The thesis is an exploration of the current role of the small business forest sector in
hinterland forest communities, and the extent to which their economic and social positions
correspond to the role envisioned for them by two prevailing visions of the future of the forest
industry. One, advocated by Canadian political economists, predicts a continuation, indeed
an intensification of corporate concentration, with attendant downsizing and job losses.
Corporate restructuring is seen in part to induce small business development, through subcontracting
arrangements and local entrepreneurialism, as a response to losses of core forest
industry jobs. The second interpretation, advocated by the alternative forestry school, views
the current crisis in the forest industry as an opportunity to return to decentralised approaches
to ecologically-based forest management which encourage 'democracy in the forests', leading
to community and environmental sustainability. Local entrepreneurs are an important part of
this new 'value-based' forest economy.
Interviews with small forest operators reveal a diversity of economic and social
identities that do not conform well to either of the positions ascribed to small business by
the Canadian political economy or alternative forestry literatures. The representations of
small business found in these two literatures homogenize and suppress this diversity,
making it difficult to 'see' small forest operators as anything other than contractors to the
conventional system of corporate forestry, or alternative operators in an ecosystem- and
community-based forest economy.
In the place of these singular, marginalizing representations, I argue, using
poststructural and feminist approaches to economic geography, for a 'third way' of
exploring small forest operator subjectivities through overdetermined multiple class
processes. Exploring small forest operator identity through multiple class processes avoids
the essentialism found in fixed representations. It recognizes the transformative potential of
small business in the forest economy, without denying the potential for exploitation that
exists both within small business and corporate forestry. Class processes rendered invisible
in the Canadian political economy and alternative forestry narratives, such as unpaid labour
performed by family members and volunteer work in local planning processes, as well as
work performed for wages and profit, are considered in this multiple class processes
approach.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11382 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Bronson, Elizabeth Anne |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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