Categorisation in Forest Areas: A Study of the ‘OTFDs’ in the Forest Rights Act

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 639-651
Author(s):  
Kamal Nayan Choubey
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Natural Resource Management ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
The Other ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Community Rights ◽  
Tribal Areas

There are certain demarcated tribal areas in our country where the Scheduled Tribes (STs) have special community rights to live their lives according to their customs and maintain control over local natural resource management. The Sixth Schedule and Fifth Schedule are examples of such areas, and after the enactment of the Forest Rights Act, (FRA), 2006, there are crucial preferential provisions for the STs in forest areas of the whole country too. This article probes the historical development of categorisations in India, particularly in the context of forest-dwelling communities, and attempts to examine constitutional provisions and the provisions of different laws passed by the Parliament to evaluate the situation of other minority communities, particularly dalits, living in ‘forest areas’. In this context, the article primarily focuses on the genesis and practice of the Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFDs) category. Based on the field study of the Taungya village, the article shows the problem of categorisation in forest areas and marginalisation of dalits due to this process and emphasises the need for a more dialogical and democratic process of categorisation in India.

“We Eat with Different Spoons these Days”: The Maintenance of Pastoralism as a Social Formation in the Sahara and Sahel

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 46-59
Author(s):  
Franklin C. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Natural Resource Management ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Customary Practices

Despite the fatalistic rhetoric articulated by Western media and some experts, pastoralists have not disappeared. Drought, disease, famines, civil conflicts, theft, and banditry have certainly undermined livelihoods and forced families of Arab, Tuareg, Toubou and Fulani to settle and seek out opportunities that are not compatible with pastoralism, particularly in urban areas. This situation is not necessarily permanent and varies case-by-case and more significantly generation-to-generation. Some ex-pastoralists abandoned hopes of restocking their flocks but plan for some of their children to become future pastoralists. In addition, despite sedentarization, many retained customary practices of natural resource management, social norms and behaviors and find in the urban areas other pre-capitalist practices that are compatible with their means of everyday tasks and performances. Using the analyses of Tom Brass, Deborah Bryceson and David Harvey an argument is made that while pastoralists have lost their herds and shifted from their customary economy into a proletarian-capitalist one, the path is not unilinear and in fact, is fluid with pastoralists shifting from one to the other in times of dearth and prosperity.

scholarly journals Tracking Nature Inscribed: Nature in Rights and Bureaucratic Practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gro Birgit Ween
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Natural Resource Management ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
National Park ◽  
The Other ◽  
Environmental Anthropology ◽  
Nature Management

<p>Indigenous people live in places that non-indigenous people generally consider nature. As these peoples’ livelihoods often are in this nature, their lives are frequently bureaucratised in ways that most of us would never encounter. This article describes my long-term effort to find ways to explore such bureaucratic processes in practice as part of my contribution to an environmental anthropology. I describe how I methodologically and theoretically explore such processes by using two examples of my writing, the articles “Blåfjella-Skjækerfjella nasjonalpark: Naturforvaltning som produksjon av natur/sted” and “Enacting Human and Non-Human Indigenous Salmon, Sami and Norwegian Natural Resource Management”. The first text describes Sami reindeer herders fighting the establishment of a national park. The other concerns an attempt of the Directorate of Nature Management to reregulate sea salmon fishing. Comparing these two articles, I show the variety of bits of nature that are materialised in bureaucratic process. Agency within such bureaucratic processes is explored with references to the materialities of the coined terms, texts bits, conventions and other legal references, as well as the numbers produced in the documents. Circulated, these bits of nature certainly influence the outcome of environmental controversies – they can contribute to naturalising particular narratives or foreseen outcomes. </p>

scholarly journals Property, possession and natural resource management: towards a conceptual clarification

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
SABINE HOFFMANN
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Resource Management ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Common Property ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Literature ◽  
Management Regime ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The One

Abstract:There are few concepts that are more central to natural resource management than those of property and property rights. Given their importance, it might be expected that there would be some consensus in the economic literature about what property and property rights are. However, no such consensus seems to exist. In fact, different authors use the same terms to denote quite disparate concepts and ideas, impeding rather than advancing progress in understanding natural resource management. As but one example, there is hardly a concept that has been as fundamentally misunderstood as that of the commons. That misunderstanding notwithstanding, there is another, less familiar, more common and even more fundamental one: the persistent confusion of possession with property. This article argues that the distinction between possession and property is of particular importance for comprehending the meaning of institutional shifts from one resource management regime to another. It therefore reviews concepts central to natural resource management, by distinguishing between state, private, common property and possession on the one hand and open access on the other.

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