Weed-Eating Pigs: Cultural Keystone Species, Interiority and Traditional Village Protection in Central China

Abstract

The current movement of traditional rural village protection in China has largely focused on remarkable rural spaces such as attractive landscapes or architecture. This study demonstrates that certain unremarkable rural spaces relating to traditional subsistence activities, such as the space of weed-eating pigs in Enshi prefecture, can be an invaluable asset to this protection. As a local cultural keystone species, weed-eating pigs provide an important impetus that has kept local people, cultural knowledge and materials circulating in a small but lively rural space, maintaining local traditional rurality. This small space also functions as rural residents’ personal interior space in which they can experience senses of continuity and order (especially the spatial order that has survived rural modernisation).