Political Transformations: collaborative feminist scholarship in Nepal

Feminist theory has expanded the sphere within which politics is assumed to occur and thus can make significant contributions to research on state transition. This paper traces the development of a research project wherein we combined our expertise and feminist commitments to explore the current political transition in Nepal. The project conceptualized market formation and resource governance to be important sites of political contestation and the formation of citizen subjectivities. Within these sites, we sought to understand what ‘democracy’ looks like at different scales, especially where, when and how people make claims and build critical accounts of established social systems in its name. Here, we reflect how on our feminist political and intellectual commitments helped develop a collaborative methodology and approach to state transition that integrates ‘politics’ across scales. The insights include the role played by spaces of social reproduction in everyday processes of state and political transformation, and the analytical opportunities opened up when research collaborations take the form of a community of inquiry within the field itself. We found ourselves turning back to the long tradition of feminist scholarship to show how the household is the origin of inequalities and how such relations transmit into wider contestations over ‘democracy’

Mismatch Between Scales of Knowledge in Nepalese Forestry: Epistemology, Power, and Policy Implications

The importance of scale dynamics and scale mismatches for outcomes of natural resource management has been widely discussed. In this article we develop theoretically the concept of ‘knowledge scales’ and illustrate it through empirical examples. We define scales of knowledge as the temporal and spatial extent and character of knowledge held by individuals and collectives, and argue that disparate scales of knowledge are an important ‘scale mismatch,’ which together with scale politics, lead to conflicts in Nepalese forest management. We reveal how there are multiple positions within local knowledge systems and how these positions emerge through people’s use of and relations to the forest, in a dynamic interaction between the natural environment and relations of power such as gender, literacy, and caste. Nepalese forestry is a realm in which power and scales of knowledge are being coproduced in community forestry, at the interface of material and symbolic practices in use of forest resources, and in contestations of social-political relations. Further, we reflect upon the importance of clear and precise use of scale concepts and present a methodological approach using triangulation for divergence, enabling researchers and practitioners involved in natural resource management to reveal scale mismatches and politics

Theorizing power in political ecology: the where of power in resource governance projects

Power and politics have been central topics from the early days of Political Ecology. There are different and sometimes conflicting conceptualizations of power in this field that portray power alternatively as a resource, personal attribute or relation. The aim of this article is to contribute to theorizations of power by probing contesting views regarding its role in societal change and by presenting a specific conceptualization of power, one which draws on both political ecology and sociotechnical approaches in science and technology studies. We review how power has been conceptualized in the political ecology field and identify three trends that shaped the current discussion. We then develop our conceptual discussion and explicitly ask where power emerges in processes of resource governance projects. We identify four locations that we illustrate empirically through an example of rural electrification in Tanzania that aimed at catalyzing social and economic development by providing renewable energy-based electricity services to people. Our analysis supports the argument that power is relational and productive, and it draws on science and technology studies to bring to the fore the critical role of non-human elements in co-constitution of society—technology—nature. This leads us to see power exercise as having contradictory and ambiguous effects. We conclude that by exploring the tension between human agency and constitutive power, we keep the politics alive throughout the analysis and are able to show why intentional choices and actions really matter for how resource governance projects play out in everyday life

Multi-scale politics in climate change: the mismatch of authority and capability in federalizing Nepal

Nepal's transition to federalism in 2015 involved a significant redistribution of authority across three levels of government, with a greater level of autonomy granted to provincial and local levels. We examine multi-scale climate policy and politics in Nepal, focusing on three elements that are important for policy development and implementation: (a) the authority to make decisions; (b) the knowledge and expertise to develop and implement policies; and (c) the ability to access and mobilize resources, primarily external funding, by government bodies at different levels. Our findings show that the newly decentralized local governments are constrained in their ability to develop and implement climate change-related policies and practical responses by a mismatch between the authority granted to them and existing institutional capabilities. These governmental bodies have limited opportunities to develop, access and mobilize knowledge of climate and development and financial resources, which are needed to put new policies into action. Based on this analysis, we argue that decentralization of governmental authority is not likely to produce effective climate policy outcomes if this mismatch remains unaddressed

A Feminist in the Forest: Situated Knowledges and Mixing Methods in Natural Resource Management

Donna Haraway’s (1991) concept of partial or situated knowledges has been a major influence on feminist methodological debates within geography. In this paper, I argue that geographers can interrogate the partiality of knowledge by developing research designs that incorporate methods derived from different epistemological traditions. The silences and gaps between data sets can be explored to interrogate the partiality of knowledge produced in different theoretical and methodological contexts. Also, advocates of interpretive methodologies can add substantially to theoretical debates over epistemology by demonstrating how the results from all methods are incomplete and subject to power – and positionality – laden interpretations. Using different methods is one way to highlight this issue and to challenge the hegemony of positivist science within mainstream academic and policy circles

Can Social Theory Adequately Address Nature-Society Issues? Do political ecology and science studies in Geography incorporate ecological change?

There has been an expansion of interest in nature-society issues within human geography spurred by the rich, sophisticated analyses of environment-development issues within the Third World. This latter work emerged out of the fusion of cultural ecology and the political economy of resource use, but scholars are increasingly turning towards post-structuralism to engage with the complex, mutual constitution of symbolic and material struggles over land and resources. Yet to some extent, these theoretical trends are moving nature-society geography away from engagement with physical ‘natural’ processes despite rhetoric to the contrary. In this paper I raise the question of whether current work in critical Geography on nature-society issues adequately tackles the ‘so-what’ issues of socio- natural change. Do political ecology and science studies—the two, broadly defined approaches currently favoured by most critical geographers—accomplish what is required theoretically and methodologically to engage with fundamental issues of social and environmental change? I suggest that when used in isolation both approaches are inadequate to point us in politically useful directions. Instead I argue for more engagement with ecological theory and ecological processes as they articulate with social processes in contingent, dynamic ways

A Forest Community or Community Forestry? Beliefs, meanings and nature in north-western Nepal

In this paper I outline a history of community forestry in Nepal and highlight how it has been embedded within different understandings of ecosystems and development. In particular, the Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation (THED) was instrumental in catalyzing the formation of community forestry. I briefly review the history of the programme as it arose nationally and then delve into the daily functioning of a user-group in Mugu District, north western Nepal to give a more nuanced snap-shot of community forestry in action. Through this narrative I try to draw out the ways in which different kinds of knowledges are both employed by different actors within community forestry contexts, but also how the methodologies and theoretical constructs used to investigate the programme produce different knowledges of community forestry and the forests themselves

‘The experts taught us all we know’: Professionalisation and Knowledge in Nepalese Community Forestry

Environmentalist concerns over the state of Nepal’s ‘fragile forests’ resulted in the establishment of Community Forestry projects. These community-based projects are partnerships between the state and community user-groups that invest user-groups with a great deal of control over their forests. Project implementation, however begins with the assumption that users have little prior knowledge of forest management and need to be taught modern silviculture. This paper examines the extent to which different community members embrace notions of professional forestry materially and symbolically. The development of written management plans, the need for careful accounting records and the promotion of silviculturally based management strategies by District Forest Officers serve to (re)inscribe differences between users based on education and literacy. Which users embrace these discourses and practices and for what purposes lends insight into the workings of neo-liberalism and how it is implicated in the reconfiguring of social and power relations within localities and in this case, the consequences of this for ecological change. It is argued that the promotion of expert knowledge and professional practices in Community Forestry is often used as a somewhat contradictory vehicle for educated elites to retain control over forest management thus undermining some of the key objectives of the program

Caring for Nature: subjectivity, boundaries and environment.

The environmental movement has brought to the mainstream ideas about how to care, love and protect ‘nature’. Many people passionately propound these ideas and are scornful or morally outraged at others who objectify, exploit and damage ‘natural environments’. Importantly, their moral outrage outlines a clear polarisation between these two positions. Yet the division between protection/love and exploitation/damage is far more complex and contested. There are those who share a deep love and respect for the land and yet treat natural environments in damaging ways to sustain their livelihoods. And it cannot be forgotten that many of the most passionate environmentalists are people living relatively privileged lifestyles that are rife with environmentally damaging chemicals, practices and objects (White, 1996). Given these contradictions, I am interested in investigating how emotional attachments to ‘nature’ are linked to people’s behaviours towards their environments. I am particularly interested in exploring this with people who work with ‘natural’ resources in one way or another for a living. How is it that people whose livelihoods depend on ‘natural’ environments embody apparently contradictory relationships to those environments? In this paper I want to propose a new research direction that builds from current work on nature-society geographies. I begin by reviewing work on nature-society issues and discuss the extent to which this literature helps us to understand the contradictions between emotion, intent and action in relation to ecological environments. I argue that while important insights have been contributed from this literature, by drawing from feminist and post-structural literatures on subjectivity and psychoanalysis, we can gain a greater grasp on the links between action, ethics, emotion and subjectivity. Fundamentally, I demonstrate how despite a recognition that nature and society are inextricably linked, nature-society studies assume a more or less stable boundary between the subjective experiences of persons and the environments with which they interact. Yet, feminist and psychoanalytic work has shown how this boundary is not stable. This insight opens up new conceptual space to rethink the nature-society nexus