Recognising and Resisting Injustice: Knowledge Practices and Politics Amongst Nepal’s Community Forestry Professionals

This paper highlights the lessons of using adaptive learning in community forestry that effectively help to resolve forest based conflicts in Terai region of Nepal. The paper is based on a three-year action research carried out in Terai. Qualitative methods including participatory rural appraisal tools and documentation of engaged action and reflections were used. Methods and tools that largely fall under adaptive learning were deployed. The field data was complemented by review of secondary data and literature on environmental history of Terai. We found that policies on land and forest in Terai for the last fifty years have induced and aggravated conflicts over access and control between state and communities and also within diverse groups of local communities. These conflicts have had serious negative impacts on sustainable management of forests and on local people’s livelihoods, particularly resource poor and landless people. Centralised and bureaucratic approaches to control forest and encroachment have largely failed. Despite investing millions of Rupees in maintaining law and order in forestlands, the problem continues to worsen often at the cost of forests and local communities. We found that transferring management rights to local communities like landless and land poor in the form of community forestry (CF) has induced strong local level collective action in forest management and supported local livelihoods. Moreover, adding adaptive learning, as a methodological tool to improve governance and enhance local level collective action significantly improves the benefit of CF. It implies that a major rethinking is needed in the current policies that have often led to hostile relationships with the local inhabitants- particularly the illegal settlers. Instead, transferring forest rights to local communities and supporting them through technical aspects of forest management will strengthen local initiatives towards sustainable management of forests.

Download Full-text

Processing the Future

10.1093/oso/9780198820802.003.0012 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Martin Giraudeau

Keyword(s):

Venture Capital ◽

Diagnostic Techniques ◽

Business Administration ◽

Knowledge Practices ◽

Project Appraisal ◽

Development Corporation ◽

Close Relationship ◽

Administrative Procedures ◽

American Research

This chapter is an analysis of the project appraisal procedures in place at American Research and Development Corporation (ARD) between 1946 and 1973, under the management of Georges F. Doriot. It shows the importance of knowledge technologies and administrative procedures in the way the venture capital company dealt with uncertain futures. The origins of these knowledge practices are traced back to Georges F. Doriot’s own views on business and more generally to the pragmatist movement in business administration of which he was a member. The conduct of project appraisal at ARD is then observed directly, and this reveals its reliance on a rich set of knowledge and diagnostic techniques as well as administrative procedures. These observations allow for a specification of the nature and role of imagination in the entrepreneurship and venture capital practices examined here—in particular, its close relationship with organized knowledge.

Download Full-text

Seeing the value of experiential knowledge through COVID-19

History & Philosophy of the Life Sciences ◽

10.1007/s40656-021-00438-y ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 43 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Sarah Atkinson ◽

Hannah Bradby ◽

Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio ◽

Anna Hallberg ◽

Jane Macnaugthon ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Conflict ◽

Medical Knowledge ◽

Experiential Knowledge ◽

Knowledge Practices ◽

Conspiracy Beliefs

AbstractSeeing the entwinement of social and epistemic challenges through COVID, we discuss the perils of simplistic appeals to ‘follow the science’. A hardened scientism risks excarbating social conflict and fueling conspiracy beliefs. Instead, we see an opportunity to devise more inclusive medical knowledge practices through endorsing experiential knowledge alongside traditional evidence types.

Download Full-text

Invocations of Indigeneity in the Colonial Red/White/Black Triad

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik ◽

10.1515/zaa-2020-0016 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 68 (2) ◽

pp. 145-158

Author(s):

Carsten Junker

Keyword(s):

Knowledge Production ◽

Settler Colonialism ◽

Black And White ◽

Knowledge Practices ◽

The Enlightenment

AbstractThis essay takes as its assumptive backdrop the “Red/White/Black demographic triad” in the sense of Stam and Shohat that resulted from the European colonial conquest and settlement of, and the transatlantic enslavement of Africans in, the Americas. It homes in on the ambivalent functions and effects of different evocations of Indigeneity in early abolitionist discourse, considering this very discourse as a specific strand of settler colonial knowledge production during the era of the Enlightenment. While Euro-American abolitionists around 1800 centrally and critically focused on relations between the positions marked by “Black” and “White,” they also made recourse to the position of “Red.” Paradigmatic readings highlight that abolitionists mobilized Red as a trope in contradictory ways according to their argumentative needs, substantiating the hegemonic character of White self-referential knowledge practices in the early US republic and abetting the justification of settler colonialism.

Download Full-text

Does False Consciousness Necessarily Preclude Moral Blameworthiness?: The Refusal of the Women Antisuffragists

Hypatia ◽

10.1017/hyp.2021.27 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-22

Author(s):

Lee Wilson

Keyword(s):

Recent Work ◽

Epistemic Injustice ◽

Victim Blaming ◽

False Consciousness ◽

Group Level ◽

Moral Agents ◽

Knowledge Practices ◽

Structural Distortions ◽

In Virtue Of

Abstract Social philosophers often invoke the concept of false consciousness in their analyses, referring to a set of evidence-resistant, ignorant attitudes held by otherwise sound epistemic agents, systematically occurring in virtue of, and motivating them to perpetuate, structural oppression. But there is a worry that appealing to the notion in questions of responsibility for the harm suffered by members of oppressed groups is victim-blaming. Individuals under false consciousness allegedly systematically fail the relevant rationality and epistemic conditions due to structural distortions of reasoning or knowledge practices, undermining their status as responsible moral agents. But attending to the constitutive mechanisms and heterogeneity of false consciousness enables us to see how having it does not in itself render someone an inappropriate target of blame. I focus here on the 1889 antisuffragist manifesto “An Appeal against Female Suffrage,” arguing that its signatories, despite false consciousness, satisfy both conditions for ordinary blameworthiness. I consider three prominent signatories, observing that the irrationality characterization is unsustainable beyond group-level diagnoses, and that their capacity to respond appropriately to reasons was not compromised. Following recent work on epistemic injustice, I also argue that culpable mechanisms constituted their false consciousness, rendering them blameworthy for the Appeal.

Download Full-text

Youth, migration and community forestry in the Global South

Forests Trees and Livelihoods ◽

10.1080/14728028.2021.1958065 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-13

Author(s):

H. Carolyn Peach Brown

Keyword(s):

Community Forestry ◽

Global South ◽

Youth Migration

Download Full-text

Contemporary Art Practice and Indigenous Knowledge

Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik ◽

10.1515/zaa-2020-0014 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 68 (2) ◽

pp. 111-128

Author(s):

Gerald McMaster

Keyword(s):

Medicinal Plants ◽

Indigenous Knowledge ◽

Traditional Knowledge ◽

Contemporary Art ◽

Art World ◽

Art Practice ◽

Knowledge Practices ◽

Communal Sharing ◽

Cultural Hero ◽

The Way

AbstractIndigenous artists are introducing traditional knowledge practices to the contemporary art world. This article discusses the work of selected Indigenous artists and relays their contribution towards changing art discourses and understandings of Indigenous knowledge. Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau led the way by introducing ancient mythos; the gifted Carl Beam enlarged his oeuvre with ancient building practices; Peter Clair connected traditional Mi'kmaq craft and colonial influence in contemporary basketry; and Edward Poitras brought to life the cultural hero Coyote. More recently, Beau Dick has surprised international art audiences with his masks; Christi Belcourt’s studies of medicinal plants take on new meaning in paintings; Bonnie Devine creates stories around canoes and baskets; Adrian Stimson performs the trickster/ruse myth in the guise of a two-spirited character; and Lisa Myers’s work with the communal sharing of food typifies a younger generation of artists re-engaging with traditional knowledge.

Download Full-text

What Are the Impacts of Social Innovation? A Synthetic Review and Case Study of Community Forestry in the Scottish Highlands

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13084359 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (8) ◽

pp. 4359

Author(s):

Carla Barlagne ◽

Mariana Melnykovych ◽

David Miller ◽

Richard J. Hewitt ◽

Laura Secco ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Rural Communities ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Community Forestry ◽

Social Innovation ◽

Local Development ◽

Evidence Base ◽

Social Dimension ◽

Vulnerable Groups ◽

Study Approach

In a context of political and economic austerity, social innovation has been presented as a solution to many social challenges, old and new. It aims to support the introduction of new ideas in response to the current urgent needs and challenges of vulnerable groups and seems to offer promising solutions to the challenges faced by rural areas. Yet the evidence base of the impacts on the sustainable development of rural communities remains scarce. In this paper, we explore social innovation in the context of community forestry and provide a brief synthetic review of key themes linking the two concepts. We examine a case of social innovation in the context of community forestry and analyse its type, extent, and scale of impact in a marginalized rural area of Scotland. Using an in-depth case study approach, we apply a mixed research methodology using quantitative indicators of impact as well as qualitative data. Our results show that social innovation reinforces the social dimension of community forestry. Impacts are highlighted across domains (environmental, social, economic, and institutional/governance) but are mainly limited to local territory. We discuss the significance of those results in the context of community forestry as well as for local development. We formulate policy recommendations to foster and sustain social innovation in rural areas.

Download Full-text