UW Department of Anthropology : News and Events : EA Forum

Reforestation Programs in Southwest China: Reported Success, Observed Failure, and the Reasons Why

Ever since the disastrous floods of 1998, the Chinese government has used the Natural Forest Protection and Sloping Land Conversion Programs to promote afforestation and reforestation as means to reduce runoff, control erosion, and stabilize local livelihoods. These two ambitious programs have been reported as large-scale successes, contributing to an overall increase in China's forest cover and to the stated goals of environmental stabilization. A small-scale field study at the project level of the implementation of these two programs in Baiwu Township, Yanyuan County, Sichuan, casts doubt upon the accuracy and reliability of these claims of success; ground observations revealed utter failure in some sites and only marginal success in others. Reasons for this discrepancy are posited as involving ecological, economic, and bureaucratic factors. Further research is suggested to determine whether these discrepancies are merely local aberrations or represent larger-scale failures in reforestation programs.

The presentation is based on fieldwork in the twin towns of Kumily/Thekkady at the fringe of the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Kerala, India. The social universe of the tiger reserve can be seen as composed of intricate interactions between private tour guides, community members acting as eco-guides, government officials, private resort owners, environmental activists, wildlife photographers, scientists and the tourists from all over the world who interact with each other in complex ways to make biodiversity conservation meaningful at the local level.

The photos explore the various ways boundaries between the Government/Community, private/public break down as individuals come to interact within limited socio-geographical space of the sanctuary for their livelihood and recreational needs. They also cover the various ways different agents choose to visually represent the park through websites, brochures, landscape design, artwork to serve ideological and practical needs. Through various photographs of the forest, the essay also tries to capture the sense of topographical and biological diversity of the forest, contrasting it with the mega-fauna based popular image of the park which has often been viewed as problematic. The photo essay concludes with snapshots of ‘interactions’ between the model agents of biodiversity conservation and the ‘visitors’, which help further the self-image of the members of the ‘Periyar Family’ as upholders of a unique model of ‘biodiversity conservation’ in the country.

Mainstream media and social scientists have highlighted the devastating effects of labour shortages in corporate agribusiness. However, often overlooked is that this problem also affects the livelihoods of local family farms. This paper will look at labour shortages and their effects on multigenernational Chicana/o farmers in San Luis, Colorado using a Marxist theory of class composition. The acequia farmers of San Luis are among the oldest family farmers in the Southwestern U.S. and are renowned for their resilient agricultural methods and conservation ethics. However, recent pressures induced by the anti-immigrant policies of the federal government have impacted the availability of labor for these acequia farmers. There is a long history of cooperation between Chicana/o farmers and Mexican immigrant workers in this region. This paper reports on the changing class composition of rural Latina/o communities and what this means for the viability and survival of rural Latina/o communities and what this means for the viability and survival of acequia farms. The paper will also examine emerging strategies these acequia farmers are developing to respond to this labour shortage crisis.

“It’s a three-ship day!” How cruise ship visits alter local constructions of time

Tourism often is characterized by particular patterns of temporality. Cruise ships transport travelers eager to explore the destinations depicted in glossy itineraries. Unlike other transportation modes, cruise ships carry high volumes of visitors whose shore experience are framed by a finite temporal window. For small, isolated destinations, the arrival and departure of cruise ships dramatically alters demarcations and experiences of time. Using ethnographic cases from southeast Alaska, I show how the passage of time throughout the day, week, and season is punctuated and shaped by both the frequency and timing of ship dockings, which affect local work relations, social interactions, and daily practice. Periods of time become associated with the tourist domain, only to be reclaimed at other times. The loss of control of one’s calendar and the powerful ways in which ship arrivals affect social relations are especially profound in rural communities. Negotiations between local and global actors for control of time are embedded in uneven power relations.

In recent years, local Zapotec community members and land managers have turned to non-timber forest products as potentially sustainable market alternatives available for alleviating rural poverty. Although such wild edibles, resins, and other resources contribute to forest complexity and may be of considerable cultural and economic importance to local communities, they have remained largely unseen by resource managers whose interests lie in extracting highly prized forest commodities such as timber. As spatially-scaled markets begin to fix their gaze on non-timber forest products (NTFPs) as ~Senvironmentally friendly~T, the thin veil of invisibility concealing NTFPs and users of these resources is dropping. In the past decade a host of forest goods have become subject to new regulatory measures designed to control the conditions of collection, production and consumption. For better or for worse, these new institutions of governance transform local social relations and uses of local forest products, creating an opportunity for research analyzing local responses to the emergence of environmental governance. An examination of the use practices, tenure and management of wild edible mushrooms in a particular common property regime in Oaxaca, Mexico serves as a basis for understanding the social dynamics of the regulatory environment governing forest-based communities. Using a feminist political ecology framework, this research attempts to illuminate the questions: Who controls the access to and management of natural resources? To what extent do formal and informal market and political spheres present openings and closures for forest-based communities? How do community-based natural resource management projects intersect with processes and discourses of democratization?

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