"Making Peace with Nature is to be commended for its thoughtful attention to the competing priorities and placemaking of the DMZ region by both human and more-than-human actors. In decentring the human, Kim makes a critical intervention in discourses of peace that instrumentalise the DMZ for political or economic gain. Making Peace with Nature makes a valuable contribution across disciplines and may be of particular interest to scholars and students in Korean studies, Asian studies, cultural anthropology, political science, and the environmental humanities."

- Ivanna Sang Een Yi, Asian Studies Review

"Kim offers an opportunity to think of the ecological ramifications of the closed borders of the last few years. One particularly powerful chapter is her study of undetonated mines along the DMZ from the Korean War."

- Adrian De Leon, Public Books

"Kim’s astute theoretical work … is a refreshing approach to the puzzle of nonhuman agency."

- Caterina Scaramelli, American Ethnologist

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"Eleana Kim’s book stands as a thought-provoking contribution to our understanding of the Korean DMZ. ... She presents a compelling case for the future sustainability of the Korean DMZ area and leaves an indelible mark on the discourse surrounding this historic landmark."

- Chae-han Kim, Pacific Affairs

Making Peace with Nature is an exceptional book that deserves wide readership.”

- Lisa M. Brady, Journal of Anthropological Research

"Making Peace with Nature is a highly innovative and exciting scholarly contribution to the growing body of research on environmental humanities."

- Su-kyoung Hwang, Journal of Military History

The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) has been off-limits to human habitation for nearly seventy years, and in that time, biodiverse forms of life have flourished in and around the DMZ as beneficiaries of an unresolved war. In Making Peace with Nature Eleana J. Kim shows how a closer examination of the DMZ in South Korea reveals that the area’s biodiversity is inseparable from scientific practices and geopolitical, capitalist, and ecological dynamics. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with ecologists, scientists, and local residents, Kim focuses on irrigation ponds, migratory bird flyways, and land mines in the South Korean DMZ area, demonstrating how human and nonhuman ecologies interact and transform in spaces defined by war and militarization. In so doing, Kim reframes peace away from a human-oriented political or economic peace and toward a more-than-human, biological peace. Such a peace recognizes the reality of war while pointing to potential forms of human and nonhuman relations.
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Eleana J. Kim shows how a closer examination of the Demilitarized Zone area in South Korea reveals that the area’s biodiversity is inseparable from scientific practices and geopolitical, capitalist, and ecological dynamics.
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List of Abbreviations  ix The South Korean DMZ Region  xi A Note about Romanization and Translation  xii Acknowledgments  xiii Introduction  1 1. In the Meantime of Division  30 2. Ponds  62 3. Birds  87 4. Landmines  119 Epilogue. De/militarized Ecologies  152 Notes  159 Works Cited  177 Index  191
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“How can a space frequently described as the most dangerous place on earth, filled with fences and land mines, contested among military nuclear powers and still formally at war, become a site of more-than-human flourishing? Eleana J. Kim’s interrogation of the Korean DMZ is both shocking and vital—a must-read for those rethinking multispecies ecologies and governance. What, she ultimately asks, would a fully demilitarized environment even look like? Can one even imagine it?”
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781478018353
Publisert
2022-07-22
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
318 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Eleana J. Kim is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging, also published by Duke University Press.