Traditional culture as an important power for maintaining agricultural landscapes in cultural heritage sites: A case study of the Hani terraces

Abstract Rural landscape changes have attracted wide interest from related researchers. Economic factors driving land use changes in rural areas have been studied frequently. Up to now, however, the importance of culture in enhancing the resistance of landscapes to external shocks has not been given attention. In this paper, the key aim is to identify the importance of culture in maintaining agricultural landscapes through analyzing the employment of farmers and taking Hani rice terraces in Southwest China as a case. We employ a questionnaire survey method in this research. The results show that: most farmers in the Hani terraced areas are part-time farmers who are engaged in non-farm jobs in the cities near their hometowns during the slack farming season; Local non-farm work provides the convenience of returning home and avoids difficult employment in distant cities; most people plan to continue farming and support landscape conservation, but do not want the next generation to farm. We found that, in agricultural heritage sites, culture maintains the stability of traditional landscapes through its pull and resistance. The pull drives Hani people to stay in or near their hometown and to persist in farming in the terraces according to well-established land use ways. The resistance makes people hold on to stagnant thinking, poor scientific knowledge, etc. and not adapt to non-local society.