back to projects.
place-based research.

“Networks of Community: The Multi-Scale Phenomenon of the Huerta and its Role in Cultural and Climatic Resilience
Región de la Araucanía, Southern Chile.” 

December 2022. 

Pontificia Universidad de Chile, Villarrica + University of California. 
Quentin Freeman, Kate di Trani, Alicia Miyares, Kat McCabe. 

“Climate change, processes of colonization, and the replacement of regenerative community-based food systems with conventional or industrial agriculture are each global systems which have highly localized impacts. Resilience must then also exist on a local scale, both climatically and culturally, to meet the varying needs of multi-species communities and landscapes. The impacts of these large-scale phenomena on the area surrounding Pucón, Región de la Araucanía, Southern Chile are multiple, as changing land access, food systems, and local climate patterns threaten food security, Mapuche and campesino cultures, and the well-being of regionally adapted ecosystems.

Within the literature on Complex Adaptive Systems, we found that the primary application was on forest ecosystems. While this framework has been applied to huertas on occasion, relating differences in management practices to culture (Ibarra 2021), we seek to expand on these findings, linking the complexity found in huertas to the larger regional biocultural landscape. By treating not only huertas but their linked communities and landscapes as part of a CAS, we are able to analyze the emergent properties on a larger scale, identifying both regional resilience and competition / vulnerability. We identify several components within our three case-study sites that build cultural and climatic resilience through heterogeneity, redundancy, and memory. Further, trade and education networks provide the connectivity that is vital to reap the benefits of regional heterogeneity and bolster regional properties of redundancy and memory....” 

Read the conceptual framework linking systems theory, relationality, & resilience theory that underpins this project here.