The Charmed Circle: Mobility, Identity and Memory around Mount Mayon (Philippines) and Gunung Awu (Indonesia) Volcanoes

Abstract

Volcanoes are surrounded by villages, towns, and polities that are constantly shifting location to benefit from the rich soils generated in the aftermath of eruptions, while, at the same time, avoiding the worst of their destructive potential. We explore the attraction of volcanoes in a Southeast Asian context through a comparative examination of the communities surrounding Mount Mayon in the Bicol peninsula of the Philippines and Gunung Awu on the island of Sangihe Besar in Indonesia. These volcanoes influence the location of settlements, forms of community identity, and the expression of cultural memories. We argue that risk awareness programmes that disregard the extent to which a volcano is embedded within the physical and mental fabric of a society and fail to connect to local historical cultural memory are likely to have little lasting effect on reducing people's vulnerability.

Talking about volcanoes: institutional narratives, the nature of risk, and Mount Mayon in the Philippines

“…Stories are all about relationships, principally between the individual and society, but also with respect to a person and the surrounding landscape. Just as individual life stories are very much expressed in social relationship structures so, too, are people's stories in Bicol bound up with the life history of Mayon: not only when it is convulsed by eruptions but through the omnipresent sense of risk that the volcano imposes on all who live within its reach (Bankoff, Newhall, and Schrikker, 2021). The importance of an individual's relationship to the material world concerns, at its core, how risk is constructed differently for different people.…”

Volcanic disaster risk reduction in indigenous communities on Tanna Island, Vanuatu

“…Whereas the villagers see eruptions as routinized catalysts for productive change; the state sees them as episodic threats to well-being". Such a statement is echoed by Bankoff et al [39]; based on the case study of Mount Mayon in the Philippines. While the volcano forms part of the livelihood of local people, some local elders "feel" that government agencies merely attempts to classify volcanoes based on their eruptive history and assess their risk without integrating people's perceptions on the "risk" of the volcano.…”

“…In actuality, DRR based on an inflexible assessment of risk will not function well in a country like the Philippines, where more than 80% of the population is living near active volcanoes [33]. Thus, Bankoff et al [39] argue that DRR must integrate local historical and cultural memory on a volcano; otherwise, it will have very little effectiveness.…”

Moving for safety: a qualitative analysis of affected communities’ evacuation response during the 2014 Mayon Volcano eruption

“…This is again recognized by Bird et al (2009), that it is not just the information that determines whether people will act to manage their risk, as decisions to act are determined by how people interpret the information (how meaningful it is to them), and people interpret information in the context of their experiences, beliefs, and expectations. This recognition of the importance of experiential knowledge of people living in frequently erupting volcanoes is highlighted by Barclay et al (2019), Mei and Lavigne (2012), Mei et al (2013), Naismith et al (2020), andBankoff et al (2021).…”