Based upon research in the state of Himachal Pradesh in the Western Himalaya of north India, this dissertation examines ways various people know, have access to and use forest resources. It examines knowledges which are privileged and those less so, and accompanying expressions of power in negotiating access to those resources. Here knowledge is seen as inextricably tied to maneuverable, situationally contingent enunciations of power. If exercises of power are understood as related to people's interpretations of the parameters of the "positions"--both social and geographical--that they operate within, then categories such as government official or villager, tribal or nontribal, women or men, townsfolk or forest communities, high caste or low are not seen as unified or fixed ones in terms of interpretations of or access to power. Since some institutionally defined positions are perceived as imbued with more or less inherent power, this combination of institutional as well as individual notions of power is examined as these relate to differently valued knowledges about forest resources. These shifting ideas about and expressions of power are additionally affected by literal movement across landscapes. Areas traversed, distances covered, length of time in a region and the appropriateness of such motion to particular positions all contribute to the valuation of different knowledges. Positionality and related knowledges are tracked through this literal as well as figurative movement, reflecting varying degrees of "room to move" through various social and physical realms for particular individuals. Methodological approaches include: participant observation, semi-structured interviews, cultivated and noncultivated plant matrices, plant list testing, map comparisons, discourse analysis of historical and contemporary documents, and travel and investigative questioning within the broader area of the Western Himalaya for regional contextualization. The dissertation shows that forest-related activities are directed by specific knowledges, and related notions of importance or value of those knowledges. The valuing of state knowledges over local use-knowledges prevents productive cooperation between various groups on forest related projects. The sometimes contradictory expressions of knowledge and exercises of power are a result of people responding to various inconsistencies in their lives related to the availability of forest resources. Corruption and subversion are two responses to such contradictions. Problems of diminishing forest resources, and limited access to them, must be, it is concluded, situated within these fields and relations of power.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8974 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | Gaul, Karen Kay |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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