’s lives significantly. Whether these planned changes are disruptive or transformative has been the subject of research for decades (e.g., Cernea and Maldonado 2018; Cernea and Mathur 2008; Partridge and Halmo 2021; Scudder and Colson 1982). We conclude that culture is recognized in the resettlement discourse, but not sufficiently deconstructed and critically assessed. Its analytical content is therefore not used to its full potential.

Methodology

In this article, we use a literature review, ethnographic accounts from fieldwork, and evaluation work as our main investigative methods. Below, we draw upon the resettlement literature review and on discourses on culture, heritage and memories more widely, to take initial steps to formulate, as an exploratory model, the CHM box, for application to resettlement studies and practice. We then review international policy documents and guidelines as primary source materials relating to culture in resettlement, to examine how culture is conceptualized and to highlight any gaps with the CHM box.

Case studies were selected to demonstrate how the CHM box may be applied in resettlement practice. Longitudinal studies of resettlement showing multi-generational change are rare, particularly ones which track cultural elements over time. For in-depth analysis, we have selected a case that contains rare ethnographic documentation of multi-generational cultural change: the Kariba dam in Zambia and Zimbabwe. This project was financed in the 1950s before the introduction of international lender resettlement policies and represents a ‘pre-policy’ or ‘without policy’ case. We draw on detailed ethnographic accounts prepared before, during and immediately after the resettlement, together with more recent ethnographic accounts of intergenerational impacts.

A more recent project, the Zimapán project in Mexico, international resettlement policy was applied and thus offers comparative value based on independent, longitudinal ethnographic field work. Author Inga-Lill Aronsson conducted rare, independent, ‘embedded’ research among the resettlers before, during and after their resettlement.

Analyzing the results, we find that the exploratory work on the model has yielded important conclusions worth further analysis through ethnographic (preferably longitudinal) studies focusing on the application of the CHM box in displacement and resettlement.

Conceptualizing the CHM Box

We now examine how culture, heritage, and memories—the CHM box—can be used in theory and praxis in resettlement. Unlocking this box allows the locally existing and generated conditions necessary for an integrated and durable cultural solution that is resonant, but not preservative in any simple way.

Heritage and memories as qualifiers of culture are necessary for maintaining continuity of cultural identity over time. Displacement due to large infrastructure projects mostly involves destruction of place—its material and immaterial expressions—that makes rebuilding efforts laborious and sensitive. Destruction is, however, also part of history (Holtorf 2020), as is forgetting (Forty and Küchler 1999), and also remembering (Connerton 1989).

Planned social change accentuates this matrix of destruction, preservation, development, memory and rebuilding, extending beyond economic compensation to subtle, complex, and highly formative past, present and future processes. We have identified this matrix as ‘the CHM box’ which, in the context of resettlement, comprises a perpetual past where historical events, tangible and intangible expressions must be assessed in relation to the present and the future during a short project timeframe. Creating a sense of the past upholds continuity.

The past is more than history; it is formative for cultural innovation and transformation. Insofar as displacement and resettlement destroy cultural sites and thereby damage historical and aesthetic values, the bequest values of future generations are affected. In this hazardous resettlement milieu, culture, heritage and memory may escape their potential use as enabling factors for participation, inclusion, negotiation, diversity and sustainability. This raises theoretical and practical questions of how intangible losses are interlinked with the material losses in resettlement projects: losses that—despite the ambition to rebuild and improve the societýs material base—seem too often to fail to be rebuilt. Intangible and tangible heritage, as well as memory, are part of culture. But from an analytical perspective, and to make use of culture in policy, we may gain by refining these opaque concepts that have intrigued and bamboozled resettlement practitioners for decades.

We propose that opening the CHM box has the potential to create resettlements that are dynamic, integrating and constructive, using its meaning-making capacities to underpin livelihoods and wellbeing. The CHM box forms the conceptual framework. We disaggregate and define its elements below, and test these in relation to negotiations, participation and transformation.

Culture

Anthropology has composed and used many definitions of culture ever since Sir Edward B. Taylor classically defined culture as that complex whole of knowledge, belief, art, morals, law and custom (Taylor 1871:1). Ethnography is the foundation.

Culture would ensure the importance of inclusiveness and cultural diversity, but there is a risk of relativization of culture. Different groups may have contesting narratives which, in negotiations, require assessments and decisions of a range of cultural values (Aronsson and Hassnain 2019).

Culture works as something between peoples’ heads in a material world, but also inside peoplés heads (Bohannan 1995). This has consequences for the CHM box. We lack knowledge about the interaction between people and the material world—what they do with each other—and how people remember and commemorate their life worlds. People take their landscape for granted as long as it is intact. Destruction is emotionally felt and difficult to comprehend and express. In resettlement, these dimensions create methodological challenges because closeness, trust and continuity are decisive. The ethnographic method is preferred, but with awareness of possibly violent situations. Local and outside ethnographers’ safety must be prioritized.

Resettlement is about transformation and, theoretically, culture is both a noun and a verb. Culture as a noun must do something to change, while culture as a verb is change because it entails its own capacity for change (Bohannan 1995, 47). Culture as a noun is its own agency and capable of agency, while culture as a verb is change. Hence culture, with its double capacities, negotiates meaning and resources from the past (heritage and memories) as well as the future (visions).

Heritage

‘Heritage’ is as opaque as ‘culture’, but over the past decade it has gained importance within a postcolonial theoretical frame. Heritage is defined (Harvey 2008, 19) as:

… not a thing and does not exist by itself—nor does it imply a movement or a project. Rather, heritage is about the process by which people use the past—a ‘discursive construction’ with material consequences.

In this discourse, power is central and local heritage is always subordinated to the national statés heritage, as articulated in the model of the authorized heritage discourse (AHD) (Smith 2006).

Resettlement is about destruction of place and its mitigation, even transformation. Heritage, in the context of transformation and destruction, is a ‘vehicle of communication, a means of transmission of ideas, values and knowledge, which includes the tangibles and intangibles of both cultural and natural heritage’ (Apaydin 2020, 2). This definition is useful and complements the classic anthropological cultural definition.

In the Bui Dam project, Apoh and Gavua (2016) connect heritage with conflict management. They applied ethnographic field methods and negotiated with the management and locals about, for example, the excavation and moving of human bones. Bones, as an analytical category, connect materiality with humans, underpinning the question of what bones do to people, and what people do with bones; hence materialized memories, tangible and intangible resources interconnect and are visible for the negotiations.

Memory

In the extensive literature (Bevan 2016; Connerton 1989; Schwartz 2010;), memories—whether individual or collective—are always double-edged, because they give comfort to some, but hate to others. We focus on collective memories. In the literature from the 1980s, collective memories are usually linked to power relations, relativism and cultural production, as can be seen in Holocaust and slavery studies that led to multiculturalism and the rights of minorities (Schwartz 2010, 620–622).

For Schwartz (2010), collective memory is linked to culture through an inherited system of symbolic forms expressed in an historically transmitted pattern that enables us to engage with the past in at least two ways: a model of society, and a model for society. A model of society helps us to reflect on present problems. A model for society determines its values and defines its meaning. Both models are relevant for resettlement.

There are two models of collective memory: the presentist and the traditionalist. The presentist model is postmodern and political. The traditionalist model is a realist model, assuming the past has an authentic heritage that can give moral direction to learn from the past, but which can change with historical advancement. Presentism has dominated memory studies, much of it based on Maurice Halbwachs’ pioneering work (1925) (Schwartz 2010, 621–622).

We favor a traditionalist view on memory, based on our experiences as resettlement researchers the ethnographic accounts of suffering, which people do not forget, which still resonate in their memory of a long-gone place. If we accept collective memory, we also accept collective trauma.

Critical voices

Gable and Handler (2011) argue that to anthropomorphize culture is a big mistake because ‘(c)ultures do not think or feel. Societies do not remember’ (Gable and Handler 2011, 23). They emphasize how culture and memory can be misused—which is a risk in resettlement. Furthermore, they argue that the conception of the past might not be ‘structured in terms of Western theories of history and memory’ (Gable and Handler 2011, 23). These arguments are relevant for the CHM box but need to be nuanced. The participatory progress in resettlement has improved dialogue: the misuse of culture and memory can be practiced by all parties, and the interpretation of the past from a global north perspective should be viewed in relation to possible tensions between local and universal definitions and local practices. These aspects are constantly present in the negotiations. A failure to recognize the complexity due to ideological factors could jeopardize entire populations’ security. We disagree with their standpoint on culture because resettlement and history show the opposite.

Culture in international policy discourse

Development projects financed by MFI follow a set of resettlement policy principles originating with the World Bank in 1980 and reformulated in 1990 (Cernea and Maldonado 2018). In 1999, a resettlement policy conversion included a paragraph that was critically discussed: ‘Losses arising from sentimental attachment or aesthetic preference and indirect losses (e.g., consequences of the project on areas not directly affected by land acquisition) are beyond the scope of this policy’ (World Bank 1998 OP 4.12, footnote 7).

This paragraph is relevant for the CHM box - sentimental attachment, aesthetics and indirect losses. The choice of words might differ today, but these elements are central for rebuilding a displaced society. The anthropologist D.E.Young (1998) argued exactly this case. The footnote was later deleted. Could a footnote have been a game changer in resettlement policy?

During 2012–2014, a World Bank review was initiated that resulted in the World Bank’s Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) (2017). On resettlement, the Environmental and Social Standard 5 (ESS5) treats culture as a building block to obtain the desirable outcome: better, or at least equivalent, material living standards and livelihoods relative to the pre-project situation. Cultural forms can be recognized in the organization of housing replacement or work groups, in the choice of leaders, and in animating a participative process designed to establish compensation standards, relocation options and livelihood strategies. But the resettlement objective is never expressed in terms of enhanced or restored cultural forms.

In contrast, ESS7 on Indigenous Peoples aims to ensure that the development process fosters full respect for the ‘human rights, dignity, aspirations, identity, culture, and natural resource-based livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples’ (World Bank 2017, 76).¹ Indigenous culture is treated as authentic, and Indigenous peoples have the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) when faced with relocation.

In ESS8 on heritage, the World Bank emphasizes the development potential of cultural heritage because ‘culture is development’ (World Bank 2017, 85). Heritage promotes and preserves. Lafrenz Samuels (2020) argued that the World Bank has started to see the value of heritage and cultural expertise in its own right, concluding that culture and tradition are no longer a hindrance to development. The complex inter-relationships between culture, heritage, memories, resettlement and development are still, however, unresolved in ESS5.

In the ESF, culture and heritage are ambiguous and instrumental, perhaps with reason. Behind lurks the symbolic force, connected to identity and contested sites in resettlement, that might trigger violence. Culture and heritage can fragment, as well as unite.

International resettlement policies acknowledge culture, but the resettlement objectives are expressed in terms of the material base rather than immaterial cultural dynamics. It seems that culture, memory and heritage escape definition, including both risks and potential uses as enabling factors for capacity building, participation, inclusion and sustainability.

Applying the CHM box for analysis in resettlement case studies

Applying the CHM box to resettlement is like a puzzle. Some pieces are clear, and others more obscure, as detailed ethnographies, particularly longitudinal studies, are often missing in resettlement.

The Kariba Case

In an iconic, unusually well-documented case of development-based resettlement in the 1950s, the pre-policy, colonial era Kariba reservoir on the Zambezi River bordered two countries: the north bank in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and, on the south bank, the settler colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The resettlement process was, at best, rudimentary. Authorities on the south bank simply loaded 23,000 resettlers into trucks and dumped them at distant sites, with some building materials, food handouts while they re-established themselves, and two-year tax remittances (Scudder 2005b). Colonial authorities rejected a paper prepared by the local Native Commissioner, I.G. Cockcroft, which recommended special measures to support the resettlers’ culture, health and livelihoods.

Recent research by Joshua Matanzima (2023) demonstrates how, compounding the loss of livelihoods, the south bank displacees lost their landscapes of meaning, ritual places and networks. Their identity as ‘river people’ was shattered. Their hasty departure interrupted efforts to replant trees and reposition their ritual places. Removed to unfamiliar, Shona-speaking areas, over time the resettlers almost lost their cohesive, river-based belief systems, their rituals and their language. These impacts were experienced in different degrees of intensity, and with a range of intergenerational outcomes. Some descendants now engage in the politics of recognition and landscape. Marginalized from mainstream Zimbabwe’s socioeconomic and political spheres, these leaders now show common cause with other minorities in lobbying for recognition and inclusion in the modern state (Matanzima 2023). This includes lobbying for continued access to the Zambezi River and its reservoir.

On the north bank, however, the colonial regime worked through local councils. Given just one opportunity for negotiating conditions, the local council nearest Kariba presented ten key conditions for approval, which, when implemented, limited the damage to resettler livelihoods and cultural identity (Matanzima 2023). Critically, the conditions ensured resettlers’ access to the reservoir draw-down area, with its seasonal agricultural and fishing potential; recognised and cared for shrines; and prevented government from deliberately changing customary law and agricultural methods. These conditions offered some continuity with culturally significant landscapes, and their associated rituals, production practices, networks and language (Matanzima 2023). With minimal knowledge of what would unfold, the north bank people far-sightedly negotiated conditions supporting the continuity of culture and heritage when given just this one opportunity for collaborative decision-making with government.

This case elucidates the CHM box in several ways. Relocations on both banks were rudimentary. People died; some were shot resisting relocation (Scudder 2005b). Memories were traumatic. For both banks, Scudder (2005b, 40) describes cultural losses as part of the ‘multidimensional stress of resettlement’. But, without negotiated conditions, the south bank people lost far more than their north bank peers.

Colson (1971, 50) noticed how paths linking homesteads and places criss-crossed the Kariba terrain: people walked the landscape. The CHM box could have offered tools for mapping this relationship, connecting emotional, aesthetic and ritual dimensions with the riverine landscapes, and with ecological and economic resources. Linking such resonant mapping with multiple points of collaborative decision-making would have offered a powerful, culturally informed basis for anticipating and responding to massive, project-induced change through time. If decision-making powers had been continuous, the resettlers themselves would have had agency in determining the course and outcomes of their resettlement.

The Zimapán case

The following is based on Inga-Lill Aronsson’s longitudinal field work between 1992 and 2018 with regular returns and digital contact (Aronsson 2002, 2009, 2017, 2019). Zimapán is a hydroelectric dam built on the border of Hidalgo and Querétaro in central Mexico. It was a World Bank financed project, and so was subject to then current World Bank resettlement policy. Some 2,500 people were displaced, mainly from three villages, La Vega, Vista Hermosa and Rancho Nuevo, in the valley of Ejido Vista Hermosa in Querétaro. The people were Spanish speaking mestizos with Otomí heritage in their housing, settlement patterns, handicrafts, kinship and in everyday language using Otomí expressions. They did not identify themselves as Otomís because (they said), they had forgotten to speak that dialect (Aronsson 2002). Kinship ties with the Otomís in Hidalgo, across the river, were common.

The negotiations for the land and the new village were complex. The rich cultural relations between humans, land, trees, spirits and conflicts about water in the history of the ejido (the agricultural cooperative founded after the Mexican revolutions) were not negotiable. Underestimating resettlement costs produced a budget overrun of 47.5% (World Bank 1997, 5, 21).

The World Bank final evaluation report noted that the resettlement would have been improved by a conducive legal framework, compensation for ecologically similar areas as the river, and land improvements for mestizo families. Against the implementors’ advice, the ejido rejected the compensation land in preference for cash (World Bank 1997, 7–8). The ejido questioned the quality of the land for agriculture and was concerned about the jointly-owned irrigation. Conflicts about water were part of the collective memory (Aronsson 2002).

The negotiations were mentioned as particularly difficult (World Bank 1997, 22). Retrospective application of the CHM box identifies that this valley was well equipped to mobilize because of its history of participation in the revolution, strategic information gathering, and violence capital. Analytically speaking, the new leader embodied the past (fighting for the foundation), present (preventing destruction) and the future (development) (Aronsson 2002, 166–167).

The World Bank (1997, 10) found that the social monitoring team was not independent enough. We agree that monitoring reports were alarmingly similar to the project implementors’ reports. Monitors knew about culture, heritage and memory, but the templates of report writing did not encourage such analysis. The report (1997, 23) also concluded that the sustainability of the new village could not be guaranteed.

By 2018, life in the new village could be captured in the expression ‘mucha pobreza’ (great poverty) (Aronsson 2019). The middle class struggled with modernization, changing lifestyles, migration and alternative incomes. The younger generation—either resettled as children or born in the new village—challenged traditional structures such as gender and politics and searched for an identity. The losers were the older generation, as the ejido lacks pension funds, and there is no river. Society was visibly more stratified.

Below is an ethnographic contextualization presented with focus on the CHM box.

The destruction of the landscape

The dam wall was closed at 5 a.m. on November 27 1993, without any prior announcement; people refused to move. The flooding was the apotheosis of a long suffering: a collective trauma that, for more than 30 years, stayed in the minds of the resettled people (Aronsson 2002, 2019). Their beloved valley was inundated; dying wild animals screamed, then deadly silence; thousands of fruit trees—‘their children’—were drowned (Aronsson 2002, 103). The destruction of the landscape, this eco-cosmology, involved the ‘bleeding of the mountains’ (Aronsson 2002) – the mountains blown up and reddish stones streaming down the sides; the confusion when the river was redirected (because the river was a space-signifying order); life and death (Aronsson 2002, 102). Life became unpredictable. These experiences embodied memories that are part of a wider collective memory net. The trees, mountains and rivers did not in any simplistic way represent the peoplés identity, as a postmodern understanding of a fluid reality would claim: they materialized it. How this traumatic memory will be commemorated is still an open question.

The devil in the landscape

Where humans and spirits lived side by side, the devil was an integral part of the symbolic landscape. The devil lived in the canyon El Infiernillo (‘little hell’) where the dam wall was built. He appeared many times for the dam workers; he interfered with the dam project; demanded human sacrifices of outsiders; and, at the end, caused a car full of tourists to drown in the reservoir.

In this symbolic landscape, his body lay stretched out and each body part represented a village: his head represented the oldest and most traditional Catholic village, La Vega; his stomach was located at the Catholic middle-village Vista Hermosa; and his legs and feet represented the youngest, most progressive village, Rancho Nuevo. La Vega and Rancho Nuevo competed for political and economic power; Vista Hermosa functioned as mediator. However, the resettlement changed this dynamic in favor of Rancho Nuevo, which reinforced its position as most progressive.

The devil was also resettled and occupied the urban symbolic landscape in the new village. Consisting of three blocks, one for each village, its division was again head La Vega, stomach Vista Hermosa, and legs Rancho Nuevo. But a transformation had taken place: the body was no longer outstretched, but in a fetal position. The villagers joked that even the devil had to submit to the World Bank.

As discussed by Barabas and Bartolomé (1973), the devil’s symbolic role in the resettlement can be interpreted as that of a cultural mediator for, and source of, everyday resistance to the Cerro de Oro Dam. The devil was a political heritage, but it was more complicated than that. People did not want to talk about it: he was a difficult and dissonant heritage that, with time, might transform into an un-wanted or un-inherited heritage that exists but society does not know what to do with it.

The new village name

The new village on the semi-desert plateau was named Bella Vista del Río (‘beautiful view of the river’). But there was no river to be seen. The public naming procedure was hilarious with more than 13 suggestions, from La Ciudad El Paraíso (‘The Paradise Town’—which is the name of a cemetery in Mexico City), to Pueblo de la Ilusión (Village of Illusion). The accepted name did not come up at the public gathering, but was imposed later (Aronsson 2002, 2009).

Placenames are mnemonics for social and cultural knowledge; in the resettlement context the village name transformed the river into a cognitive domain to uphold a continuity of the past. The power of heritage is that it connects to the past and makes us believe that there are existential values that might help us restore lost values. The risk is that the past is sacralized and frozen, reinforced with materialized memories, and thus becomes inaccessible for reconstruction and renegotiation.

A motto painted on a truck in the new village in 1994 said ‘My village is in agony’ (Aronsson 2002, 195). In 2018, the younger generation did not want to talk about the past, because ‘we live here now’, and turned to their mobiles. The middle-aged to older generations cried, rebuilt their houses, planted their gardens. Behind the high walls facing the streets, all was a blue copy of the homestead in the valley. And La Llorona (the crying woman) from the valley—the myth of the woman who drowned her children and herself because of poverty—still walked the streets at night, crying loudly (Aronsson 2019).

The land

With the reservoir, all irrigated land in the valley disappeared. This land, together with parts of the rain-fed land on the plateau, had been distributed when the ejido was founded in 1937 and was followed by three land extensions. The land distribution had created a socioeconomic system comprising a hierarchy of landowners, a group of landless and ‘people without rights’ (Aronsson 2002, 80). The system was based on who had been first and who lived where: the land was inherited.

The land was central to the negotiations. The land was cash compensated through a complicated process (Aronsson 2002, 235), but the ejido had some land on the plateau that still was available for distribution after the resettlement.

This existing intricate socioeconomic classificatory system with its social stratification was flexible under normal circumstances due to informal land use, social obligations and reciprocities. It was a moral economy. It was not flawless, and conflicts between the villages (with deadly outcomes) were not unusual. These conflicts were historically known, and they inhibited future collaboration because of distrust. The resettlement disturbed this complex system and invoked another socioeconomic cultural classification, creating dissonance between the existing system based on cultural heritage, and the monetary system of compensation.

In 2018, no ejido land was distributed; the whole system had broken down. The internal negotiations, underway since 1995, had created strong tensions and even fatal violence in the community. The conflict arose because the original ejidatarios wanted to secure their sons’ (not daughters’) access to land—while the ordinary ejidatarios argued that all land available should be fairly distributed among all. In the meantime, foreign investors contacted the ejido regularly wanting to purchase land (entire mountains), creating distrust.

This local socioeconomic and cultural system, based on temporal, spatial orders, heritage and memories, and materialized in the land distribution scheme with its particular classificatory categories, has merged (or is merging) into one single socioeconomic cultural category. This is a direct result of the resettlement and is a fundamental societal transformation involving all elements of the CHM box and livelihoods.

Whether this is a sign of democratization and modernization is a question of interpretation. The breakdown makes the ejido vulnerable to corruption and rumors because its fundamental sociocultural system of relations has been destroyed. Something new will come. The CHM box also recognizes that destruction and violence are part of the past, and consequently the community has to confront its past to survive.

Development of the uncivilized

The disassociation from the dam, and awareness of the statés involvement, were chronicled in the Ballad of Zimapán, composed and performed by the La Vega Brothers during the negotiations. The ballad belongs to the genre of Mexican folk songs. The text is straightforward: ‘We just could not believe what happened to us. Our valley and river are gone, and we will move to Ezequiel Montes where we will progress’.² The ballad was informative and sarcastic: the valley people were aware of the ambiguities in their culture, and discussed the topic, but they rejected the notion that they were uncivilized and in need of development.

An article about Zimapán, in the México City newspaper Excélsior, reinforced the view that the people were ‘uncivilized’ (1991, 129). The article claimed that the dam would bring development to this underdeveloped valley and presented a photo of a house from the valley. The women, furious, responded that this ‘house’ was a stable (which the ethnographer can confirm). The collective interpretation was that ‘the CFE (Comisión Federal de Electricidad) portrays us as if we live like animals’ (Aronsson 2002, 129). The CFE social resettlement team denied any involvement, but the damage was done. People felt collectively that their cultural values and dignity were diminished. This defined the rest of the project.

Analysis of the case studies

In both pre-policy Kariba and policy-based Zimapán, culture was largely ignored by the project developers, yet very much alive to the resettlers. It is legitimate to ask how such cultural expressions could contribute to culturally resonant resettlement. Events in both cases were performative when they happened and therefore became meaningful during the resettlement process. They lingered in peoplés minds and influenced the negotiations, although in Zimapán they were not openly discussed with outsiders because there was no adequate shared language. North bank Kariba resettlers had, in contrast, seized the one chance to express and negotiate their own culturally resonant conditions.

Renaming, destruction, trauma and memory are powerful vehicles for the transformation of a resettled society. Resettlement processes draw upon the past for the formation of the future in an impossibly short time span in the present. Methodologically, the challenge is to generate and explore knowledge, and to write culture so it makes sense for all involved. Heritage means using the past for the material and immaterial construction of the future. Memory is a means of stabilizing identities, which could be used to establish a symbolic space for memory work in a wider context. Sensory memories are engraved in peoples’ bodies. But there is a risk, because memory in the context of identity formation might become politicized; if the past becomes sacred and beyond renegotiation, transformation becomes difficult.

The CHM box creates a negotiating space and demands a higher level of responsibility and awareness for all involved. CHM can set the tone to handle the destructive forces set in motion in resettlement. Such forces might also be transformative, as culture has the double capacity of supporting negotiation of meaning and resources from the past (heritage and memories), while also envisioning the future.

The cases show collective memory and collective damage are inextricably linked, as are remembering and imagination. Culture and heritage do not, in themselves, inhibit future development, but to be useful, they need to be understood in all their complexity. Ethnography and local voices can unlock the CHM box. Mapping CHM with other elements such as landscape, ecology and economics through rapid change has significant potential to facilitate understanding and formulate responses, anticipating culturally resonant solutions.

Conclusion

Whether by accident or design, international resettlement policies, unless involving Indigenous Peoples, conceptualize culture in a supportive role, at best. Tools, approaches and methods from a rich social science discourse on culture, derived from real resettlement cases, are largely overlooked in policy. Officially, cultural difference may be viewed with suspicion, or ignored. In neither pre-policy Kariba nor in policy-based Zimapan were the developers concerned with achieving culturally resonant solutions.

The north bank Kariba community, however, seized a single opportunity for collaborative decision-making to unlock more enriching cultural outcomes. This case raises the possibility that linking CHM mapping with collaborative decision-making offers a powerful, culturally-informed basis for anticipating and responding to project-induced change through time. Continuous, collaborative decision-making would give the resettlers agency in determining the course and outcomes of their own resettlement, and the degree of its cultural resonance, from the earliest stages.

Resettlement can be transformative. This notion appeals to those who assume that the past impedes development. The past can impede development, if it becomes frozen, and so beyond possible renegotiation and transformation, as exemplified in a single materialized memory, such as a house key to a long-gone house. Memories can also create memory-interest groups that politicize the relations between groups leading to sociocultural fragmentation. Both the Kariba and Zimapán cases demonstrate this process.

One challenge is to recognize the relationship between the intangible and the tangible, as an essential expression of meaning-making with material consequences. The relationship between cultural intangibles and the material world in resettlement processes can be further explored both in project work and in research—not in any simple, instrumental way but recognizing its full potential and pitfalls in multiple negotiations on resettlement entitlements. Resettlement negotiations and monitoring indicators can address lost collective values and cultural organizing principles, finding new forms to articulate and encompass those values. The CHM box, in all its complexity, can offer a common language for the shared journey between the displacers and the displaced, in negotiating steps towards a culturally resonant, jointly envisioned future.

Societies remember for a long time, but forgetting is also an art. Both must be considered.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Professor Chris de Wet and Eddie Smyth for comments on earlier drafts; three unnamed reviewers; the Zimapán resettled community for their kind contributions and Carolyn Page for editing. Neither Inga-Lill Aronsson nor Susanna Price have competing interests to declare. The research on which this article is based, conducted by Inga-Lill Aronsson, was supported by Magn. Bergvalls Stiftelse, Stockholm, 2013 and 2017 (Dnr 2017-02275).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Inga-Lill Aronsson

Inga-Lill Aronsson has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and is associate professor in the Department of ALM (Archival Studies, Library and Information Studies, Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies), Uppsala University, Sweden. She is a member of The International Research Group for Policy and Program Evaluation (INTEVAL). Email: [email protected].

Susanna Price

Susanna Price, PhD, was the first resettlement specialist recruited to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to implement its 1995 Policy on Involuntary Resettlement. Currently a Lecturer (Hon) in Culture, History and Languages, in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, she publishes regularly on displacement and resettlement. Email: [email protected].

Notes

1 The ESS7 also aims to ‘promote sustainable development benefits and opportunities for Indigenous Peoples … in a manner that is accessible, culturally appropriate and inclusive’.

It aims to ‘recognize, respect and preserve the culture, knowledge, and practices of Indigenous Peoples … and to provide them with an opportunity to adapt to changing conditions in a manner and in a timeframe acceptable to them’ (World Bank 2017, 76).

2 Corrida projecto Zimapán Ballad of Zimapán), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIOA-9uwsC0

Año del ochenta y nueve//Voy a empezar a cantar//Este corrido muy triste//Ni quien se iba a imaginar …) Ya con esta me despido//a orillas del río San Juan//me voy para Ezequiel Montes//donde voy a progresar Corrida Projecto Zimapán).

In the year of 89//I will begin my song//This very sad ballad//That nobody would imagine//…) With this I say farewell to the shores of the River San Juan//I will leave for Ezequiel Montes//where I will progress La Vega Brothers).