Forest Futures : Global Representations and Ground Realities in the Himalayas

Contents: Acknowledgements. I. How to make one's interlocutors present? Approaching local perspectives on forest and ecology in Garhwal: 1. Context, questions, and methodology of research. 2. Fieldwork and textual representation. II. The region: a geographical and socio-historical sketch of Uttarakhand (with special reference to Garhwal): 1. Physiographic setting. 2. Historical overview. 3. Administrative and demographic structure. 4. Socio-economic situation. 5. The state of forests. III. Resisting commercial forest exploitation: a narrative approach to the Chipko Andolan: 1. Public representations of the Chipko Movement. 2. Chipko and its prehistory: the leading narrative. 3. Local narratives on Chipko: conflicting perspectives of leaders and participants. 4. Talking about Chipko: the view of non-participants. 5. After Chipko: impact and prospects. IV. Ecology and development : two powerful narratives: 1. Ecology: a multifaceted concept and the search for action guidelines. 2. Development as concept and Praxis. 3. Discourses on ecology and development in India. V. Discourses on forest rights and forest use in Uttarakhand: 1. Forest legislation and forest policy in colonial and post-colonial India: perspectives from above. 2. Chipko leaders and participants: perspectives from below. VI. The interconnections of forest and village life in Rawain (Western Garhwal): 1. The village and the region. 2. Approaching the forest issue through local narratives and practices. 3. The local claim over forest rights. VII. Conclusion: lessons from Uttarakhand, or, the locals speak back. Bibliography. Index.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, struggles over forest rights in the Garhwal Himalayas drew worldwide attention via the Chipko Movement. To a large extent, this also entailed a subsuming of local experiences under global discourses: many of the messages and meanings of the Chipko Movement's varied struggles were homogenized, changed and rewritten.

Antje Linkenback persuasively argues that global representation took away narrative control from local actors and removed Chipko from the specificity of its locale, from its village contexts. Her attempt is to relocate forest issues and struggles by revisiting the perspectives of leading activists and local residents.

She discusses prominent representations of Chipko in relation to local histories of resistance, local representational contestations, and local forest practices--all set against a backdrop of local reflections on Chipko and its aftermath. She argues that the issues of forest control and sustainable forest use have to be seen in the context of concerns about social and economic development, regional autonomy and imaginations of preferred futures among people actually resident in the region.

Built on an impressive edifice of fieldwork, this book will interest ecologists, environmental historians, social anthropologists, and political scientists."