Forest control, development and state formation in Nepal
Date
1999
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Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, CA
Abstract
This thesis analyses processes of state formation and intensification in Nepal, taking community forestry as a point of entry. Both the state and communities are seen as disaggregated entities, separated by a blurred and shifting boundary. The state co-ordinates and multiplies power relations, while communities make claims on state services, co-operate with state projects or sabotage, manipulate and resist state regulations, as diverse interests dictate. State formation and intensification is therefore a two way process. On the one hand, the state attempts to regulate, order or intervene in village resource and population matters through planning, legislation and bureaucratization; on the other hand, communities are compelled into the web of bureaucratic relations, but also, at times, elect to forge closer relations with state agencies for their own ends. Grounded in theories of state-society relationships, especially those proposed by Ferguson, Migdal, Peluso and Vandergeest, the study argues that state formation and intensification occurs through two modes---control over discourse and territorialization---both of which can mask the political nature of state actions.
Following Ferguson, the study argues that state intensification does not necessarily result in people and resources being co-ordinated or ordered more effectively. Going beyond Ferguson, it argues that intensification of the terntorialized and bureaucratized state may arise---not through extension of control---but by intensifying the state's presence, most significantly as an abstraction: the benevolent state. State formation and systematization of its regulatory reach reconfigure the division between state and communities.
Organized into nine chapters, the study emphasizes that resource control should be seen in the context of the history of relationships between state, land, and people. It discusses decentralization, legislation, planning, the bureaucratization of resource use, the ambivalent role of forest bureaucrats, and presents three village case studies of community forestry. Sources of data include observation, formal and informal interviews with government officials and villagers, and documents, including legal texts. The study shows that state resource control in Nepal has shifted, since the 1950s, from control through people to a territorial mode; the development of an intensified, bureaucratic, territorialized regime of resource control is continuing.
Community forestry laws---as with territorialization initiatives elsewhere---have functioned ambiguously in Nepal. However ineffective the forest bureaucracy in implementation, whatever the conflicts or collaborations between politicians and bureaucrats---and the support, resistance and manipulation by villagers, including adoption of gendered strategies by the villagers---the community forestry program has nevertheless become a point of coordination and multiplication of power relations. Communities wishing to maintain a stake in their village forests must place themselves within state bureaucratic channels. Forest villagers and the state, both interested in the natural resource, have no option but to engage with one another through the medium of constantly evolving community forestry policy.
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Keywords
FOREST POLICY, FOREST RESOURCES, LAND TENURE, NEPAL, DECENTRALIZATION, SOCIAL FORESTRY, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE, LEGISLATION, FORESTRY PLANNING