Social agency in alpine communal forests : local actors' interactions with communal forests and participation in communal forestry in the French and Swiss Alps

Given the vast amount of policy discourse claiming that participation of local communities is a condition for sustainable forest management, this research aims at understanding how local actors actually perceive - and interact with - their communally owned forests. <br> <br>Without predetermining whether there will be participation at local levels or predefining what participation should be like at this level, we have selected six communes in the French and Swiss Alps. The selection criteria were that they have a substantial part of their territory covered with communally owned mountain forests and that they tend to have multiple forest-related uses. Besides country and region based institutional variation of the region selected (between the French Haute-Savoie and the Swiss cantons of Valais and Vaud), we chose communes with varying socio-economic and land-use contexts, as well as according to demographic trends and the relative importance of the primary (farming and forestry), secondary or tertiary sectors (mostly tourism). <br> <br>Based on sixty-five semi-structured interviews, we first analyze local actors' perceptions of the communal forests so as to crystallize different forest values and forest related conflicts. We estimate the relative importance of these values and conflicts, comparing results between the communes, and between categories of actors, based on their occupation, their age and their gender. Describing twenty collective agency processes, we develop a typology based on who takes part, why and how. Then we compare these processes in their capacity to either reproduce or change social structures and their relative dependency or autonomy from state authorities. <br> <br>After exploring the background of the concept of "participation" in democratic theory and in natural resources and forest policy making, we focus on micro-level social interactions and collective agency in communal forests. While taking a Grounded Theory approach for generating propositions based on a systematic qualitative interview analysis, we use insights from Anthony Giddens' structuration theory, as well as from Michel Crozier's strategic analytical methodology. We complement these with additional social theory concepts needed to address the cultural and ecological aspects of local social interactions with forests. <br> <br>Interpreting our results, we find that local social interactions and collective agency processes in relation with communal forests are correlated with various local actors' values and with many of their expressed multiple land-use conflicts, but that they generally do not address forestry related conflicts. We notice important variations in perceived conflicts, values, and in the involvement of the actors according to their occupation, gender, age, and relationship with authorities. These findings provide insights about the power relations structuring local interaction systems. The grounded analysis of these variations leads us to distinguish an important cultural, economic, and political conflict line between urban and rural representations of the communal forest (livelihood versus quality of life), as well as between urban and rural strategies in local forest-related agency (local autonomy versus state control). Our research finds a strong relationship between the historical consolidation of state-led forestry institutions and concomitant erosion of common property institutions, and the impact of modernization on the place-making capacity of local actors interacting with their forest. <br> <br>The result of this research is a set of propositions regarding local agency in communal forests and local actors' engagement in forestry, in the Swiss and French alpine region. These findings provide a better understanding of the local dimensions of participation in forestry.

Author dc:creator

• Finger-Stich, Andréa

Contributors dc:contributor

• Shannon, Margaret

• Nachhaltigkeit
• Communal
• forestry

Repository record source_url

https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/2472

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:freidok.uni-freiburg.de:2472