Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters Along the Korean DMZ

Making Peace with Nature  is a deeply researched, provocative analysis of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Written by Eleana J. Kim, professor of anthropology at the University of California-Irvine, the book explores the meaning of the DMZ through both ecological and sociopolitical lenses. Rather than turning to common tropes about the DMZ—in which the area either represents a paradoxical conservation success story, embodies a relic of pristine nature, or offers the best way toward peace on the peninsula—Kim asks readers to think beyond politics and instead adopt a biocentric view that enables us to rework our relationship with nature and, thus, with each other. Kim offers the framework of “biological peace,” in which humans are decentered (though certainly not excluded) from the explanatory narrative and through which we can better interpret the DMZ and its role in the Korean peninsula’s past, present, and future.