Living with Diversity: Forestry Institutions in the Western Himalaya

By Sudha Vasan

Diversity of forestry institutions that emerges from and permeates practice of forestry in the Western Himalaya is at the centre of this work. Thick ethnographic descriptions of a range of forestry institutions in Himachal Pradesh forest department, colonial forest settlements, national parks and reserved forests, sacred groves, forest cooperatives, indigenous institutions, institutions created in Social Forestry, Joint Forest Management and several other state projects are found in these pages.


The central argument is about the diversity of practice that continuously confronts the synoptic vision of modern forestry. Practical diversity of institutions that clearly emerges in this narrative challenges, defies and transforms state simplifications that attempt to simplify, homogenize and standardize ecological and social landscape. On the one hand the historical perspective in this book highlights the persistence of a mosaic of forestry institutions that reflect multiple attempts at state simplification. However, it is also argued that this diversity is not merely residual diversity driven by preexisting institutional remnants. Instead it is continuously created and recreated by mutually constituting interactions of structures, dispositions and actions that constitute the logic of practice. Since institutional diversity is an active product of practice, it is neither a chaotic nor structureless institutional environment. Forestry institutions in Himachal Pradesh form a tapestry of interwoven variations that are dynamically recreated within boundaries of structural constraints.

The author relates this theoretical understanding to suggestions for a practical forest policy framework in the region that recognizes and positively deals with the resilience of institutional diversity. Efforts to manage forests by obviating, circumventing, ignoring or assuming away the existence of diversity risk unsustainability. This disjuncture between assumptions and pragmatic reality fundamentally underlies the limited success of forest management efforts. The inevitability and importance of forest policy engaging with institutional diversity is emphasized and a framework for "living with diversity" is suggested.

The book will be of interest and use to those in the fields of environmental studies, forestry, sociology, regional studies of the Himalaya, history, politics, management, human geography, social anthropology and development studies as well as policy-makers, bureaucrats and non-governmental organizations.

2006 xviii+273pp.
ISBN: 81-7986-053-1
Rs. 400.00

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