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ENVIRONMENTAL SUBJECTIVITY, DEMOCRATIC
ASSERTIONS-AND REIMAGINATION OF FOREST

PhD.

GOVERNANCE IN ORISSA, INDIA

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NEERA MENDIRATI'A SINGH

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ENVIRONMENTAL SUBJECTIVITY, DEMOCRATIC ASSERTIONS AND
REIMAGINATION OF FOREST GOVERNANCE [N ORISSA, INDIA

By

Neera Mendiratta Singh

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Resource Development

2009

ABSTRACT
ENVIRONMENTAL SUBJECTIVITY, DEMOCRATIC ASSERTIONS AND
REIMAGINATION OF FOREST GOVERNANCE IN ORISSA, INDIA
By
Neera Mendiratta Singh
In the Indian state of Orissa, several thousand villages protect state-owned

forests through self-initiated community based collective action. Through multi-sited
ethnographic inquiry, I explore the emergence of these community forestry initiatives
and their role in democratizing forest governance. The three papers in this
dissertation explore issues relating to environmental subjectivity, democratic
inclusion, and reflexivity, respectively. The first paper, “Environmental Subjectivity
in the Forested Landscapes of Orissa,” explores how rural people in Orissa recreate
themselves as environmental subjects or agents who consider themselves as
conservationists. A critical challenge for contemporary societies in view of large-scale
environmental crisis relates to transformation in human subjectivity vis-a-vis the
environment, to foster love, care, and conservation of ‘nature’. Recent scholars have
turned to Foucault’s notions of govemmentality to understand how regimes of power
and knowledge shape environmental subjectivities. This work tends to privilege the
role of these regimes in subject formation and does not pay adequate attention to
technologies of the self or to the role of affect in shaping subjectivities. Based on
ethnographic inquiry in Orissa, this paper explores how technologies of the self act in
conjunction with technologies of power to shape environmental subjectivity. It
illustrates the role of local agency, material practices, and affect in transformation of

environmental subjectivity.

The second paper, “Democratic Spaces across Scales: Women’s Action and
Inclusion in Forest Governance in Orissa, India,” addresses the challenges of social
equity and inclusion within community forestry. Through a case study of a local
federation, the paper illustrates how constraints to, and possibilities for, women’s
involvement are different across scales. Further, spaces for participation and
democratic action across scales are intermeshed and in dynamic interaction. In the
Orissa case, marginalized women gained voice and visibility by organizing at a
regional scale, and used democratic spaces at higher spatial scales to overcome
constraints to their participation at the community level. The case demonstrates how
closer attention to issues of scale and cross-scale linkages can help in deepening
democracy and addressing issues of social justice.

The third paper, “Blurred Boundaries: Research, Researcher, and the
Researched,” discusses my positionality and explores how complex identities are
performed and negotiated in a research setting. In this paper, I use ethnographic
vignettes and poems to explore the blurred boundaries and ‘in-between’ spaces
between researcher and researched, insider and outsider, and action and research. The
three papers are tied together With common themes about power, agency and

subjectivity.

 

Copyright by
NEERA MENDIRATTA SINGH
2009

 

 

Dedicated to the memory of
Ashok Babu and
Rajendra K. Sarangi

whose lives continue to inspire and challenge me

 

Acknowledgments

This dissertation has been a long time in the making. I am pleased to
acknowledge some of the many debts that I have accumulated without divesting
myself of any responsibility for what follows. First and foremost, my gratitude to the
“jungle surakhyakaris” i.e the forest protecting people of Orissa, for their teachings in
environmentalism, the ethics of care, and in complex subjectivities shaped by the
tensions of living in, living off, and loving the forest at the same time. My special
thanks to Jogi babu, Udainath Khatei (Bapa), Ballia Babu, Prasanna Babu, and
Kailash Bhai in Nayagarh; Arjun Rout, Arakhit Babu, Ram Babu, Jai Bhai, Rajendra,
Bisika Mausi, Kuntala, Pramila, Minati Apa, Gopal Khuntia, Narasingha Das and
Rajendra in Ranapur; Kulamani, Ramsharan Hota, Surya, Satyanarayan Hati, Bishnu
Purthy, and Goracharan Mohanto, for their influence on my thinking about forest-
people relationship. Thanks also to the leaders of Orissa Jungle Manch, and various
district federations for their time and their efforts in sustaining and strengthening the
forest protection movement in Orissa. And to my former colleagues at Vasundhara for
our work together and for continuing conversations, especially Y. Giri Rao, Rana
Roy, Prasant Mohanty, Rekha Panigrahi, Sabita Singh, Bharati Chakra, Shakuntala
Acharya, and Tanushree Das. Thanks to Sanjoy Pattanaik, Nirmal Jyotishi, and Sushi]
Roy at RCDC; Rajendra Meher, YCDA; Ram Das, NIPDIT; Prabhakar Adhikari,
Pragati; and Prof. Radhamohan for sharing their insights with me. I am indebted to
Sudhir Pattanaik, Madhu Sarin, Puspanjali Satpathy, and Kundan for their friendship,
and intellectual support.

I am grateful to my dissertation advisor, John Kerr for his outstanding support,
able mentoring, and infinite patience over the several years that this dissertation has
taken. He was very supportive of interdisciplinary work and provided me the space

vi

 

 

for boundary-crossing. This dissertation would not have been possible without the
space and support that he provided. Jim Bingen, Frank Fear, Anne Ferguson, Dianne
Rocheleau and Laurie Thorp provided invaluable support as members of my
dissertation committee. They brought diverse perspectives, critiqued, challenged, and
encouraged me at different times (or at the same time) in different ways. Thank you!
Earlier versions of the paper “Democratic Spaces across Scales” were
presented at the 2007 meeting of the Association of American Geographers in a '
special panel on ‘Governing the Environment,’ organized by Arun Agrawal and

Ashwini Chatre, at the 2008 meeting of the Association of American Anthropologists

 

in a panel on ‘Gender and Sustainability,’ organized by Pamela McElwee and Maria
Cruz-Torres; and at a Workshop on ‘Rights based Agenda in International Forestry’
organized by Thomas Sikor and Johannes Stahl at Berkeley. Special thanks for the
discussants for this paper, Ashwini Chhatre, Joan Mecher, and Jeff Romm at these
respective venues for their comments. Earlier versions of the paper, “Blurred
Boundaries: Research, Researcher and the Researched” were presented at the World
Congress on Participatory Action Research and at the 2009 meeting of the Society of
Applied Anthropology. Thanks to all the participants at these conferences for their
comments and feedback. Apart from my dissertation committee, Jenifer Buckley and
Kundan Kumar read the dissertation in its entirety, their comments and edits helped
improve the clarity of the papers.

I gratefiilly acknowledge the support from the Social Science Research
Council, and the American Institute of Indian Studies for dissertartion fieldwork. The
support from the American Association of University Women, the Center for Gender
in the Global Context, and the Graduate School at MSU was critical at the writing

stage. Rajkishore Mishra, Arundhati Jena, and Aurobindo Rout provided able research

vii

 

assistance at different times during the fieldwork and painstakingly transcribed
lengthy interviews. I am grateful to them for their support.

Thanks also to students, faculty, and staff at the department of CARRS, the
Bailey Scholars Program, and the Residential College in Arts and Humanities at MSU
for a sense of community in the US. Special thanks to Kim Chung, Bill Derrnan,
Stephen Esquith, Vincent Delagado, Geoff Habron, Laura DeLind, Lisa Fine, Mark
Sullivan and Glenn Sterner for their support for my professional development at
MSU. Thanks also to my friends, and family for the much-needed emotional support.
To my parents, for their unconditional love and for all that they have done to enable

me to dream and re-imagine, and to Kundan and Shashwat for being a part of my life.

viii

 

Table of Contents

Chapter I
Environmental Subjectivity in the Forested Landscapes of Orissa .............................. I
Abstract .................................................................................................................... I
Introduction ............................................................................................................. l
Intimate Environmentality: Enriching the Analytics of Environmentality ............. 4
Research Setting and Methods .............................................................................. 10
The Contested Forests ........................................................................................... 12
Local Agency: Initiation of Community Forestry Initiatives ................................ l7
Intimate Practices: Protecting and ‘Growing’ the Forest ...................................... 22
Discourse of Moral Authority ................................................................................ 27
‘Jungle’ Loko: From ‘Uncivilized’ to ‘Environmental’ People ............................ 3O
Moral Authority Discourse at Higher Spatial Scales ............................................. 32
State Response and Local Resistance .................................................................... 33
Transformation in Environmental Subjectivity ..................................................... 39
Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 43
References ............................................................................................................. 46
Chapter 2
Democratic Spaces across Scales: Women ’3 Action and Inclusion in Forest
Governance in Orissa, India ....................................................................................... 52
Abstract .................................................................................................................. 52
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 52
Conceptual Framework: Democracy, Spaces, and Scales ..................................... 55
Substantive Democracy: Redefining State-Citizen and Citizen-Citizen Relations 55
Democratic Spaces and Participation as a Spatial Practice ........................................ 56
Scale, Democratic Spaces, and the Marginalized Voices ........................................... 57
The Setting: Community Forestry in Orissa .......................................................... 59
Ma Maninag Jungle Surakhya Parishad ................................................................... 6l
Methodology .......................................................................................................... 62
Restricted Space at the Community Level: How can we go uninvited? ............... 64
Space for Women at the Federation Scale ............................................................. 66
Space for Women through the ‘Athraha Tarikh’ Monthly Meetings ......................... 68
Women’s Action and Expansion of Spaces ........................................................... 69
Transformation in Spaces across Scales ................................................................ 73
At the Regional Scale within MMJSP ........................................................................ 73
At the Community Level ............................................................................................ 75
Continuing Challenges at other Scales ....................................................................... 77
Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 78
References ............................................................................................................. 82

 

 

Chapter 3

Blurred Boundaries: Research, Researcher, and the Researched ............................... 86
Abstract .................................................................................................................. 86
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 86
Reflexivity, Voice, and Power ............................................................................... 88
Research Context ................................................................................................... 91
My Positionality: Insider/Outsider ........................................................................ 92
Blurred Boundaries: The Researcher and Activist Selves ..................................... 94
The Contours of Power: Visioning Orissa’s forest ................................................ 99
Concluding Thoughts: Evocative Ethnography as a Si(gh)ting Technology ...... 110
References ........................................................................................................... I I3

 

Chapter 1

Environmental Subjectivity in the Forested Landscapes of Orissa

Abstract

A critical challenge for contemporary societies in view of large-scale environmental
crisis relates to transformation in human subjectivity vis-a-vis the environment, to foster
love, care, and conservation of ‘nature’. Recent scholars have turned to Foucault’s

notions of govemmentality to understand how regimes of power and knowledge shape

 

environmental subjectivities. This work tends to privilege the role of these regimes in I
subject formation and does not pay adequate attention to technologies of the self or to the
role of affect in shaping subjectivities. Based on research in Orissa, India, this paper
illustrates the role of local agency, material practices, and affect in transformation of
environmental subjectivity. In Orissa, several thousand villages are engaged in the
conservation of state—owned forests through self-created governance arrangements. Using
multi-sited ethnographic research with these forest-protecting villages, this paper
discusses how rural people in Orissa have recreated themselves as environmental
subjects. This research illustrates how technologies of the self act in conjunction with
technologies of power to shape environmental subjectivity.
Introduction

How people come to a sense of commitment to their local environment—or, what
turns them into conservationists—is a central problem in environmental politics (Raffles,
2005; Agrawal, 2005a). Usually this problem is seen through the lens of structure and

agency, focusing on structural constraints that motivate people to act in their ‘immediate’,

 

rather than ‘real’ interests, or in terms of the rural poor failing to value local nature due to
some false consciousness that can be remedied through environmental education (Raffles,
2005). Agrawal (2005a) suggests that structure and agency are inadequate lenses through
which to understand this problem, and opens up the theoretical apparatus of structure and
agency to the Foucauldian framework of power and the subject. In a study of forest
councils in Kumaon, India, Agrawal traces the process of creation of ‘environmental
subjects’, i.e. people who care about the environment, and shows that this care and the
creation of environmental subjects are linked to the subjects’ involvement in the
government1 or regulation of the environment. He discusses the process of transformation
of rural Kumaon residents’ subjectivities relating to environmental conservation and
explores the link between action and subjectivities.

Human capacity to reflect upon and evaluate one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions—
i.e. for self-reflective activity, or, broadly speaking, subjectivity—~43 the essence of
philosophy (Atkins, 2005). In more precise terms, subjectivity refers to the production of
subject positions—the repertoire of possibilities into which ‘subjects’ are recruited,
temporarily and often unwittingly (Butler, 1997). While the subject of subject formation
has engaged philosophers for years, it has received limited attention in the study of
nature-society interactions (Agrawal, 2005b; Nightingale, 2006). Early work in political
ecology treats identities and subject positions as fixed and pre-formed instead of

examining how they come to be and change over time (Agrawal, 2005b: 211,

 

' Agrawal uses the term ‘government’ to refer to different mechanisms used to shape the conduct of
specific people and groups, including the mechanism that such people and groups use on themselves.

Nightingale, 2006). Agrawal seeks to remedy this gap by drawing attention to ways in
which the subject position of ‘conservationist’ is formed in the forested landscapes of
Kumaon. Agrawal (2005a: 166) uses the term ‘environmentality’ to denote a ‘framework
of understanding in which technologies of self and power are involved in the creation of
new subjects concerned about the environment.’ ‘Environmentality’ provides a useful but
incomplete analytical framework for focusing on subjectivities and subject formation in
nature-society interactions. Despite repeated reference to what Foucault terms
‘technologies of the self’ , Agrawal does not fully elaborate on the processes through
which rural residents make themselves, and privileges technologies of power that act
through the forest councils instituted and put in place by the state. Other scholars have
critiqued Agrawal’s approach for inadequate attention to local agency (Acciaioli, 2006;
Gupta, 2005), for an ahistoric view of identity categories and positions (Hathaway, 2005;
Narotzky, 2005), and for insufficient attention to the ‘complex and deeply biographical
practices’ through which environmental subjects make themselves and are made (Raffles,
2005)

Based on my research in Orissa, I expand on the framework of environmentality by
drawing attention to local agency, material practices, and the role of affect in
transformation of environmental subjectivity. In Orissa, more than 8,000 villages protect
state-owned forests through collective action even in the absence of formal legal rights.
These community initiatives are not traditional indigenous arrangements but newly
created institutions initiated and sustained by transformation in environmental

subjectivities. Based on multi-sited ethnographic research, I explore how rural pe0ple

make themselves as environmental subjects drawing creatively from the cultural,
discursive, and disciplining material available to them. I draw attention to the role of
affect, technologies of self, and embodied practices in the shaping of environmental
subjectivities. I argue that we give undue emphasis to the technologies of power and
neglect what Foucault terms ‘practices of liberation’ or ‘technologies of the self through
which citizens make themselves. Human interactions with their natural environment are
suffused with emotion, yet emotion receives relatively little attention in nature-society
studies. My inquiry draws attention to the technologies of self, generative forms of
resistance and re-imagination, and the role of affect in the shaping of environmental
subjectivity.

Intimate Environmentality: Enriching the Analytics of
Environmentality

‘The subject is constituted through practices of subjection, or, in a more autonomous

way, through practices of liberation’ (Foucault: ‘An Aesthetics of Existence’ edited

by L. Kritzman, 1988: cited in Bevir, 1999).

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1979[1975]) elaborates on how the application
of power in the form of the gaze produces subjects. He says, ‘He who is subjected to a
field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power;
he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power
relations in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his
own subjection’ (l979[1975]: 202-3). The gaze thus acts as a sorting device. Those

subject to the gaze become subject to power; those who escape the gaze also, presumably,

escape the effects of power. Some of Foucault’s later work recognizes the many different

ways through which subjects come into being (2000[1979], 2000[1982] cited in Agrawal,
2005). Foucault (1988:18) also talks about ‘technologies of the self, which permit
individuals to effect. . .a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls,
thoughts, conduct, and ways of being, so as to transform themselves.’ Foucault
(1992[l984]: 10-11) defines ‘techniques of the self’ or ‘arts of existence’ as ‘those
reflective and voluntary practices by which men [sic] not only set themselves rules of
conduct, but seek to transform themselves and to make of their life into an oeuvre that
carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria.’

Foucault is often criticized for not paying enough attention to local agency and his
work on disciplining society is taken to imply a deterministic view. O’Farrell (2009) says
that Foucault’s work is far from deterministic and suggests ‘constant strategic interplay
between the forces of order and those who wish to think and act otherwise.’ Bevir (1999)
also avers that Foucault’s rejection of autonomy does not imply rejection of agency.
According to Bevir, ‘For Foucault, the subject is produced by regimes of power and
knowledge, but these regimes do not determine the experiences that they can have, the
ways they can exercise their reason, the beliefs they can adopt, or the actions they can
attempt to perform.’ So, agents are creative beings; it is just that their creativity occurs in
a given social context that influences it.

While Foucault’s later work focuses on technologies of the self, his work is most
commonly associated with ‘technologies of power’ that seek to discipline society. Most
of the literature on neoliberal govemmentality focuses on technologies of power and

knowledge instead of technologies of the self (Agrawal, 2005a). Agrawal (2005a) seeks

to correct this deficiency by focusing on the role of power, social practices, and
imagination in shaping environmental subjectivity using empirical evidence from
Kumaon. While Agrawal refers to the ‘technologies of self’, he does not fully explore it.
His analysis suffers from a common shortcoming in nature-society studies pertaining to
the conceptualization of the boundaries between self and environment (see Nightingale,
2006, Milton, 2002). The other shortcoming relates to the Cartesian dichotomy of mind
and body that frames the scholarship on power and resistance.

Agrawal suggests that the notions of imagination and resistance present two facets of
the puzzle of the relationship between government and subjectivity. Benedict Anderson’s
(1991) work suggests that the imagination of the less powerful is colonized by the
powerful. In contrast, the scholars of resistance highlight how such a colonization of
imagination is resisted. Scott (1985) promotes the view that the weak resist the powerful
through daily acts of resistance, and if nothing else, then in the realm of ideas and beliefs.
Agrawal points out that these two streams of scholarship on imagination and resistance,
when considered together, lead to conflicting conclusions. He says (2005a: 165),
‘Technologies of government produce their effects by generating a politics of the subject
that can be better understood and analyzed by considering both practice and imagination
as critical.’ He thus argues that closer attention to social practices can lead to ‘theorizing
that would be more tightly connected to the social ground where imagination is always
born and, reciprocally, which imagination always influences.’ I would like us to consider
how these two streams of scholarship on resistance and imagination are premised on the

mind and body dichotomy. Mitchell (1990) suggests that our conceptualization of power

(and resistance) is dominated by a single, master metaphor, i.e. the distinction between
persuading and coercing that correlates to the dichotomy between mind and body. Power
may operate at the level of ideas, persuading the mind of its legitimacy, or it may work as
a material force directly coercing the body (ibid, I990). Agrawal’s attention to social
practices as a way of collapsing the mind and body dichotomy—though he makes no
reference to it—is insufficient. It will be more productive to look at embodied practices
and embodied interactions between the self and the environment.

Tim Ingold’s work is particularly instructive in comprehending the embodied nature
of human relationships with the environment. Ingold (2000) asserts that ‘the organism
and the person’ can be one and the same. He asserts, ‘Instead of trying to reconstruct the
complete human being from two separate but complementary components, respectively
biophysical and socio-cultural, we should be trying to find a way of talking about human
life that eliminates the need to slice it up into these different layers.’ Drawing on the
work in new biology that takes a relational view of the organism, Ingold opens up new
ways of understanding the human-environment relationship and comprehending
environmental subjectivity. To Ingold, ‘[W]ays of acting in the environment are also
ways of perceiving it.’ His work encourages us to pay greater attention to everyday
practices as embodied ways of being and acting in the environment.

Raffles (2002) makes similar arguments in the context of Amazonia when he argues
that ‘for many people who live in the Amazonia, nature is something lived and of which
one is unmistakably a part rather than something of which one has abstract knowledge.’

Paul Richards (1993) shows that knowledge of nature is ‘not only a set of practices, it is

also a lexicon—one that is profoundly contextualized, social, and dynamic’. Raffles
(ibid.) points out that people enter into ‘relationships among themselves and with nature
through embodied practice’ and suggests that what is termed as local knowledge is
actually ‘intimate’ knowledge. He uses the term ‘intimate’ to refer to ‘affective sociality’
and suggests that ‘affect though inconstant, is ubiquitous and the perpetual mediator of
rationality.’ For him, intimacy is a site for the social production of knowledge, and the
reworking of human-nature boundaries. He emphasizes, ‘It [intimacy] is always within a
field of power. It is always in a place. It is always embodied. And it is always, above else,
relational.’

Embodiment is at the level of lived experience and is about ‘understanding’ or
‘making sense’ in a ‘pre-reflexive or even pre-symbolic way’ (Csordas, 1990: 10, cited in
Wolputte, 2004). Embodiment is thus intrinsically a part of our being in-the-world and
collapses the difference between subjective and objective, cognition and emotion, and
mind and body. Raffles’s and Ingold’s work suggest that in addition to regimes of power
and knowledge, human subjectivity is shaped by embodied human interactions with
nature. Even though Agrawal discusses how participation in regulatory practices leads to
environmental subjectivity, he does not elaborate on how these practices are embodied
and are as much biophysical as they are social. How do the everyday acts of walking
through the forest, watching the trees grow or the landscape change transform one’s
subjective experience of nature and one’s ways of thinking about it?

This work also connects with recent work within geography and feminist theory that

is attentive to the embodied, discursive, and social processes that produce subjectivity

(Longhurst 2001, Rose, 1993 cited in Nightingale, 2006). This work suggests that
subjectivities are always place-based, i.e. performed within specific places and spaces,
embodied and material, and performed within a matrix of power and resistance
(Longhurst, 2003). While this work suggests that subjectivities and space are interactive
and mutually constitutive, it has not explored the ways in which boundaries between self
and other, and self and environment, are implicated in the processes of subject formation
(Nightingale, 2006). Nightingale (2006) points out that although the boundary between
self and the environment is not straightforward, most theoretical work takes it for
granted. Kay Milton’s (2002) work on the role of emotions and identification in how
people form attachment to nature provides interesting overlap. In psychoanalysis,
‘identification’ refers to the unconscious processes of introjection and projection, which
operate as dynamic exchanges within all interpersonal relationships (Bondi, 2003).
Milton (2002) extends this process of identification to people’s relationship with nature
and argues that if people can identify with aspects of their ecological environment as
being like themselves in one way or another, they are more likely to treat that
environment as they might themselves or another person.

Judith Butler’s work on performative construction of gender also helps analyze the
formation of subject positions. Butler (1990) insists that gender identity is not ‘is’ but is
done or performed. Her work encourages us to understand gender identity as a verb—as
performative. Identity is a verb because it is realized through repeated acts, or
reiterations, of cultural norms that function as signifiers of gender (Butler, 1990; Atkins,

2005: 254). If we extend this to subject positions vis-a-vis environment, it becomes

important to consider how environmental subjectivity is performed and shaped by this
performance.

Drawing from the work cited above, and based on my analysis of community
initiatives to protect forests in Orissa, I suggest that the analytical framework of
environmentalin can gain from explicit attention to the role of embodied and intimate
practices shaped by affective sociality, technologies of self and local agency in shaping
environmental subjectivity.

Research Setting and Methods

Orissa is a typical place at the margins, rich in natural resources—including
minerals—with a high prevalence of poverty. A state located on the east coast of India,
almost 40 per cent of its geographical area is classified as state-owned forest land. It is
the least developed state in India with a high concentration of poverty in the tribally
dominated forested areas. Socially marginalized groups like tribals (adivasis, or
indigenous people) and dalits (the ‘untouchable’ castes) form almost 40 per cent of its
population. Almost half of the rural population lives below the official poverty line.
Poverty is fimher exacerbated for certain social groups. For instance, 72 per cent of
Orissa’s tribals live under the poverty line. Population density in Orissa is high, with as
many as 236 people per square kilometer. Almost 80 per cent of the state’s population is
rural and depends heavily on the forest for livelihood and sustenance. This dependence
on the forest has shaped villagers’ efforts to protect it. Through the lenses of structure and

agency, these community forestry initiatives are explained in terms of the presence of

10

community institutions, the failure of state authority over forests, local culture, and the
weak presence of formal local self-governance institutions (Kant et al., 1991).

This research is based on my dissertation fieldwork between 2004 and 2007. It also
draws on my previous work in Orissa as a community forestry practitioner. I used
qualitative research and multi-sited ethnography to explore rural people’s relationship
with forests through village case studies and interviews with community forestry leaders
at different spatial scales. Multi-sited or multi-locale ethnography encourages ‘a shift
away from the ethnography that is so centrally place and local-world determined’ towards
an ethnography aimed at representing the operation of the system (Marcus, 1989). The
different spatial scales and sites of collective action and engagement in my research
include the community, block, district, and state levelsz. My methods included
conversational interviews with village men and women, leaders of federations, prominent
environmental leaders, NGO staff, and activists3. I also studied village meeting records in
Ranpur block of Nayagarh district, and the meeting records of a block-level federation,
Maa Maninag Jungle Surakhya Parishad. My analysis of discourses at higher spatial
scales comes from interviews with leaders of six federations, focus group discussions,
and participant observation of the meetings of federation leaders and of state-level

workshops. I use villagers’ songs and poems to examine the discourse that rural

 

2 India is organized into states, which are then divided into districts, blocks, panchayats, and villages.
Blocks contain about 200 villages.

3 I have used the actual names of village people, community leaders, and villages; after obtaining consent
by my interviewees to use their names, since there is no perceived risk involved in doing so. Many of the
people cited here are public figures and share these views at public forums. Names of Forest Department
officials have not been used.

11

communities employ and as indicators of transformation in discourse and subjectivity (cf.
Zerner, 2003).

Evidence for transformation in local subjectivity and environmental behavior is
partly supported by data relating to change in the forest cover. Even though there is no
comprehensive study that delineates forests regenerated through protection by
communities, the Forest Survey of India Report (1999, covering the period 1993 to
1995), attributes an increase in forest cover by 90 square kilometers and 10 square
kilometers in Mayurbhanj and Balangir districts, respectively, to community efforts. A
study by Singh et a1. (2005) uses remote sensing data for forest-cover change from 1990
to 2000 and undertakes ground-level verification. This study finds that in one decade, the
forest cover increased from 53 per cent to 67 per cent in Kandhamal district and from
39.0 per cent to 39.7 per cent in Mayurbhanj district, and attributes this change to
community forest protection. The other evidence comes from interviews with village men
and women, and villagers’ songs and poems.

The Contested Forests

Professor Radhamohan", who has long experience with community forestry,
describes his first encounter with forest protection initiatives in Dhenkanal district. ‘It
was September of 1971. Monsoon played truant. It was a drought-like situation’. On that
day he and his students were taking two pump-sets to a village to draw water to save the

paddy crop. ‘On our way, we were stopped by a group of elderly people. This is what we

 

4 Interview was in English, exact words used. He is an academic who has been teaching at district colleges
and has also been deputed to the Government of Orissa is various capacities. In January 2007, when I
interviewed him, he was the Chief lnfonnation Commissioner with the Government of Orissa.

12

saw. A group of women were crying. More than 300 people—each of them armed, with
whatever country arms they could lay their hands on—were coming in our direction.
Around 30 to 40 young people from a small village took a strategic position and were
getting ready for the supreme sacrifice. Women were wailing. They stopped us and said,
“Please do something”.’ The small village had been protecting a patch of forest of about
100 hectares for the past 15 years. The night before, one man from a large neighboring
village tried to take some timber from this forest. He was caught and fined. After hearing
about this fine, the larger village was outraged and decided to teach the small village a
lesson by destroying the forest that they had protected. It was on this scene that
Radhamohan and his students arrived. Radhamohan continued, ‘Thirty to forty youth
from the small village were ready for “the supreme sacrifice”. They said that “only over
our corpses can they harm our forest.” My students and I stood between the two parties
and tried to avert bloodshed. After about two hours of persuasion the two groups laid
down their arms.’ After considerable effort and dialogue over weeks, it was agreed that
the large village would protect another forest patch and would not lay claim to the forest
protected by the smaller village. Radhamohan says that he still gets goose bumps as he
thinks about that evening. While this incident sounds dramatic, it is not unusual. It
occurred in 1971, and the small village had been protecting forests for 15 years. In 1990,
I was similarly amazed by community efforts to protect state-owned forests. As I traveled
through Dhenkanal district with a technical team evaluating the progress of the Social

Forestry Project in Orissa, in close proximity to sad-looking monocultures of eucalyptus

13

and acacia trees, I found luxuriant stands of regenerating sals forest under community
protection and care. This community protection was in striking contrast to the work of the
Social Forestry Project, which aimed to plant trees on non-forest lands to protect the
natural forests against villagers.

Why was it that although outsiders like Radhamohan repeatedly encountered
community efforts to protect forests, and persistently tried to bring attention to them,
community efforts remained invisible to the state? The narrative of villagers as destroyers
of forests continued and shaped investments in social forestry, while local efforts to
regenerate forests at no cost to the state exchequer remained unseen and uncelebrated.
The explanation lies in part in the politics of control; there was money to be made in
planting trees and sustaining the myth of local communities as destroyers of forests. The
explanation also lies in colonial forest governance and continuing contestations over the
control of forests.

Rich work in India’s environmental history illustrates how the politics of knowledge
and discourses of science, development, and conservation shaped India’s forests. Both
forestlands as a juridical category and forests as an epistemological construct co-evolved
and were shaped by these discourses. Forestlands as a juridical category originated with
the annexation of large tracts of lands by the colonial government. Large areas that were
not under direct control of private owners were brought under state control, aided by the

‘right of conquest’ (Guha, 1983). The first attempt at forest legislation, the Indian Forest

 

5 Sal, Shorea robusta, is a tree species native to South Asia. It is one of the most important sources of
hardwood timber in India. The wood is resinous and durable, and is sought after for construction. Sal resin
is burned as incense, and sal seeds and fruit are a source of oil and vegetable fat.

14

Act of 1865, empowered the state to declare any land covered with trees or brushwood as
government forest. This was driven by the contention that ‘total state control over all
forest areas is the only check on individual self-interest and short-sightedness’ (Gadgil
and Guha 1989). Annexation of large tracts of land as forestlands granted tremendous
power to the Forest Department as the agency that controlled lands and their
disbursement (Rangarajan 1996). Wherever the potential proprietors or traditional local
users did not use language recognized by the colonial government to stake claims, their
claims remained non-existent (Guha, 1983). As a result, certain forms of forest use, such
as swidden cultivation or pastoral nomadism, were not recognized at all.

In addition, epistemological, cultural, and historical forces shaped the process by
which forests were constituted, or imagined. The early British attitudes towards forests
were conditioned by their own military history and agricultural revolution, with the forest
seen as an abode of ‘robbers, lawless squatters, poverty-stricken and the uncivil’, and the
cutting of trees and expansion of agriculture seen as signs of progress (Skaria, 1999;
Rangarajan, 1996). Closely related to this were attitudes towards the ‘wild-people’—the
adivasis who were termed ‘wild-tribes’. Skaria (1999) highlights how the British sought
to assimilate and civilize both wild spaces and wild people and how wilderness was
placed ‘before or outside civilization’ with a consistent focus on ‘mastery’.

Even though the struggle for forest rights was an important part of the resistance and
rebellion against the British throughout India, the post-colonial government continued
more or less with the same forest governance framework. In the past few decades, the

contradictions between democratic polity and undemocratic forest governance have

15

intensified the call for reform in forest governance. Tensions and contestations have
continued as environmental conservation has replaced revenue imperatives as the driver
for centralized management.

In Orissa, much of the forest was managed through timber concessions to private
companies. Following independence, there was large-scale felling of trees in forests in
ex-zamindarz45 areas in a bid to profit before the forests were transferred to the
government of Orissa. In many areas, villagers recount large-scale degradation of forests
in the period following independence due to a sudden sense of freedom, and loss of state
control over forests. In addition, large-scale commercial harvests of forests by the state in
the bid to maximize forest revenue led to pronounced degradation from the 19503 to
197037. Conversion of forest areas to agriculture and for various development projects
was another cause of forest degradation.

Transformation of forest-people relationship through formal institutions of
governance has been a complex and highly contested process. It is not easy to will
landscapes and subjects into discipline through formal policy and epistemological
constructions. Both landscapes and people resist and defy easy governability. Local
communities, peasants, and tribal societies opposed formal rules restricting their
relationship with their environment through open rebellion and resistance as well as
through forms of ‘everyday resistance’ (Scott, 1985). In south Orissa, for example,

attempts to reserve the customary shifting cultivation lands of the Saora tribals led to

 

6 The Zamindari system was a way of collecting taxes from peasants. The zamindar was considered 3 lord
who would collect taxes on his lands for the British authorities, retaining a portion for himself.

7 Prior to that, forests had suffered massive commercial exploitation during the British rule, especially
during World War II.

16

rebellion forcing the British to de-reserve parts of forests. During the independence
movement, issues of forest access and taxation were an important grievance and source of
mobilization in the Prajamandal Andolansg in many princely states, such as Nayagarh,
Dhenkanal, and Rairangpur9 (Rath, 2000), as well as in zamindaries such as Kanika and
Jeypore (Pati, 1983). These struggles still resonate in the memory of the peasantry and
rural people and shape current contestations over forests.

Almost two-fifths of Orissa’s geographical area is classified as state-owned forest,
and local people have few rights over these forests. About a quarter of the state-owned
forests lies inside village boundaries and is commonly referred to as village forest.
Studies have demonstrated that villagers find it easy to extend community management to
village forests due to the management vacuum arising from confusion between legal
ownership (in the revenue department) and management responsibility (in the Forest
Department) (Kant et al., 1991). Over time, village-based efforts to protect forests have
taken place in almost all legal categories of forests, even in the absence of any formal
rights over these forests. In response to questions about why communities have taken the
initiative to protect forests, one woman captures the approach. ‘Even if we don’t own the
forest, this is the forest that we use, the only one that we have. The forest guard will still
get his salary even if the forest disappears. For us, nothing would be left’. In contrast to

the more violent protests and rebellions, recent community initiatives to protect forests

 

8 Prajamandal Andolans were peasant movements against the British in the 19305 and 19403. They were
significant local struggles against feudalism and for self-determination in many princely states.

9 Present-day Orissa previously comprised 24 princely states and three British-delineated provinces.

l7

can be seen as a form of resistance through which local communities seek to assert moral
claims as conservators of the forest.
Local Agency: Initiation of Community Forestry Initiatives

In the incident that Radhamohan describes, the village started protecting forests
sometime in 1956 following forest degradation. Throughout Orissa, villagers responded
to degradation of their landscapes by initiating active forest patrols and restricting their
own use to allow forests to regenerate. Indeed, collective action for natural resource
management worldwide can be explained in terms of local innovation in the face of
scarcity, degradation of landscapes, and dependence on resources (Ostrom, 1992;
Templeton and Scherr, 1999). While these factors explain local action to conserve
forests, they do not fully explain shifts in local subjectivities that shape villagers’
wllingness to die for the forests that they have conserved”). To understand this, one
needs to delve into the processes through which subjectivities are transformed.

I start with a brief description of the initiation of village-based or communityll forest

protection efforts. Even though there are several instances of villages protecting forests as

 

'° There are several instances where people have actually been killed in the act of protecting forests.
Vasundhara, an Orissa-based N00, has instituted an award for ‘jungle shaheeds’ (forest martyrs). In 2002,
a pallia (forest patroller) in Nayagarh was killed while patrolling forest. The demand for state recognition
of his sacrifice brought forest-protecting communities from all over Orissa to Nayagarh in an extraordinary
display of solidarity and strength.

" I use the term ‘village’ interchangeably with ‘community’. These efforts are usually village- or
habitation-based. Rural people themselves use the terms gaon or mauza, ‘village’ or ‘hamlet’, to refer to the
unit of forest protection. The translation of ‘community’ as goshti in Oriya has little valence at the local
level, and refers to crafted institutions or crafted forums instead of communities living in physically shared
spaces. While villagers share physical space, the space is by no means homogeneous. Negotiations are
needed to work together as a whole, and not everyone shares equal costs and gains equal benefits in
working together as a community. For a more general discussion of the problematic of using the term
‘community’, see Agrawal and Gibson (1999) who suggest an emphasis on institutions instead of on
community when discussing community-based natural resource management. See also Brosius et al., 1998.

18

early as the 1930s (Sundar et al., 1996; RCDC, 2006), most efforts are more recent,
starting in the 19703 and 19803 (Kant et al., 1991; Singh, 1995). There are no concrete
figures available for the actual ntunber of such initiatives. A survey by RCDC (2006) lists
5,500 community forestry groups in 16 out of a total of 30 districts in Orissa; this can be
extrapolated to estimates of 8,000 to 10,000 community forestry groups in Orissa.
Different reasons lead villagers to protect forests. These include experiencing rapid
degradation of forests and witnessing changes in their landscape within a short span of
time, such as 10 to 15 years. For instance, in Lapanga, in one of the oldest instances of
forest protection, villagers decided to protect the village commons as a forest in 1936,
when forest products became scarce. In neighboring villages, protection started after the
construction of the Hirakud dam in the 19503, which led to massive deforestation. In
Nayagarh district, villagers reported that forests became degraded following Indian
independence, during the transition in governance regimes. Following deforestation and
large-scale poaching, wildlife disappeared and the forest became more accessible and
amenable to timber pilferage. One villager observed, ‘Tigers used to protect the forest.
When the tigers were gone, there was no fear. We had to step in [and replace the tigers].’
The narrative of change in landscape and of loss figured prominently in the reasons
people gave for protecting forests. For example, in the Budhikhamari cluster of villages
in Mayurbhanj district, one rural resident stated, ‘Sabu jungle sarijai thila. Highway disu
thila’ [The entire forest was depleted. The state highway was visible from here]. In a
village in Dhenkanal district where women initiated forest protection, a woman said, ‘The

forest was gone. There was no cover for jhada [defecation]’.

l9

In Kesharpur village12 in Nayagarh, villagers narrated an incident in which villagers
could not find wood to cremate the body of a poor man. Less extreme instances of the
scarcity of forest products were cited in other interviews as the reason to protect forests.
One woman in Mayurbhanj district observed, ‘If there is forest, then one can stoke the
fire [for cooking] and run to the forest to get a tuber to boil, pick some mushrooms or
greens to cook [even if there is nothing else to cook]’. Scarcity of small timber and poles
for house construction and for agricultural implements also promoted forest protection.
Villagers also cited humiliations and hardships endured due to non-availability of forest
products as reasons for forest protection. A resident of Sekarnal village in Boudh district
said, ‘Most houses in the village got burned down due to fire. There was no wood nearby.
We had to go the farther- away forest, to “steal” wood, and face humiliation. Setebele
bujhihela kastata [then we felt the pinch].’ Or in another case, ‘You know, we could not
even find a good-sized log for the plough It was really hard.’ Humiliation at the hands of
Forest Department staff was another commonly cited reason. In one village, villagers
decided to protect the village forest after they were fined by a forester for ‘stealing’ wood
from the reserved forest. Humiliation and insults also often came from other villages that

had started protecting forests and restricted the access of others.

 

'2 Kesharpur is a pioneer village in terms of forest protection in Nayagarh district. It forms the nucleus of
an overtly environmental movement to protect forests, which now has expanded to over 900 villages.
Human and Pattanaik (2000) describe the evolution and expansion of this movement, which incorporates
Gandhian philosophy and global environmental discourses into a uniquely powerful local environmental
and forest protection narrative (also see Kant e. al., 1991).

20

Environmental reasons or perceived connections to failed rains or intensifying heat
in the summer was another causal factor. In many villages, protection started after
drought or failed rainfall. A villager in Phulbani district said, ‘The forest had become
completely degraded. The heat also became unbearable. Rains became erratic. After that,
we decided to protect [the forest].’ The fertility of agricultural land in the foothills was
another driving force and, often, the initiative to protect forests came from farmers driven
by concerns for the flow of streams and agricultural fertility. Sometimes, forest protection
was initiated to check further encroachment or conversion of forests to agriculture by
individuals (Village Kudamunda: Panda and Pati, 1992). In addition to current hardships,
concern about the future generation and children’s needs also led to collective action.
“We are protecting for our children [Pila mane pain jagichu]’ is a common refrain. The
critical importance of forests in life at different stages is also commonly related— i.e.
‘from birth till death, wood is needed’ '3. In a locality, after a few villages started
protecting forests, other villages learned from these examples and followed suit”. Most
forests thus protected were extremely degraded and needed several years of protection
before any visible results could be seen. The moral claims associated with the effort to
protect the forest created a moral economy of ‘care and claim’. Villagers commonly stake

their claims to a forest that they have protected by saying, ‘We have protected the forest

 

'3 ‘When you are born, you need wood to boil water for the first wash. Then, at the time of getting married,

wood is needed for agni-sakshi. And you need wood for the funeral pyre when you die.’

'4 Several villages take pride in being the first ones to start protecting forests in their area. The reason for
conflicting claims is not necessarily because these villagers are being dishonest. Rather, several villages in
an area probably took the initiative to protect forests independently.

21

with a lot of jatan [effort], and years of thengapallin’. Forest protection thus becomes a
basis for asserting moral authority on the forest. lnformally, this set into motion a process
of converting state-owned or defacto open-access forests into communally claimed
forests.

Community leaders in different parts of Orissa have referred to the villagers’ process
of taking up forest protection as ‘Board mara hela ’ (sign-boards were put up). Villagers
made public announcements of their decision to protect by beating drums, making
announcements at the local marketplace, or by putting up sign boards. Access by
neighboring villages was restricted, with a gradual intensification of control and
patrolling. Villagers sought the support of neighboring villages by invoking the rhetoric
of ‘environment conservation’ and ‘benefits to humanity’. It was usually easy to garner
this support as these forests were heavily degraded and did not offer much. Protection by
a few villages then triggered other similar initiatives, as it was clearly seen as a process of
asserting control over forests. Villages that took up forest protection early often claimed
large areas, with less forest available to the late-starters. Instability caused by such an
inequitable distribution of forests led to conflicts and renegotiation of boundaries under
these informal regimes. The need for inter-village coordination and conflict resolution led
villages to develop coordination arrangements. Informal networking among villages was
later stepped up by community leaders and NGOs to form federations of community

forestry groups.

 

'5 Thengapalli is an Oriya term that literally means ‘stick on rotation’; a wooden stick or baton is passed
from house to house to signify the household’s turn to send someone on patrol.

22

What stands out clearly is the way that people articulate the materiality of their
relationship with forests. Material dependence on the forest provided the initial impetus
for forest protection. But an awareness of this relationship with the forest emerged only
as it disappeared and its resources became scarce. The humiliations, physical hardships,
and cultural dislocation were germane to the initial investment of labor for forest
protection. However, to sustain the effort and to leverage community support for the
process, a discourse of moral authority was needed, especially in the absence of formal
rights over forests.

Intimate Practices: Protecting and ‘Growing’ the Forest

What exactly does community forest protection entail? It involves restricting
outsiders’ access to the forest as well as imposing restraints on the village’s own use.
Villagers form a separate forest protection committee, or entrust the village committee or
the council of elders with the responsibility of devising rules to protect forests and of
instituting a management system. Restrictions on outsiders draw moral authority from the
village’s own restraint on use. To restrict access and restrain use, rules are framed to
specify which activities are and are not permitted, what can be extracted and when, and
penalties for non-adherence to rules. Generally, villagers start by completely closing
access to the forest. As the forest regenerates, access is gradually permitted and rules
become more complex. In the absence of formal legal power, these penalties are backed
by the ability to impose social sanctions. These arrangements are quite dynamic,

adaptive, and flexible, with a high degree of cross-learning between villages. (For a

23

detailed discussion see Kant et al., 1991; Singh and Singh, 1993; Human and Pattanaik,
2000; Conroy et al., 2000).

Villagers use words like jungle jagunchu, which roughly means ‘to bring forest into
one’s consciousness’ or jungle badhaibar, ‘to grow forest’. These words reflect a more
intimate relationship with forests through a process of nurturance and care. Protection
systems include a range of arrangements, such as merely ‘keeping an eye’ —thengapalli
or paid watchmen. Usually two to six people go on thengapalli per day. Giridhari
Pradhan from Iramaru village16 described thengapalli arrangements in his village thus:

‘Palli (patrolling duty) begins from this end of the village to the other end of the
village. Today four people go for palli and tomorrow again four people will go.
Even at the night time palli happens. The four people who go during the day also
go at the night time. If anyone misses their duty without prior information then the
person will get fined. So, no one skips their turn without informing. If anyone has

any problem, they arrange for someone else to go in their place through a mutual
exchange.’

Often instead of thengapalli, villagers decide to keep an eye on the forests. In some
villages, women told me, ‘we go to the forest all the time. If we see anyone entering the
forest, we call the men. Thengapalli is not needed’.

Through thengapalli or ‘keeping an eye’ on their forest, villagers develop an
embodied relationship (or reinforce a pre-existing one) with the forest in the process of
patrolling, walking through the forest, and thinking of the forest as their own. In villages
that use thengapalli, the regulatory authority is dispersed, and everyone gets an
opportunity to partake in the regulatory as well as care function. While on patrolling duty

[palli], the pallia stops to pick berries, remove weeds, get a creeper out of the way, assess

 

'6 Iramaru village, in Ranpur block, Nayagarh ditrsict. Interview by Aurobindo Rout, translated by me.

24

whether any trees have been freshly cut or lopped and whether there are any signs of
pilferage or violation of forest rules. These actions—and the day-to—day interaction with
the growing plants and trees, birds and animals—lead to intimate and embodied practices
in relation to forests. Subjectivities of nurturance and care are evoked through these daily
practices.

Different sections of the community participate differently in these practices and thus
have different experiences based on their differing dependence, use, and participation in
regulatory practices (cf. Agrawal, 2005). Women, especially from lower caste and poor
families, tend to make daily trips to the forest to gather fuel wood, tubers, leaves,
mushrooms, and medicinal plants, and spend several hours of the day in the forest. These
trips are also times for social interaction with other women gathering forest products.

This relationship is reflected in the pride that villagers display in the forests that they
protect. In the peak heat of summer afternoons, I was taken on long treks by villagers to
show me their forest. Often, I dreaded the invitation, ‘Aaso, jungle tike bhuli aasiba’
[Come, let us take a short walk to the forest]. The short walk would last a couple of
hours with my tour guides wanting to take the longest possible route, stopping frequently
to point out medicinal plants, pick berries, and generally display with pride the results of
their years of protection and sacrifice. In the process, what clearly emerges is the
relationship they have with the forest, trees, and different plants (and to some extent with
animals) as living resources. There is a relationship of nurturance and care. This special
relationship is a function not of gender and other social identities but of material practices

and interaction with plants and the environment. The investment of labor, institutional

25

ingenuity, and care that villagers make in their forest leads them to develop an intimate
relationship with the forest, somewhat similar to their relationship with crops and farm
animals. Through the practice of protection and what they term as ‘growing forest’, there
is a shift in how forests are viewed and in subjectivities related to forests.

The practices relating to forest protection transform interaction with forests. New
rules need to be negotiated about what can be harvested and what cannot. There is also a
sense of forests coming into the community domain of ownership and care, irrespective
of the dejure status of forests. The act of conservation and daily practices structured
within the framework of care seem to foster a feeling of love for forest. This is reflected
in the songs and poetry of people (not folk or traditional, but more recent and emergent),
and in the care that they display for the forests.

As forests regenerate, wildlife comes back, often creating the menace of agricultural
crop destruction. Despite this problem, villagers often speak lovingly about the return of
wildlife as a sign of their success. In Boudh district, a village leader reported that with the
regeneration of their forest, elephants have started using it as a corridor. Yet instead of
speaking about this as a problem, he spoke fondly about encounters with elephants.

In many cases, individuals have protected forests. Satyanarayan Hati of Sekamal
village in Boudh district has been protecting a patch of forest for the past several years.
He is a ‘head-loader’ who used to sell firel wood as a livelihood and can be categorized as

someone in a destructive relationship with the forest. Yet, he is now invested in
protecting the forest and for the past several years has been fighting a mining company

and timber smugglers at great risk to his life and his family. When asked what he

26

personally hopes to gain from putting so much labor and effort into protecting the forest,
he found it difficult to comprehend the question. He finally said ‘We live by the forest.
The forest provides us many things—roots and herbs, fruits like mahua and char, also
fallen wood and branches, which I can sell in the future.’ When asked if he will cut the
trees to sell them, he vehemently exclaimed ‘Never.’ He went on to say, ‘The cool breeze
coming from the forest, it feels nice. It feels good that we have protected this forestn’
Community-based protection has involved sacrifice and investment by villagers. For
example, in Kesharpur village in Nayagarh district, villagers decided to sell off their
goats to allow the forests to regenerate, an extremely significant sacrifice considering the
importance of goats in the local economy. Thengapalli involves a considerable
investment of labor. For a small village of 30 to 40 households, thengapalli of four
people a day translates into a substantial investment. In a village in Mayurbhanj district,
one villager said, ‘In 1982, the minimum wage was 20 rupees a day. If pallia went once a
week, then he will go 52 times a year. Then that will be worth 1,040 rupees per year.
After 22 years of service, if the person demands that money as wage, can the government
provide it?’ For a person on patrolling duty, it means loss of wages for that day, and in
the context of a hand-to-mouth existence these are remarkable sacrifices. In many areas,
women have shifted to using leaf litter as fuel instead of wood. In Jatipur village, in
Mayurbhanj district, even in 2005 (after years of forest protection) women used leaves as
fuel, except during the rainy season. Often forests have been protected against huge odds.

For example, when a group of about 90 villages close to Baripada town started protecting

 

'7 Interview with Satya Hathi, translated by me.

27

forests, they faced enormous pressure from the organized timber smugglers and from the
local ‘head-loaders’ supplying fuel wood to the urban center. This is the case in many
areas.

As mentioned, community protection requires substantial investment and sacrifice.
Garnering the support of the entire community for such an investment requires creating a
discourse about moral imperatives. The following section discusses how such a discourse
is created and employed to further moral authority for forest protection.

Discourse of Moral Authority

‘A amo pakhe to bandook nahin, aamar aastra houchi katha’

‘We don’t have guns, our words are our weapon”.’

In the absence of formal authority over forests, villagers must invoke and rely on
moral authority. To invoke this moral authority, villagers use the global and national
discourse of environmental conservation, and tropes such as ‘working in the interest of
the environment and humanity’. In the process, global environmental discourse has
melded with the emerging local environmentalism. Even though community forest
protection started as early as the 19303 in several cases, programs spread more rapidly in
the late 19703 and early 19803, with the increased influence of environmental discourse at
the global and national levels. Several environmental awareness programs were initiated
in the 19703. In Orissa, environmental awareness programs were incorporated as part of
the university-level National Service Society (N SS) program. After learning of

community forestry efforts, Radhamohan used Dhenkanal College’s NSS program to

 

'8 Gorachand Mohanto, Budhikhamari Joint Forest Protection Party, interview August 2004.

28

expand such initiatives. In Nayagarh, teachers played an important role in environmental
awareness. The Social Forestry Project (SFP) initiated in 1983 also had an environmental
extension component. This growing emphasis on the environment made local
communities realize that the environment was something that the external world valued,
and they began to represent their forest protection using the dominant environmental
discourse.

Local environmental and economic imperatives and global environmental discourses
melded to create discourses about the need to protect forests for clean air, rain, global
benefits, and local needs. For example, in a song used by Dhanarasi village in Sundergarh
district, reference is made to the forest bringing welfare to all (jungle kariba sabhinka
mangal), and the song is used to call for unity to restore the forest’s lost glory. In
Nayagarh district, Brukhya O’ Jeevar Bandhu Parishad (BOJBP)l9 uses songs and
slogans to spread environmental awareness and foster a collective identity as ‘jungle
surakhayakari’ or ‘forest-protecting people’. For example, the following slogan talks

about trees being life’s treasure:

Brukhyo aamar jeevan dhano, Trees are our life’s treasure
Jagaye mati pani pawano, They offer us soil and air
Brukhyo’ beena banchiba nahin Without trees life would end,
Bruskhyo aarnaro jeevan bhai. Trees are our life’s friend.20

 

'9 In Nayagarh district almost 900 villages are involved in forest protection. In 1982, 22 villages came
together to protect forests on Binjhgiri hill, and formed an organization called Friends of Trees and Living.
In the region, the forest protection movement has a very strong environmental, spiritual, and emotional
content. For details of the movement see Kant et al., 1991 and Human and Pattanaik, 2000.

2° Translated by Human and Pattanaik (2000).

29

Or the slogans used, such as this:

Congress pain, na Janata pain
Ehi andolan jungle pain,
Jungle pain, jungle pain
Barsha pain, jeevan pain,

Ehi Andolan jungle pain.

Not for Congress or for Janata (Party),
This campaign is for forest,

For Forest, For Forest.

For Rains, For Life,

This campaign is for forest

Or take this lyrical song from Dhanarasi villageZ':

Ahare chai kete sundara chai,

eta aau kata nai

Ethanu tike chetare bhai

Jahata sarila, sarita galana,

ethanu tike chetare bhai

Gacha ama bandhu sukha dukha sahi
Jete kati dele mana nai kare

Tathapi 3e nai die durei

Gacha amara ghara duara sabu kame
laguche

Jeri buti aonla phala harida baheda miluche
Katuthile tangari dhari hae kahe nai

Janarn kala maa lekhe sabu achi sahi

Nijar lekhe taku tike dekha

Dekhu dekhu nai dia jalei

How cool and lovely is this shade,
Please cut it no more...

Hitherto be aware O’ brother
Whatever is lost, lost it is,

From now on, take care, my brother.
Trees are our friends,

ours in happiness and sorrow,

Even on being cut, they don’t protest
Or shrug us away

Trees give us so many things

Herbs, medicines, aonla, harida and
baheda, everything we get,

Even on being axed, they don’t yell

Like life-giving mother, they bear all our
excesses,

Now like our own child, let us take care of
it,

Look. . .care. . .let it not catch fire.

In this song, embodied (‘cool shade’) and material relationship with forests (‘gives

us so many things’) is interwoven with the narrative of love, nurturance, and care.

Villagers commonly refer to the forest as a mother and also pledge to take care of it like

their own children, thus completing a cycle of care and nurturance. In Dengajhari village,

for example, Sashi Pradhan said, ‘We protect forest as if we are protecting our own child

 

2' This song was documented by a village youth of Dhanarasi village as part of a village biography
documentation project by Vasundhara and NIRD. l translated the two songs from Dhanarasi village

included here from Oriya to English.

30

from any sort of danger.’ The word mamta, i.e. motherly love, is used to describe their
relationship with their forest. This nurturance is then used to assert moral authority
concerning forests. For example, at a village meeting in 1992, policy recommendations
for benefit sharing between the Forest Department and village communities under the
Joint Forest Management (JFM) program were being discussed. An old man walked out
of this meeting in protest. He said, ‘We have protected our forest as a child. Now, you are
discussing who will get what part [of the child].’
‘Jungle’ Loko: From ‘Uncivilized’ to ‘Environmental’ People

In the process of protecting forests, rural people are asserting their identity as ‘jungal
loko’ (forest people). Due to colonial representations of forests as wilderness and forest-
dependent people as uncivilized and wild, the word jungali has negative connotations.
Rural people are re-appropriating this term to mean ‘environmental’ people. In Nayagarh,
the forest protection movement uses the song, ‘Aame he jungle-jati’ (O, we are forest-
caste). In the process, they challenge the prevalent caste—structure, and seek to displace it
with new ‘caste’ and identity as forest people. Instead of jungali, they use the term
‘jungle’ to subtly eliminate the negative connotation. In one of my interviews, a district
forestry federation leader criticized a state-level leader as an aun-jungal loko (non-jungali
person), and claimed that a person who does not depend on forests cannot represent the
concerns of forest-dependent people. That the higher caste and middle class people have
embraced the term primarily ascribed to uncivilized tribals is a testimony to changing

subjectivities. For example, consider the following song from Dhanarasi village:

31

Ame jangalia loka ho, We are forest-people, O’

jangala ama mulaka Forest is our country

Peta pain dana, roga ku oushadha, Food for stomach, medicine for

ei ama sukha dukha. disease,

Phala mula sabu die ho, With us in our happiness and sorrow.
Jhuna mahu sabu die, Fruits and tubers, everything it offers,

Scented resin and honey, too,
Nija pua boli mane rakhithiba,

na heba epari kie ho Let us keep it like our son,

Asa sapatha kariba ho There won’t be any one like this one
jangala ku na katiba Come, let us take an oath,

Jangala katile We won’t cut forest

barasa abhabe chatapata arne heba ho. If we destroy forest,

Failing rains we will suffer, 0’

Another song used by the Nayagarh Jungle Surakhya Mahasangha promotes a
common identity of forest-protecting people as ‘forest-caste’. It describes how forest
protection is their policy and dharma‘?" (religious duty), and how they derive moral
strength from non-violence and from their struggle for life and nature. Through forest
protection, villagers are not just regenerating forests but also rejuvenating community
institutions and unity (Singh and Nayak, 2003). Protecting the forest together gives
villagers a sense of pride and ensures the ‘sustenance of unity’ in the village”. In
Dhavani village in Mayurbhanj district, where the community forest protection system
had broken down, villagers’ disappointment and a sense of failure was palpable. This

contrasted sharply with the sense of pride and excitement that a neighboring village

 

22 The term dharma refers to one's righteous duty or any virtuous path in the common sense of the term.
Throughout Indian philosophy, dharma is presented as a central concept that is used in order to explain the
‘higher truth’ or ultimate reality of the universe. The word dharma literally translates as that which upholds
or supports, and is generally translated into English as law.

23 Focus group with Boudh district forestry federation, August 2006.

32

protecting the forest displayed. In the process of regenerating forests, villagers are
creating new identities for themselves as jungle surakhyakaris or conservators of forests.
Moral Authority Discourse at Higher Spatial Scales

The common identity of forest conservators as forest-protecting villages has been
aided by the process of villagers coming together as federations. After individual villages
starting protecting forests, they often felt the need to coordinate with other neighboring
villages due to the shared nature of forest resources, or to manage conflicts due to
changes in access regimes. Groups of villages thus came together for inter-village
coordination. Conflict resolution was an important need fulfilled through these inter-
village coalitions. Over time, this experience of federating and coordinating among
groups of villages was used to envision and institute networks at higher scales. The idea
of federating caught on, and gradually block-, district—, and state-level federations
emerged either spontaneously or aided by NGOs.

In 2008, there were 26 different district or sub-district level federations, covering 23
districts, with an approximate membership of about 7,000 villages. These federations are
at varying levels of activity with some of the federations being very strong and vibrant
and others still struggling to bring villages together and establish effective
communication channels. Some of these different federations further link up through a
state-level federation called the Orissa Jungle Manch (Orissa Forestry Forum, hereafter
referred to as OJM). Formed in 1999, OJM represents several thousand villages and is a
major venue for community voices though it continues to struggle with issues of

representation, elite dominance, democracy, and funding and resource support.

33

Community forestry federations have helped in projecting the collective imagination
of villages involved in protecting forests and in articulating and aiding transformation in
subjectivities. They have helped villagers learn from each other and share ideas across
scales and locales, and helped coalesce emergent meaning and environmental imaginaries
by assisting in the emergence of a collective identity and voice of forest-protecting
villages.

State Response and Local Resistance

Despite large-scale forest protection by communities, the state refuses to fully
acknowledge these initiatives. In 1990, when I started working in Orissa, my nai've initial
response was that the state did not know about these initiatives. I later realized that not
knowing was not possible; not seeing was more likely. Even though forests in Orissa
respond very well to protection, the state nevertheless ignored widespread community
forestry initiatives in favor of investments in Social Forestry Projects“. From 1983 to
1996, Social Forestry established plantations of exotic tree species at huge cost, instead
of supporting low-cost protection efforts. In many areas, the Forest Department (FD)
struggled to find land to plant trees and sometimes cleared sal forests to plant eucalyptus.
In some of my earlier work (Singh 2002), I comment on the invisibility or the ‘conspiracy

of silence’ on the part of the FD. What were the reasons for this invisibility or this

 

2" Social Forestry was premised on the assumption that if villagers were provided fuel and fodder woodlots
close to their village (on non-forest lands), then they would not resort to using natural forests and degrade
them further. Social Forestry has been criticized as having a faulty design and for meeting the needs of
paper and pulp industries instead of local fuel and fodder needs. In Orissa, Social Forestry was particularly
ill-suited given the large-scale community initiatives to protect natural forests that could have been
supported at much less cost to the state exchequer than was planting trees.

34

silence? As I mention earlier, the state’s refusal to see these initiatives was linked to the
politics of control over forest resources, and opportunities for rent-seeking.

In 1988, the chief minister of Orissa received thousands of postcards from forest-
protecting villages demanding recognition. Responding to this pressure, the state issued a
policy resolution that provided for the formation of Forest Protection Committees to
protect state forest reserves. This was the first policy of its kind in India and was a
precursor to the Joint Forest Management (JFM) approach adopted in India in 1990. In
1993, Orissa promulgated a detailed JFM policy that allocated a 50 per cent share of final
forest harvests to the JFM committees. Through J FM, the state sought to impose order
and uniformity on community forestry arrangements. Unlike in some other states in India,
communities in Orissa saw JF M as a step backwards, and responded by asking, ‘Where
was the FD all these years, when we were struggling alone to protect forests? Why has it
come now to ask for a share in the forest?’ (Singh, 1995; Vasundhara, 1999). In an
interview with Indramani Jena in Mayurbhanj district, this was how the Forest
Department’s interest in JFM was interpreted25 :

In 1988, suddenly the (forest) department walked in from nowhere. Like a father

who disappeared when a child was born, and suddenly reappears when the child is

five years old, and thinks, ‘My son will probably go to the school now. If I hand him

over to someone for house-work, he can fetch me 10 or 50 rupees a month or a

yearly sum of income.’ Exactly in the same manner, the department reappeared,

thinking: village people have protected trees, now let us go and assert our ‘paternal’
rights and say that the forest is ours.

There were also more fundamental concerns and differences in worldview that made

villagers wary of JFM. These included concerns about loss of autonomy by becoming

 

25 Interview in August 2006, translated by me.

35

upwardly accountable—to external authorities—instead of downwardly accountable, or
differences about what forests meant and how they should be managed (Sarin et al.
2003)

Until recently, Orissa’s JFM program was not funded through overseas assistance. In
a way, this helped community initiatives to continue with relatively little interference
from the FD. For the past few years, FD investments in JFM have been increasing, first
through federal government funds and recently through a loan from the Japan Bank for
International Cooperation (JBIC). With funds flowing to the JFM program, the FD is able
to buy local consent for the IF M framework as well as use money to disrupt local
community arrangements (Sarin etal., 2003).

The state’s refusal to acknowledge and accommodate community forestry initiatives
through policy changes is linked with the politics of control over forests and more
importantly with the politics of disciplining people. It is hard for the state to admit that
transformation in environmental subjectivities is happening through self-emergent
processes instead of through a state-led process. At one state-level conference in 1991, a
senior FD official insisted that villagers were protecting the Social Forestry plantations
but not state-owned natural forests, even though an FD-funded report documented 1,100
communities protecting forests. The reason for such a denial possibly lies in the need to
be in control of the disciplining process. The state would like to be the driver of the
transformation in people’s attitudes and their subjectivities relating to forests.

In response to continuing efforts by the state to co-opt community forestry initiatives

under the uniform JFM structure that offers limited local autonomy, villages have

36

organized in the form of federations. F orest-protecting villages have intensified their own
process of democratic assertion and seek to posit alternate discourses based on moral
authority, and to present alternate imaginaries relating to forests and forest governance.

The legal terrain thus continues to be contested, and the struggle of local
communities for legal recognition and rights over the forests that they protect continues.
Even though villagers generally are able to enforce moral authority, they also cite
problems that arise from their lack of legal authority. In Dhavani village in Mayurbhanj
district, where the forest protection system broke down, one villager stated that other
villagers challenged their authority to restrict access by saying, ‘13 this forest your
father’s property? Did you water and make these trees grow?’

Local communities have been perplexed at the response (or non-response) from the
state. At a dialogue session with JBIC and FD representatives, one federation leader said,
‘We are confused. The state wants to protect forests. Thousands of villages are protecting
forests. These villages are doing the job of the [Forest] Department. We would have
thought that the department would be happy. But instead of being happy and joining
hands, they continue to ignore us. And now, the state is asking Japan for money for the
forests that we have protected. All this makes us doubt the intentions of the
govemment26.’ In 2005 and 2006, community forestry federations protested the
government of Orissa’s proposal to obtain funds from JBIC for a JFM project. The

following is a translation of part of a song used at one protest rally in Nayagarh:

 

26 Meeting of Orissa Jungle Manch with JBIC in February 2005.

37

The state refuses to see us,

Devises new ways to break us

In the name of forest development, money is going to come
How will they write these forests as degraded?

Are they complete nuts?

We have regenerated forests, don’t you know?

Can’t you see?

Who gives you the right to go to Japan with a begging bowl?

What democracy. . .this is autocracy. Where is our voice?

Can’t you hear?

Can’t you see?

The British left, but soon came in brown Masters,

The British took the keys,

But left the old locks,

Come, let us break these locks,

Demand our rights, our forests,

Our children’s future,

0’ people, let us do andolan”

More importantly, through their efforts to protect forests, Orissa’s villagers resist a
dominant representation that paints them as short-sighted destroyers of forests, and they
try to create new identities for themselves as conservators of forests. Through their
investment of love and labor in regenerating degraded forests, communities in Orissa
seek new meanings and ways of being with forests. At the same time, villagers are
engendering creative forms of resistance. Their resistance, unlike the usual ‘weapons of
the weak’, does not drag feet, pilfer from forests, or break rules, but resists images and
labels thrust upon them. These forms of resistance posit alternate ‘environmental
imaginaries’ (Peet and Watts, 1996) that challenge dominant discourses. In contrast to the

more visible social and environmental movements that confront corporate take-over of

their lands and resources, they represent more subtle but no less significant forms of

 

27 Andolan means struggle or movement.

38

resistance. Here, villagers resist through exercise of agency to fashion new ‘selves’ as
forest conservators. These ‘selves’ and subjectivity might be in sync with the behavioral
change the state aims to produce in them encouraging environmental consciousness.
However, they are not shaped only through the state’s will to power or the ‘will to
improve’ (Li, 2007), but they assume new forms that take the state by surprise.

The terrains of power also shift in the process. By assuming the role of the state in
conserving forests, without a formal transfer of authority, villagers have demystified the
state and its power. The state also experiences this transformation in power relations. In
my interviews with Forest Department staff, they asserted that community forestry
federations were trying to run a parallel government. A community leader from another
geographical area cited a divisional forest officer (DFO) who made a similar comment. In
Mayurbhanj district, the community forestry federation, Budhikhamari Joint Forest
Protection Party (BJPP) received active encouragement from the Forest Department in
the early 19903, but in 2005 the Forest Department renounced it. In addition, the
federation changed its name from ‘Budhikhamari Joint Forest Protection Committee’ to
‘Budhikhamari Joint Forest Protection Party’ to dissociate itself from JFM committees.
When I asked the DFO about BJPP, he said, ‘I cannot help you there. The FD has nothing
to do with the federation.’ When I suggested that the federation had been initiated by the
Forest Department, another officer responded, ‘Well, that was the “scheme” then.’ And
the DFO added that they recently hosted a team of forest officials from Nepal who came
to explore means of breaking the federations and developing joint forest management in

Nepal.’ Thus, even though the ‘environmentality’ of villagers might align with changes in

39

behavior that the state wants to bring about, it can still disown or discredit this

environmentality.

Transformation in Environmental Subjectivity

Abe to gote nasha haijaichhi.
Mado-pado khaile bhi aame jungle chadibu nahin

Now, forest protection has become a passion. Even if we get bashed and beaten-up,
we won’t leave the (protection of) forest”.

Local subjectivity about the forest and the environment are transformed through the
practice of forest protection. Others have voiced views similar to those above—asserting
that ‘now’ forest protection has become a passion, implying that there has been a process
of transformation at work. As I have described, this process of transformation has been
aided by intimate material practices, by participation in the government of the
environment, as well as by embodied day-to-day interaction with forests shaped by
material practices.

As Ingold suggests, ‘ways of acting in the environment are also ways of perceiving
it.’ Through their actions and practices of protecting and growing forests, villagers have
begun to perceive forests in a certain way. These perceptions are expressed in terms such
as ‘our forests’ or statements that the forest is like ‘our child’, or like ‘our mother’. These
perceptions are imbued with sentiments of care, nurturance, and love. The relationship
between the forest conservators and forests is intimate and embodied, and therefore the

practices that shape local subjectivity in relation to the forest are as much biophysical as

 

2‘ Gorachand Mohanto, Leader of the Budhikhamari Joint Protection Party, interview in August 2005. My
translation. The exact same words were used by another community forestry federation leader at a state-
level workshop held 15 December 2005.

40

they are social. The villagers’ practices and subjectivities as forest conservators are
performed in day-to-day living and are in turn shaped by this performance.

Since forest protection requires large investments of time and effort, discourses of
environmentalism and a certain conception of self and collective are needed to initiate
and sustain such investments of local time and care. In the process of creating this self-
conception as forest conservators and through intimate practices as described in the
paper, subjectivities are transformed. Through transformations in subjectivity,
environmental consciousness becomes part of people’s notions of themselves. This
subjectivity then becomes a part of their identity and becomes part of who they are and
how they act. Like other identities—such as being Oriya, a village resident, a dalit or
adivasi, a woman or man—being a forest conservator becomes a subject position. This is
expressed evocatively in the songs through which people assert their identity as ‘forest
caste’ or as environmental people. It is also expressed in people’s actions to conserve
forests through risking their own lives.

I do not wish to paint an overly romantic picture of utopian environmentalism. Not
all the people in Orissa have come to care similarly about their environment, or have
become environmental stewards who give primacy to environmental conservation over
short-term interests. Even within the communities involved in protecting forests, some
are more committed than others. Many other problems exist within forest protection, such
as conflicts between and within villages over resources, exclusion of the marginalized,
struggles for power and position, politics of class and caste, and so on. At local levels,

exclusion and marginalization occur within these forest protection efforts. Many of these

41

systems of forest protection break down due to internal conflicts and external
aggressions, though the transformation in subjectivity may not necessarin extend back to
the pre-protection days”. Problems persist (for a detailed discussion see Sarin et al.,
2003; Singh, 2002); I have not elaborated on these given my focus on subject formation
and subjectivities. As is to be expected, transformation in environmental subjectivities is
embedded in fields of power and terrains of contestations. The villagers may have
succeeded in regenerating forests in thousands of villages, but have not done as well in
coming together in larger political mobilizations to force the state to accede to their
demands for rights. They have not been able to create a larger political identity or come
together as a statewide green political movement. The state continues to ignore these
arrangements and seeks to co-opt them. Yet, millions of people in thousands of villages
in Orissa, involved in forest protection, think of themselves as forest conservators, among
many other identities, and their actions and discourses are informed by this subject
position.

How does local environmental subjectivity interface with regimes of power,
knowledges, institutions, and practices? As I mentioned earlier, local ‘environmentality’
was influenced by the dominant discourse of environmental conservation. Local
initiatives are also embedded in dominant perceptions of forests shaped by scientific
forestry, but they also form a substrate on which these new forms of knowledge flourish.

In the early 19903, many villages adopted silvicultural practices, such as cleaning and

 

29 For example, while in a village that I describe above, discussing the forest protection system that had
broken down, a few women sat in a comer conferring with each other. They said, ‘No matter how busy we
are, we can always make a quick trip to the forest, and see how things are [and reinitiate protection].’

42

thinning, borrowed from the technical knowledge of the Forest Department. Over the
years, through practice and horizontal learning, villagers seem to have developed
different knowledge bases upon which to draw to manage their protected forests. For
example, in Mayurbhanj district, villagers told me that they no longer carry out organized
forest cleaning (clearing of the understory) or thinning (removal of poles), since their
regular uses—and the care they take when they extract products—serve similar purposes.
Official silvicultural practices and knowledge is increasingly challenged as villagers
experiment and realize that their objectives are very different from those that have shaped
scientific forestry. For example, in one of the oldest cases of forest protection, in Lapanga
village, villagers worship saat-gachias (sal trees with seven stems), and there are large
numbers of trees with multiple stems. Such trees would not be possible in a forest
managed by foresters, for whom efficient timber production favors retaining a single pole
or main trunk to maximize timber production. However, villagers need smaller timber,
mainly poles, and therefore did not thin out multiple trunks. Communities often prioritize
non-timber forest products (N TF P3) over timber production, and accordingly may
manage forests so as to promote NTFP production. For instance, women in the Ranpur
area have initiated a festival for planting Bauhinia vahlii vines in protected forest areas,
as they provide leaves for leaf-plate making, an important livelihood activity for poor
women. In the process of actively taking care of the forest, villagers experiment with
practices related to forest management that challenge dominant knowledge. Thus
protection initiatives become actions or steps in the direction of re-imagining or re-

visioning local relationships with forests and in challenging dominant scientific forestry

43

paradigms. In response to the dominant mode of managing forest for timber (for example,
coppice with standards), villagers say that the ‘forest is not a crop to be harvested.’
Transformation in environmental subjectivity has thus led to a questioning of dominant
power and knowledge.

What is the evidence that a transformation in subjectivity has taken place? The
regenerating forests stand as testimony to the labor and effort put into bringing them
back. The day-to-day thengapalli, the songs, the narratives that display the local
relationship with the forest and the concern for future generations, are further evidence
that people have re-imagined their relationships with forests in novel ways. Barhart
(2009) cites a community forest user group member in Nepal as saying, ‘People do not
love the government. The government took the forest from them and left nothing for the
people, so the people didn ’t love the forest. ’ This imagined relationship with forests in the
pre-protection days also applies to Orissa. In Orissa’s forested landscapes, the nature-
culture dichotomy imposed through the formal forest governance framework is being
transformed as local people reconstruct their relationship with the forest. Forests are
transformed from being ‘nature’ out there, to being a part of constructed landscapes that
are nurtured through constant care and attention. Forests are also transformed from state
property to community property and brought into an informal community management
arrangement. Local communities in Orissa assert, ‘Ama jungle aamar’ (Our forest is

ours), even though the legal struggle to make it theirs continues.

44

Conclusions

In the forested landscapes of Orissa, through local practices of forest protection and
discourses relating to it, local subjectivities about the forest and the environment have
been clearly transformed. I do not seek to establish a causal relationship to explain this
transformation. I would like to draw attention to possible pointers, such as material
practices, embodied interactions, discourses, and affect that create or transform self-
conception and shape environmental subjectivity. I suggest that the analytical framework
of environmentality can gain from more explicit attention to embodied intimate practices
shaped by affective sociality, technologies of the self, and local agency. Attention to
embodied practices is in consonance with the work of other scholars who suggest that
breaking down the dichotomy between mind and body can enrich our understanding of
the notions of power and resistance. Through my analysis, I join Raffles (2005), who
suggests that exploring environmental subjectivities requires close attention to the deeply
biographical practices through which environmental subjects ‘make themselves’ and,
equally, ‘are made’.

The transformation of environmental subjectivity in Orissa illustrates the role of
local environmental imaginaries, intimate everyday embodied practices, and creative
forms of resistance in the making of environmental subjects. While the ensemble of
power-knowledge, formal institutions, and the social practices mediated by these
institutions play an important role, equally important is the bedrock of physical and
material reality of daily practices that are shaped by human interaction and dwelling in

the environment.

45

The case of Orissa presents a sharp contrast to Agrawal’s (2005) representation of
transformation in environmental subjectivities in Kumaon. Agrawal attributes the
transformation to technologies of power and social practices engendered through formal
institutional arrangements for the government of environment. In contrast, community
forestry initiatives in Orissa represent transformation in environmental subjectivities
shaped through intimate daily practices that are mediated through affective sociality. The
Orissa case illustrates how creative imagination and daily practices of resource
conservation by thousands of village communities and millions of resource-dependent
poor have nurtured environmentalism and social movements and fostered transformation
in environmental subjectivities. These daily practices are more than social practices,
instituted and mediated by the state. These are ‘intimate’ practices (Raffles, 2000) that
are shaped by everyday interactions with forests, interactions that are embodied and

mediated by affect.

46

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Chapter 2

Democratic Spaces across Scales
Women ’3 Action and Inclusion in Forest Governance in Orissa, India

Abstract

In developing countries and subsistence economies, rural women depend critically on
forest resources but tend to be excluded from forest governance and decision making.
Recent efforts for decentralization in forest governance have not improved this situation
much. Drawing on multi-scalar ethnographic research from Orissa, India, this paper
shows that constraints to and possibilities for democratic participation for women are
different across spatial scales. Further, spaces for participation and democratic action
across scales are intermeshed and in dynamic interaction. In the Orissa case, marginalized
women gained voice and visibility by organizing at a regional scale, and used democratic
spaces at higher spatial scales to overcome constraints to their participation at the
community level. The case demonstrates how closer attention to issues of scale and cross-
scale linkages can help in deepening democracy and addressing issues of social justice.

Introduction

In forested landscapes of developing countries and subsistence economies, rural
women depend critically on forest resources but tend to be excluded fi'om forest
governance and decision making (Agarwal, 1997; Colfer, 2004). This marginalization
continues despite recent efforts towards decentralized natural resource governance.
Despite the rhetoric of democracy, social justice, and rights, the so-called ‘democratic
decentralization’ initiatives remain elite-dominated and do not adequately challenge
deeply entrenched power relations (Ribot et al., 2006; Sarin et al., 2003; Agrawal and

53

Gibson, 1999; Thoms, 2008). Local participation and empowerment in these top-down
approaches to institutional reform are conceptualized on a harmony model of power and
structural constraints to equity and power relations are downplayed (Mohan and Stokke,
2000). There is also a tendency to romanticize communities as homogeneous, static, and
harmonious units within which people share common interests and needs (Guijt and
Shah, 1998). Increasingly, this essentialization has been critiqued and the notions of
‘community’ and ‘participation’ have been problematized (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999;
Brosius et al., 1998; Flint et al., 2008). The problem of exclusion and elite dominance
persists despite efforts to address it (Colfer, 2004).

This problem is not unique to natural resource governance but is a central challenge
for development interventions in a wide variety of contexts. Scholars and practitioners
concerned with women’s participation in the public sphere express frustration at the
limited success of top-down approaches in solving complex social and political processes
(Cornwall et al., 2006; Batliwala and Dhanraj, 2006; Mukhopadhyay, 2006). While top-
down approaches have limited success, bottom-up processes that challenge unequal
power relations are unlikely to emerge from locales and spaces where these power
relations are most strongly entrenched. In this paper, I show how this paradox can
possibly be addressed through an example of women’s organizing in community forestry
in Orissa, India, at a meso-scale.

In the Indian state of Orissa, several thousand villages are protecting state-owned
forests through community-based arrangements. In contrast to the state-led devolution

efforts through Joint Forest Management (JFM), community forestry initiatives in Orissa

54

represent democratic assertion from below through which citizens seek to exercise
greater control over decisions that affect their lives. At one level, they further democracy
by seeking to alter state-citizen relations and interactions in the realm of forest
governance. But at another level, they are rooted in traditional local institutions and
mirror existing social power relations within which certain groups of people, particularly

30, are marginalized and not included as firll members of

women, dalits, and adivasis
community republics. This paper discusses the case of a local community forestry
federation in which women used space for participation at higher spatial scales to
overcome constraints, to their participation at the community level. Drawing on long-term
multi-scalar ethnographic research, the paper illustrates how spaces for participation and
democratic action across scales are intermeshed and in dynamic communication. Further,
impulses for change can come from scales that are more amenable to change. This
research illustrates that power relations manifest differently across scales and suggests
that marginalized people can gain voice and visibility by traversing through scales and
organizing at scales and locales where power relations are less strongly entrenched.

Hence, constraints to, and possibilities for, democratic participation differ across scales.

Attention to these differences in constraints and possibilities at different scales can

 

3° Dali! refers to a caste traditionally regarded as untouchables. Adivasis are believed to be the aboriginal
population of India and are also referred to as ‘tribals’. Both groups tend to be discriminated against in rural
India.

55

improve interventions to deal with issues of marginalization and powerlessness at the
community level.

Following this introduction, I introduce the conceptual framework of democracy,
democratic spaces, and scales that frames my exploration of women’s organizing and
collective action across scales. After this, I introduce community forestry in Orissa as the
setting of my research, including the Ma Maninag Jungle Surakhya Parishad (MMJ SP),
a local-level federation comprising 187 forest-protecting communities. After a brief
description of research methods, I introduce the nature and extent of space for women’s
participation at the community and federation levels in community forest management in
Orissa. I then describe women’s actions to expand their space, and how opening space at
one scale impacted spaces at other scales. I conclude with a discussion of the
opportunities for expanding democratic spaces by explicitly working across scales, as
well as implications for research approaches to examine cross-scale linkages.

Conceptual Framework: Democracy, Spaces, and Scales

Theoretically, the notions of democracy, democratic spaces, and the politics of scale
frame my exploration of women’s action within forest governance. In this section, I
elaborate on how I use the terms ‘democracy’, ‘spaces’, and ‘scales’. I also introduce the
key concerns behind the paper, which are exclusion of marginal citizens from decision
making and the opportunity to use democratic spaces at one scale to open new spaces at

another scale.

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Substantive Democracy: Redefining State-Citizen and Citizen-Citizen Relations

I start with the idea of democracy to help grapple with issues of social exclusion and
marginalization. Key principles of democracy include control by citizens over their
collective affairs and equality between citizens in the exercise of that control (Beetham,
1999). In forest governance in developing countries, given the history of lack of state
accountability, most discussions about reform and democratization focus on altering
state-citizen relations, but the inequalities among citizens and power differentials within
communities are often overlooked. Ideals of equality demand not only equal political
rights, but also social conditions that create free and equal opportunity to speak, which
implies a precondition of freedom from domination, and an environment free of power
asymmetries and coercion (Young, 2000). In social contexts such as Orissa, strong social
stratification and power inequalities get in the way of inclusion and political equality. Not
everyone has an equal opportunity to speak and be heard; some utterances are more
important than others and some voices are perpetually silenced due to social
marginalization. It thus becomes important to assess how power relations between
citizens are altered so that women can gain more voice and become equal citizens. When
we assess women’s citizenship, it is useful to view citizenship not only as a status but as a
practice (Oldfield, 1990). This implies paying attention to structures that define what it is
to be a citizen and individual agency that shapes what it is to act as a citizen (Lister,
1997). And often it is the local rather than the national that becomes the arena for
citizenship struggles and expression of human agency (ibid. 1997: 34). In view of this,

Yuval-Davis’s (1999) notion of citizenship as a multilayered construct applicable

57

simultaneously to people's membership in sub-, cross-, and supra-national collectivities
and in nation-states provides a useful construct to look at varying participation across
scales.
Democratic Spaces and Participation as a Spatial Practice

Recent feminist scholarship draws attention to different locales and spatial scales as
sites of political action and engagement (Harcourt and Escobar, 2005). Cornwall (2004)
invites us to analyze in spatial terms arenas of democratic participation. Drawing on
Lefebvre (1991), she uses space as ‘a concept rich with metaphor as well as a literal
descriptor of arenas where people gather, which are bounded in time as well as
dimension’ (of. Massey, 1995). The spatial has often been overlooked in previous work
about participation (O’Reilly, 2007). Framing participation as a spatial practice, Cornwall
(2004) encourages us to consider how ‘particular sites come to be populated,
appropriated or designated by particular actors’ in ways that enable or disable social
transformation. She draws attention to the ‘relations of power and construction of
citizenship that permeate any site for public engagement’. Further, she contrasts invited
spaces with popular spaces to distinguish between spaces created as part of externally
imposed top-down participatory development projects, and self-emergent spaces created
through collective action.

Scale, Democratic Spaces, and the Marginalized Voices

In recent years, the concepts of scale and scalar politics have attracted considerable
attention in the field of geography and beyond. Recent work in geography challenges the

commonplace understanding of scales as arenas or nested territorial containers, ‘Russian

58

dolls’ with discrete scales contained within one another (Bulkeley, 2005). This work
emphasizes that there is nothing ontologically given about scale; rather, scale is socially
constructed, contested, and reconfigured (Brenner, 2001; Marston, 2000; Bulkeley,
2005). Further, the boundaries between home and locality, urban and regional, and
national and global scales are blurred (Smith, 1993). These boundaries are ‘established
through the geographical structure of social interactions’ (ibid 1993); and ‘the social and
ecological outcomes of any particular scalar arrangement are the result of the political
strategies of particular actors and not inherent qualities of a particular scale’ (Brown and
Purcell, 2005). The politics of scale involves ‘continuous reshufiling and reorganization
of spatial scales’ as part of ‘social strategies and struggles for control and empowerment’
(Swyngedouw, 2000). While scalar arrangements are constantly being made and remade
(Swyngedouw, 1997), their fluidity is not total (Brown and Purcell, 2005). Swyngedouw
(1997) uses the notion of scaled places and describes them as ‘the embodiment of social
relations of empowerment and disempowerment and the arena through and in which they
operate’. Howitt (1998) also encourages us to focus on the relational aspect of scale that
includes a complex mix of space, place, and environment.

While there is an explosion of literature on the politics of scale, there is relatively
little exploration of how scale or power relations at different scales are experienced by
people inhabiting or traversing through these scales. How does democratic space differ
across scales? Are there some scales that are more amenable to democratic organizing

and expression of marginalized voices than others?

59

Smith (1993) uses the notion of ‘jrunping scales’ to suggest that ‘groups at a
disadvantage at one scale can pursue their aims at a different scale, hoping to turn the
balance of power to their advantage’. I build and expand on the notion of ‘jumping scale’.
Jumping scale suggests an arena] concept of scale and implies that when a scale is
jumped there is some form of escape from the ‘entrenched structure of scale’. I suggest
that the idea of traversing scales provides a more usefirl way of analyzing power relations
at different scales and their material manifestation. What does the scale of a village mean
for women who live in the village, and how are relations of power expressed and
experienced differently across scales? How can traversing, i.e. moving to and fro, across
scales be used by marginalized people to gain political skills and find ways to circumvent
and challenge power relations that are differentially expressed at different scales? I use
the ideas of democracy and democratic spaces, and their expression at different spatial
scales, to analyze women’s organizing and action within community forestry in Orissa.

The Setting: Community Forestry in Orissa

In Orissa, 8,000 to 10,000 villages independently protect almost 15 to 20 per cent of
the state-owned forests through community-based arrangements (Kant et al., 1991;
Conroy et al., 2001; Singh, 2002). Orissa is one of the most forest-rich states in mainland
India. It also happens to be economically the most under-developed. Almost 40 per cent
of Orissa’s geographical area is legally categorized as forests, with actual forest cover
being about 23 per cent. A majority of the rural population lives in forested landscapes
and depends on forests and marginal lands for subsistence and livelihood needs. Poor

women especially depend on forests for gathering fuel and a variety of forest products for

60

their own use and sale. This dependence on forests has led to community-based initiatives
to protect and manage state-owned forests. Villages have invested in elaborate patrolling
and management arrangements even in the absence of formal legal rights. Some villages
started protecting forests as early as the 19303, while a majority started in the mid-19803.

The forest-protecting villages in Orissa have come together as federations at different
spatial scales to improve collective bargaining positions, resolve conflicts, and learn from
each other (Singh, 2002). At the local scale, clusters of villages often come together to
collaboratively protect a patch of forest or to support their respective forest protection
efforts. Building on these examples, ‘federations’ of forest-protecting villages have
formed at other spatial scales. These federation-building efforts have often been
facilitated by NGOs, influential local individuals, or by the Forest Department staff. In
the early 19903, some NGOs facilitated the formation of district-level federations. A
state-level federation called Orissa Jungle Manch (OJM) was formed in 1999. As of
2007, there were 25 district federations and other local-scale federations in Orissa. But as
mentioned earlier, these community forestry groups are not necessarily very democratic
internally. While traditional community institutions help in fostering collective
management of forests (Kant et al., 1991), they also hinder democratic inclusion of
women and other socially marginalized groups in forest decision making.

Various studies indicate that women face hardship in the initial years of forest
protection. They have to walk longer distances to gather fuel or face humiliation at the
hands of local ‘forest guards’ as their access to local forests is restricted (Sarin et al.,

1998; Agarwal, 2001; Singh, 2001). Some of these problems ease as forests regenerate

6l

and access to forest products is gradually restored, but the exclusion of women from
decision making in traditional community institutions continues. Community forestry
federations also face the problem of male dominance and tend to have very little
representation of women and their concerns. But community forestry groups and their
federations are not static; they continually interact with other processes of social change
and formal institutions of democracy. MMJ SP represents one such case of
transformation.
Maa Maninag Jungle Surakhya Parishad

MMJSP31 is a federation of forest protecting villages in Ranpur block of Nayagarh
district in Orissa. Ranpur block is a drought-prone area, and forest-based livelihoods play
a critical role in the lives of the poor, especially of adivasis and dalits. The total
geographical area of the block is about 142 square miles and almost 35 per cent of the
geographical area is recorded as forest. Almost 39 per cent of the households in the block
are landless. Landlessness is especially pronounced among adivasis and dalits with 70
per cent of them being landless. For the landless, dependence on forests is especially
high. Of the 271 village settlements, 187 are involved in conserving forests. A few
villages began protecting forests in the 19603, while most others started in the early
19803. These initiatives were prompted by local dependence on forests for products and
services. In the past ten years, after being encouraged by MMJ SP, some additional

villages have initiated forest protection.

 

3 ' Maa Maninag Jungle Surakhya Parishad means ‘Mother Maninag Forests Protection Forum’. It is
named after a local deity and its namesake hill, Maa Maninag. Parishad means ‘forum’ or ‘solidarity
group’, and MMJSP is locally referred to as the Parishad.

62

MMJ SP was formed in 1997 with an initial membership of 85 villages. The
experience of informal networking among villages in the area formed a basis for this
federation. In 2007, its membership stood at 187 forest-protecting communities clustered
into 18 groups with membership ranging from 4 to 14 villages. The cluster groups are
based on historical social and cultural ties, often through shared dependence on a
common forest.

Methodology

I used qualitative research to explore women’s experiences and action in everyday
life and sites of engagement across scales. I explored issues of power across scales
through what Marcus (1998) terms ‘rn‘ulti-sited’ or ‘multi-locale’ ethnography. Marcus
(1998) encourages ‘a shift away from the ethnography that is so centrally place and local-
world determined towards an ethnography that is aimed at representing the operation of
the system’. The different spatial scales of collective action and engagement in my
research and analysis include community-scale, block-level (an aggregation of
approximately 200 villages), and state- (or province-) level. In this analysis, I follow
Brenner (2001), who insists that ‘analyses that are specifically analyses of scale must
examine a range of scales at once and focus on the relations among scales’. To this multi-
scale analysis, I bring ethnographic depth and attention to everyday life processes, and
action-orientedness, all of which are hallmarks of feminist methodology (Fonow and
Cook, 1991; Reinharz, 1992).

This research is based on several months of fieldwork spread over 2004 to 2007 when

I lived and worked in Orissa. My extended presence allowed long—term participant

63

engagement in the processes that I was studying. I participated in several of the women’s
group meetings and various federation and village meetings at different scales of analysis
over this three-year period. Further, I draw on insights from my long-term work in Orissa
on community forestry issues as a practitioner. In 1991, I founded an NGO, Vasundhara
(which means ‘Mother Earth’ in Hindi and Sanskrit) to work on forest conservation and
local livelihood issues in Orissa. Vasundhara was involved in facilitating the formation of
MMJ SP. Through my work with Vasundhara, I was closely associated with MMJ SP from
its inception. In the tradition of ‘radical objectivity’, I embraced my ‘bias’ and both the
burden and advantages of my positionality and past association with MMJ SP.

My methods included conversational interviews with village men and women, leaders
of MMJ SP, study of MMJSP and women’s group meeting records, participant
observation of meetings, focus group discussions, and interviews with NGO staff.
Following feminist principles (Oakley, 1981; Kirsch, 1999), my stance towards my
interviewees was interactive, collaborative, and non-hierarchal. I interviewed 11 women
leaders, including 3 women sarpanches32 associated with MMJ SP, 6 male leaders, and 4
NGO staff. With several research participants, a follow-up interview was conducted after
several months to understand the process of transformation. These interviews were taped
and transcribed and coded for themes. I attended several of the women’s monthly
meetings, and participated in different advocacy strategy meetings and events. I also

analyzed records of MMJ SP meetings from 1997 to 2007 to trace the process of

 

’2 Sarpanches are the elected representatives in the Indian local self-governance system, the Panchayati
Raj. Since 1993, through the 73rd amendment of the constitution, one-third of all panchayat seats have been
reserved for women.

64

transformation over the years. Three focus group discussions were held with women in
village settings to understand constraints to their participation. To understand the context
of women’s action, inclusion, and exclusion within community forestry, I undertook a
detailed study of forest decision-making processes in six villages, and in two clusters of
villages. The next several sections document my findings relating to constraints to
women’s participation at the community level and how opening of space at the block
level impacted spaces at other scales.

Restricted Space at the Community Level: How can we go uninvited?

As is common in rural India, women tend to be excluded from community decision
making. In Ranpur, patriarchal relations are particularly strong and lead to women’s
marginalization within community-based forest management. This marginalization is
exemplified by women’s marginal presence in forest protection committees. Of the 111
villages surveyed in 2005 by Vasundhara and MMJ SP, only 23 villages had women
representatives on the community forest protection committees. Only 7 per cent of the
office bearers in these committees were women. Representation of dalits and adivasis
was equally low at 7 per cent and 16 per cent respectively. Women’s actual presence in
the committee meetings and effective participation tends to be minimal.

At the village level, it is hard for women to participate given strong social and
cultural taboos that restrict their participation in the public sphere. Mostly, women’s non-
participation in community decision making is attributed to culture, and simply accepted
as the way things are done locally. Some of the common remarks that recurred in my

interviews were, ‘[The] village story (situation) is different than cities’; or a male leader’s

65

comments, ‘We are not so modern that we will involve women’. Women also talked
about cultural taboos. ‘Someone is a father-in-law or uncle-in-law, how can we go and sit
with them. . .won’t we feel shy? Men will say, how immodest she has become, she is
coming and sitting with us. We have to take care of our honor, and behave appropriately.’

Women also point out constraints related to confidence. ‘If we go once, we will get
the courage, (but) we have never gone—that is why (we feel shy). How can someone
who has never opened her mouth speak? She won’t be able to speak. Once she speaks up,
then she can.’

In many villages, women have been included in recent years due to the institutional
provision for women’s representation on JFM committees, called the Van Samarakhan‘
Samities (VSS). The Government of Orissa’s policy resolution for JFM requires that at
least three women serve on the executive committee of the VSS. Generally, the women
included as members of the VSS do not attend VSS meetings. In a focus group
discussion, one woman member said, ‘Men decide when they will meet. They fix a time
as per their convenience and sit for a discussion’. Another added, ‘They never inform or
invite us. We could go if they invited us. How can we go uninvited?’ About whether they
are informed about the discussion at these meetings, women wryly said, ‘We do not ask,
and they do not tell. Maybe they inform other men, but we don’t get to hear what is
discussed’. Of course, they do get to know when the committee frames rules that affect

their access to the forest. In many cases, the proceedings of the meetings are sent to

women for their signatures, and they are expected to sign without bothering to read them.

66

As is widely noted in the literature relating to constraints to women’s involvement,
meetings are scheduled without taking into account women’s time availability or the
convenience of the meeting venue. Meetings are often held in late evening hours on the
village temple premises, to which women’s entry is restricted”. Time- and space-related
constraints add to keeping women and often dalits out of these decision-making forums.
The case of Das Mauja Jungle Surakhya Samiti (Ten-Village Forest Protection
Committee) illustrates this. This committee, one of the oldest such cluster formations in
the area, is a committee of ten villages protecting a contiguous patch of forest for over 25
years. An executive committee of 20 persons, 2 representatives from each village, meets
every Sunday evening to coordinate forest management. The meetings begin at 6:00 or
7:00 in the evening and continue until late at night. Women cannot attend these meetings
given the inconvenient time and local cultural taboos. Men do not feel the need to make
any changes in the meeting venue or time to accommodate women’s presence. While
traditionally this committee was all male, three women have been included since 2005 in
accordance with JFM norms about women’s representation. Even though formally a JFM
committee has been formed, for all practical purposes the informal committee continues
to function. Women are invited to attend only when outsiders such as the Forest
Department or NGO staff attend their meeting. At other times, men simply get the
women members’ signatures on the proceedings.

Many villages in Ranpur organize an annual party to celebrate community forestry

and to encourage village youth and children to protect the forest. Like similar community

 

33 For example, menstruating women’s entry to temples is a traditional taboo, and in many villages, dalits
are still kept out of temples. While these barriers are breaking down, they are by no means gone.

67

feasts, women cannot join in and surplus food is sent home for them when the party is
over. Women’s absence from these formal spaces of community forestry is at odds with
their otherwise active role in forests.
Space for Women at the Federation Scale

Marginalization of women at the community level is further amplified at higher
spatial scales within community forestry federations, as leaders from the village level,
who tend to be male, become members of the federations. As is the case with other
federations, MMJ SP was initially dominated by men. No village women attended the
initial local meetings that led to the formation of MMJ SP. Male leaders initially resisted
involvement of women within MMJSP’s governance structure. At one of the meetings of
MMJ SP in 1997, male leaders expressed reluctance to involve women. After persistent
interventions by Vasundhara, men agreed to make space for women in the governance
structure, but this was done mainly to appear gender sensitive and progressive to
outsiders (Singh, 2007).

In 1997, the first year of MMJSP’s existence, no women attended any of the eight
meetings held during the year. In 1998, a couple of higher-caste women attended MMJ SP
meetings. When the presence of women remained marginal, the problem was discussed at
a meeting in May 1999. Following this discussion, it was decided to form a women's sub-
group within MMJ SP. The decision was prompted by Vasundhara. Vasundhara staff who
were involved in the process said, ‘We were committed to bringing women in, but did not

want it to be as an external imposition. It was a sensitive issue. We wanted to respect the

68

autonomy of a people’s organization, but at the same time we wanted to see more women
and other marginalized sections included. So, we kept raising the issue.’

MMJ SP initially decided to form a task force for improving women’s involvement
within the federation as well as within community forest management efforts. This task
force’s first meeting was held in July 1999 and was attended by one woman and nine
men. It was then decided to organize women’s meetings at local levels to discuss the
issue. Several village meetings for women were then organized. Following this, it was
decided to have separate women’s meetings at the block level on a regular basis. On 26
September 1999, the first ‘women’s meeting’ was convened. At this meeting, participants
decided to form a women’s sub-group within MMJ SP, called the Central Women’s
Committee (CWC) that would meet every month on the 18th day of the month. Women
refer to these meetings as ‘mahila meetings’ or women’s meetings, or simply as ‘athraha
tarikh” meetings’. Even at the initial meeting where CWC was formed, women’s
presence was low; only 7 of the 25 participants were women. Despite a preparatory
process, it was difficult to get women to come. However, as a result of space being
created for women at the block level, women started trickling into the monthly meetings
and gradually started asserting themselves within the block federation.

Space for Women through the ‘Athraha T arikh ’ Monthly Meetings

The ‘athraha tarikh’ meetings serve as an ‘open space’ for women to come and

discuss their problems, meet other women, and learn from each other’s experience. Since

2000, a tribal woman has presided over these meetings. Having a woman preside over

 

3" Athraha means ‘18“. and tarikh means ‘date’ in Oriya and refer to the meetings held on the 18th every
month.

69

these meetings was an improvement from their initial stage, when male federation leaders
facilitated ‘women’s’ meetings and encouraged them to speak up.

The male leaders still attend these meetings. In a way, this helps maintain linkages
between MMJ SP and the women’s group and provides women an additional way to
influence MMJSP’s agenda. The secretary of the MMJ SP often attends these meetings,
and his presence sends a signal to women that their discussion is of importance to the
federation, but at the same time his patronizing attitude often hinders open and free-
flowing discussion.

These meetings are held in a big hall in the office premises of MMJSP and
Vasundhara in Ranpur town, which is centrally located and easily accessible. The
meetings are scheduled at 10:00 am, although women tend to arrive late, due to
transportation problems. The women travel 3 to 20 miles to get to Ranpur. Some walk,
others request a ride on a bicycle or motorcycle from male relatives, and most take a
public bus that can be erratic and unreliable. Due to logistics, the meeting does not
effectively last more than three hours. Initially, predominantly middle-aged and older
women attended these meetings, given their relative freedom to travel and the household
help they receive from daughters or daughters-in-law. Increasingly, younger women have
started attending as the CWC has begun focusing on forest-based livelihood activities that
engage younger women.

When women gather for their monthly meetings, the informal interaction before, and
after the meetings, are as important as the formal discussion during the meetings. Women

exchange news about family and friends, and seek advice on common problems. These

70

meetings provide a sense of purpose, and a social outing. One woman pointed out, ‘Men
can stand for hours in a local tea-shop and gossip, while we cannot. We also need a place
to go to’. These meetings have thus become important as a place to go.

Women’s Action and Expansion of Spaces

In this section, I discuss how women have acted in the democratic spaces within
MMJ SP and expanded spaces available to them through their actions. Specifically, I
discuss how women who were engaged in plucking kendu leaves35 used this space to
advocate for their livelihood rights. As women gathered every month for their monthly
meetings, they brought problems associated with their livelihoods to this space. Problems
that were otherwise ‘invisible’ thus became visible and a part of MMJSP’s advocacy
agenda. In the process, MMJ SP gained more visibility and popular support thanks to
women’s advocacy concerning these problems. Male members thus came to appreciate
women’s role in MMJSP.

Kendu leaves are an important source of livelihood for the poor in central India,
especially during the lean summer months when few other sources of employment exist.
In Orissa, about 30 million person-days of work are created in the collection of kendu
leaves within a short span of three to four months. The trade in kendu leaves is
nationalized in Orissa and hence they can be sold at only govemment-run collection
centers called phadies. In Ranpur, there were no phadies, and women gathering kendu

leaves were forced to sell to private traders who operate illicitly and offer only a fraction

 

3’ Leaves of the kendu tree (Diospyros melanoxylon) are used for wrapping tobacco to make beedis,
the local cigarettes.

71

of the government-fixed prices. Women raised this problem at one of the women’s
meetings in 2000. At the athraha tarikh meeting in January 2001 , women decided to take
up this issue, and subsequently decided to organize a rally in Ranpur town. In April 2001,
about 2,000 women from 95 villages rallied to demand phadies and sent a petition to the
chief minister of Orissa. In response, in 2002, the government established two phadies
and promised to set up more phadies later. However, it did not.

Women continued advocating for additional phadies through MMJ SP. When these
efforts failed, women staged another mass demonstration in Ranpur in November 2004.
About 2,500 dalit and adivasi women gathered to demand additional phadies. After the
administration did not respond, the women decided to hold a sit-in demonstration
(dharna) in front of the State Legislative Assembly. From 9 to 16 March 2005, 19
women participated in a dharna in front of the Assembly in Bhubaneswar.

The process of advocating for kendu leaf phadies has taken women into territories
and spaces that they usually do not inhabit. Travelling to these places and spaces both
physically and metaphorically has been liberating and empowering for women. This has
also made them see and realize their power and potential as political actors.

For women, their action for kendu leaf phadies was an important turning point. In my
interviews, they recounted this struggle, and saw their first rally at Ranpur in 2001 as an
important marker in their becoming political actors. At a meeting in 2004 to discuss
future courses of action, women were fast to suggest, ‘Puni rally kariba’ (‘let us do

another rally’). The women who had benefitted from the first kendu leaf phadi felt

72

obliged to continue with advocacy efforts. They said, ‘Because of everyone’s efforts, we
got a phadi. How can we now sit silent?’

Two women sarpanches were actively involved in these strategy meetings. They
brought to these meetings their experience from the formal political arena. This advice, as
well as counsel from male leaders of MMJ SP, helped women design multi-pronged
strategies. In the process, women learned how to become political actors and citizens. For
many of the women who went to Bhubaneswar for the dharna, it was their first visit to
the capital city. Being in spaces and places alien to them and finding their feet was in
itself an experience. There was also the rare freedom from the drudgery of household
work.

The ‘streets of power’ in Bhubaneswar became their training grounds in the arena of
political action and activism. There they met other people who had come with similar
demands, befriended other women from other regions, and shared stories and problems.
They learned to deal with policemen, who tried to drive them away, and stray onlookers
who stopped by, as well as the media and elected Members of the Legislative Assembly
(MLAs). MLAs from the opposition party especially expressed support and incited
women to continue their fight. In the process, women also became very agitated at the
lack of response from their own elected representative.

The MLA from their region was a woman; she also held a ministerial charge. Women
were particularly hurt by her apathy because during her election campaigning, she had
invoked ‘sisterhood’, and claimed to understand women’s problems. However, this Apa

(elder sister) changed after getting elected. Women said, ‘Now she does not recognize us.

73

We are still the jungle-people, while she has become an urban dweller’. Another woman
added, ‘She is not a woman. She has become a man’. After six days of dharna, Ranpur
women went to meet this MLA at her residence. In the interaction that ensued, Kuntala
Nahak, a dalit woman from Mardakote village, took on the woman minister, and
reprimanded her for not doing anything about their problem (Singh, 2007). In this
exchange with the MLA, Kuntala, as a woman neither awed by a ‘minister’ nor bound to [I

correct etiquette, was able to speak to power directly —challenging authority and

a“ \-l"‘!'.".". .'

demanding accountability. Following this encounter, the MLA called representatives of

 

MMJ SP for another meeting and, responding to pressure from the women’s dharna, the
government promised to open another phadi. While this fell short of their demand for
several phadies, it was seen as an achievement, and the women felt that they were not
returning home from Bhubaneswar without any results. They were aware that it was the
first time that representatives from Ranpur had come to the streets of Bhubaneswar with
demands.

Advocacy on the Kendu leaf issue is not the only action taken by women in the newly
emergent space within MMJ SP; they have also taken the initiative to organize around
other forest-based livelihood issues. Biskia Jani, an adivasi woman leader says, ‘When
we started meeting, we said, “Forest protection in itself is of no use, unless we can get
some income out of the forests that we protect.” So, we thought about what we could do.

We looked at our existing activities (in the forest). For example, the collection of siali

74

leaves36—we decided to improve our incomes from siali’. Women decided to acquire
machines to stitch siali leaves into plates and to market them collectively. This collective
action was effective at a specific scale, and women were able to act at this scale as a
result of organizing through MMJ SP.
Transformation in Spaces across Scales

In this section I summarize the transformations in democratic spaces available for
women’s participation that have taken place at the block (regional) and village levels.
At the Regional Scale within MMJSP

Through their advocacy efforts and action in emergent spaces within MMJ SP, women
have displayed their power and determination to take control over their lives. In the
process, the men have come to appreciate the women’s role and, more importantly, their
power as mobilized masses that can rally in the streets and display MMJSP’s strength.

Over the years, there has been an increase in women’s representation in the
governance structure of MMJ SP. The governance structure consists of a general body, an
executive committee, and a working body. In addition, there are an advisory committee, a
special task force for conflict resolution, and the women’s sub-group. Initially, the
general body consisted of the president and secretaries of all the village-level committees.
Given the male domination at the village level, this entailed that no women were part of
the MMJSP’s general body. In 2000 this changed, and now the entire executive
committee of cluster-level groups is part of MMJSP’s general body. This has created

more space for women, but it has only been an incremental change. However, this

 

36 Siali leaves are used for making leaf-plates to serve food.

75

institutional change is reflective of how, at an organizational scale, space can be created
by favoring one scale over the other. If community scale had continued to define
membership criteria to higher-order organizational structures, then women would have
had little scope and space to participate.

The executive committee of MMJ SP is usually elected by the general body.
Considering that the general body tends to be all male, under normal circumstances the
executive committee would not include any women. Based on Vasundhara’s intervention,
special provisions were made for including women in the executive committee. The
initial ad-hoc executive committee of MMJ SP in 1997 consisted of 24 men. At the time
of MMJSP’s registration as a society in 1998, 3 women were included in the ll-member
executive committee. These 3 women included one dalit and two adivasi women. This
inclusion of women remained notional. The current executive committee of 17 people has
4 women; however, until early 2006, none of the women were office bearers.

A working body was constituted to increase direct participation from a larger body of
villagers in the functioning of the MMJ SP. The initial working body in 1997 consisted of
30 people, with only 1 woman member. The size of the working body and the proportion
of women have grown steadily; by 2006 the working body had 84 members with 31
women. Thus, there has been a constant increase in the membership of women in the
working body. The representation of adivasis and dalits has also been increasing. This is
in stark contrast to membership of women at the village level, which is about 7 per cent.

Even though the CWC started as a separate women’s group, there is synergy between

men’s and women’s actions. As one woman leader said, ‘If we (women) are in the fore,

76

 

they are behind (us). And if they are in the fore, we support them. When we inform the
men about a problem they cooperate with us to solve it’. The women also feel that they
now have more respect. As Kuntala said, ‘Earlier, when we used to speak they did not
listen. Now, things are different. Our opinion is heard (katha suno chanti).’

At the Community Level

How does women’s organizing at a higher spatial scale help to overcome the
patriarchal relations that are so deeply entrenched at the community scale? Identities and
subject positions that are deeply entrenched at one scale become more fluid at another
scale. At the village level, a woman is more easily seen as someone’s daughter-in-law,
mother, or sister-in—law; it is harder for her to be just a woman, much less a person.
Cultural taboos are also more relaxed outside of the immediate village boundaries. As
Kuntala’s story shows, when a woman is able to take advantage of reduced cultural
obstacles to successfully engage in democratic spaces at a higher scale, her success gives
her both the prestige and the confidence to expand her role at the community scale. After
her participation in the demonstration at Bhubaneswar and her exchange with the woman
minister, Kuntala refirsed to sign a village resolution and demanded changes in it.
Previously this would have been unthinkable.

In several villages, women have taken defunct forest protection systems over from
men. In Dengajhari village, women revived the forest protection system after several
years of neglect. After attending a CWC meeting on 18 October 2000, women decided to
revive the forest protection system, with two groups of women patrolling on a rotational

basis. Soon after they started protecting the forests, the women faced a serious

77

confrontation with a timber smuggling group. When a group of 50 to 60 men tried to steal
timber from their forest, 27 women confronted them and seized more than 1,500 logs.
The village men, who were too afraid to confront the timber smugglers, were amazed at
the women’s courage, and this incident became a local legend. The leader of the women’s
group came to be known as ‘forester mausi (aunt)’. She recounted the incident frequently
and dramatically, thus inspiring women in neighboring villages to play a greater role in
forest protection. Men also became open to the possibility of a more pronounced role for
women in forest protection.

There are now several instances where women have started protecting forests on their
own. As Kuntala said of the transformation in the space for women, ‘Due to participation
of women, the forest is well-protected. Now the question is whether men will participate
in the process, or resign from it? If they want to be involved, then they can join in at the
rear, not in front!’

While this transformation is taking place in certain villages, women members of
MMJ SP committees are beginning to question the exclusion of women at the community
level, more generally. In the general body meeting of MMJ SP in 2007, Pramila Dash, of
Surkhabadi village of the Das Mauja cluster, raised the contradiction between the talk
about women’s participation at the block level, and the village-level reality that women
are simply expected to provide their signatures to endorse men’s decisions. Thus changes
are occurring both because women who have achieved success at a higher level are

beginning to stand up at the community level, and because actors at the block level,

78

where greater democratic space already exists for women, are lobbying for
institutionalizing the same changes at the village level.
Continuing Challenges at other Scales

While there has been a transformation in women’s participation in MMJSP, women’s
involvement in other community forestry federations remains a challenge. This is not
unusual considering that the community forest management groups are traditional
institutions that derive strength from culture and traditional sources of authority. Their
federations also draw on these strengths of tradition and culture and often they do not
know how to address power inequalities that come with this tradition and culture. In
Orissa, only 3 of the 25 federations have taken steps to improve women’s involvement.
Most federations do not necessarily see marginalization of women or other social groups
as a problem. While NGOs working with federations may recognize this as a problem,
they do not necessarily allocate their scarce resources to processes of long-term change.

The institutional norms of representation in federations tend to promote leaders or
office bearers from lower scales to higher scales As women are absent from governance
structures at the community level, this absence persists at higher federation scales, unless
some corrective measures to specifically include women are taken at other scales. Even
when women are included through special provisions, they do not have the same
representational authority as the male ‘leaders’.

In Orissa Jungle Manch (the state-level federation), women’s involvement and
participation remains marginal. In addition to having a limited institutional presence,

women also remain absent from different state-level policy forums, conferences, and

79

workshops. Many factors contribute to this. Often it is leaders and those seen as ‘experts’
who attend policy forums. Women find it hard to attain such leadership and expert
positions. When district federations nominate one or two representatives to represent the
district at the state level, they tend to be men. For village women, travel to Bhubaneswar
is also a constraint. It is hard for women to obtain their families’ permission to travel
unless they have a woman travelling partner. This constraint, and the travel costs of each
additional person’s travel, favors men’s representation in state-level policy events.

When women do come to these meetings, they find it hard to comprehend policy
discourse and discussion of issues that seem far-removed from their immediate concerns.
Men often do not take the time to fill in the details of past discussion. Women also
encounter difficulties comprehending technical and managerial discourse.

Conclusions

Women’s marginalization in natural resource governance, as in other areas of
governance, is a critical problem, especially in developing countries. The challenge lies
in altering or dismantling existing power relations in societies and contexts where
hierarchy and unequal social relations define the prevailing social order. In such contexts,
top-down approaches to social reform do not work very well, and bottom-up processes
for social transformation are unlikely to emerge from locales where power relations are
strongly entrenched. In this article, I have focused on locales and spaces from which
change can come. This case is ordinary in many ways. It represents an everyday form of
women’s organizing to address their common problems. In the process I have described,

women gained voice and confidence to negotiate space at other scales. There are

80

numerous such examples of women coming together in groups to save and invest, and to
fight against multi-national companies that threaten their local environments, health, and
economies (see Harcourt and Escobar, 2005 and Gibson-Graharn, 2006). What is
noteworthy in my example of women’s everyday action and activism are the
extraordinary possibilities for leveraging spaces at certain scales to create and expand
spaces at other scales where women have harder and often solitary struggles to wage. I
suggest that closer attention to constraints and possibilities at different scales can help
practitioners and development workers design strategies that are able to leverage spaces
at meso-scales, while supporting spill-over effects at other scales. This requires
recognition of interrelationships across scales, and enhanced communication and
connections across scales.

Constraints and possibilities for women’s participation are different across spatial
scales, and it is important to better comprehend and leverage these differences. While
cultural constraints restrict women’s voice within their immediate communities, they are
often more knowledgeable about the workings of this scale. At the macro-scale of region,
nation or globe, techno-managerial discourse and language make it more difficult for
village women (or men) to participate effectively. In Orissa, meso-scales—i.e. scales of
locality, regions where common struggles of life and livelihood can be clearly
identified—provided an easier entry point to addressing issues of marginalization. In the
case of MMJ SP, women were able to gain voice at the block level, as that was the scale at

which they needed to take up advocacy to solve their commonly faced livelihood

81

problems. This meso-scale also provided a nurturing ground to build confidence and to
initiate women into the policy arena and public domain.

Even though the concept of scale and cross-scale linkages has drawn a lot of attention
in the social sciences in recent years, there has been inadequate appreciation of how
democratic spaces across scales differ. We lack in-depth ethnographic descriptions of
how space across scales varies for various social categories and how transformation can
be facilitated by allowing marginalized groups to ‘jump scales’. As I illustrate with my
case, constraints to, and possibilities for, democratic participation across scales do not
only vary in degrees, but there are also real differences in the nature of constraints. An
appreciation of these differences can lead to better understanding of the constraints that
marginalized groups face at different spatial scales and locales. While my case is
embedded in the context of forest governance, these findings have implications for work
on issues of marginalization in a variety of contexts. I do not suggest that there is a
uniform prescription, or that there is a specific scale at which it is easiest to initiate a
process altering power relations. Rather, I emphasize the need to pay close attention to
differences in the degree of entrenchment of power relations across locales. It is common
for practitioners struggling with women’s empowerment issues to express frustration that
home is often the site most resistant to change. Mendhapurkar (2004), among others,
points out that improved livelihoods and enhanced political space do not automatically
translate into greater negotiating power within the closed doors of the family. Even
though the process of change is gradual, expansion of space at one scale has bearings on

space and constraints at other scales. Spatial dimensions of participation often have been

82

neglected in discussions about participation (0’ Reilly, 2006). Lefebvre (1991) draws our
attention to the need to pay close attention to social space when dealing with challenges
of social transformation.

My research urges us to think outside of the dichotomy of bottom-up and top-down
processes and to think creatively about meso-scales. I suggest focusing on locations and
influences that draw on the spontaneity of bottom-up emergence, and enrich it with the
intentionality of social change driven by ideas of justice and equality that might be
missing from the locales at which change needs to be effected. The Orissa case also leads
us to become more aware of the need to support ‘jumping scales’ or traversing scales.
This allows ideas to flow across scales, connections to be made, and skills to be gained at
one scale and applied at another where it would be difficult to acquire them.

In terms of methodological implications, this requires what Rocheleau and Roth
(2007) term as ‘seeing multiple’ from situated perspectives within polycentric models,
i.e. a radical empiricism that seeks to understand complex assemblages by treating them
as networks, observing and evaluating them from multiple standpoints (nodes) within a
given structure. It necessitates a shift towards a study of connections and flows across
spaces, and away from study confined to locales and sites to better comprehend and

leverage cross-scale linkages for processes of social change and transformation.

83

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Chapter 3

Blurred Boundaries: Research, Researcher, and the Researched

Abstract

Feminist scholars insist that the sort of knowledge you make depends on who you are
and that positioning thus becomes a key strategy for marking knowledge as situated.
While the need to be reflexive about one’s positionality cannot be overemphasized, the
project of reflexivity is complex. There are limits to ‘transparent reflexivity’ and to
knowing and making visible the interaction between the researcher, the researched, and
research. In view of the complexity of positioning oneself in the ever-shifting web of
one’s research and research relationships, writing oneself into research is challenging. In
this paper, I share my attempt to write myself into my research. I draw from my
experience of three years of ‘field’ research and several years of practitioner life in
Orissa, India, to explore how complex identities are performed and negotiated in a
research setting. I use ethnographic vignettes and poems to explore the blurred
boundaries and ‘in-between’ spaces between researcher and researched, insider and
outsider, and action and research.

Introduction

In the past two decades, issues about reflexivity and voice have gained prominence in
critical social inquiry. The undoubtedly problematic ‘objective’ researcher and ‘his’
voice, from everywhere and yet nowhere, has been increasingly replaced with a reflexive
subjective researcher who embraces the partiality of view from the position from which

she chooses to see. Feminist scholars insist that the knowledge you make depends on who

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you are (England, 1994; Rose, 1997) and hence positioning becomes critical to the
practice of grounding knowledge (Haraway, 1991). It is now recognized that ‘the self is
the key fieldwork tool’ (Van Maanen, 1988) and our consciousness is always the medium
through which the research occurs (Stanley and Wise, 1997). Despite this recognition,
reflexivity is undervalued and misconstrued as ‘navel gazing’ and even ‘narcissistic and
egoistic’ instead of being fully appreciated as a ‘self-critical sympathetic introspection
and the self-conscious analytical scrutiny of the self as a researcher’ (Moss, 1995).

The task of reflexivity is further complicated as there are limits to ‘transparent
reflexivity’, and the self under scrutiny is not a ‘transparently knowable self (Rose,
1997). More than ‘self-discovery’ (England, 1994), reflexivity in research involves being
open to ‘self-construction’ (Rose, 1997; Reinharz, 1997). This makes reflexivity and
writing oneself into one’s research especially challenging. I follow scholars who suggest
alternate formulations of reflexivity and ways of looking at researcher-researched
relations that explore ‘betweenness’ between researcher and researched (England, 1994),
between the ‘field’ and ‘not field’ (Katz, 1994), and between theory and practice (N ast,
1994). I explore blurred boundaries and unclaimed territories between action and
research, researcher and researched, and insider and outsider using ethnographic vignettes
and poetry.

From 2004 to 2007, I lived in Orissa and conducted research on collective action by
rural communities to conserve forests. Prior to that, from 1990 to 2001, I worked in
Orissa as an NGO practitioner. Based on my experience of long-term ethnographic

inquiry in a setting where I was embedded as a practitioner, 1 illustrate how complex

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identities are performed and negotiated. Building on Haraway’s ideas that ‘siting’ is
intimately connected with ‘sighting’, I illustrate that forms of writing that invite the
reader into the text and to share the platform (Ellis and Bochner, 2006) can be acts of
‘siting’ and ‘sighting’ that reveal and question power relations in the production of
knowledge and seek to democratize it.
Reflexivity, Voice, and Power

In multiple disciplines, feminist researchers challenge the notions of objectivity and
propose alternative formulations of objectivity that are rooted in standpoint theory and
situated knowledges proposed by Harding (1991) and Haraway (1991). The central
concept in feminist epistemology is that knowers and the knowledges (multiple and
plural) that they produce are situated (Rose, 1997). In contrast to the ‘god-trick’ of
claiming to see the whole world while remaining distanced from it, subjugated and
critical knowledges work from their situatedness to produce partial perspectives on the
world (Haraway, 1991; Rose, 1997). They see the world from specific locations,
embodied and particular, and never innocent; siting is intimately involved in sighting
(Haraway, 1991). Haraway insists that situatedness and the epistemic privilege or
authority that comes with it is not given; it must be developed, its technologies revised
and invented. She asserts, ‘[H]ow to see from below is a problem requiring at least as
much skill with bodies and language, with the mediations of vision, as the “highest” form
of techno-scientific visualizations.’

To Haraway, positioning remains key to the practice of grounding knowledge, as

‘position' indicates the kind of power that enables a certain kind of knowledge. Since the

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sort of knowledge you make depends on who you are, it is critical to be reflexive about
how your ‘self’ shapes the knowledge that you produce and the choices that you make
about your research (Rose, 1997). Rose (1997) points out that feminist scholars suggest
transparency in reflexivity process that draws attention to the need to ‘shed light' on the
research process’ (Farrow et al., 1995) and make the relationship between the researcher
and the researched ‘visible and open to debate’ (Gilbert, 1994:90). Rose (1997) critiques
such a notion of ‘transparent reflexivity’ that seeks to produce ‘a visible landscape of
power, external to the researcher, transparently visible and spatially organized through
scale and distribution.’ She suggests that this notion of transparent reflexivity depends on
‘certain notions of agency (as conscious) and power (as context), and assumes that both
are knowable.’ Rose suggests alternate formulations of reflexivity and cites scholars who
explore alternate ways of looking at researcher-researched relations by exploring
‘betweenness’ between researcher and researched, the ‘field’ and the ‘not field,’ and
theory and practice.

Further, England (1994) draws attention to the intersubjective or more broadly
dialogic nature of research that involves dialogue between people (or with oneself).
Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1986) theory about dialogism, she suggests that research
can be seen as ‘continual interaction between meanings that emerge from conditional and
contingent human interaction between researcher and the researched’. This dialogic
exchange need not be limited to the process of research, but can be extended to writing

and interpretation of results.

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In recent years, there has been increased attention to narrative text and evocative
ethnography to deal with issues of voice and representation in qualitative inquiry.
Narrative texts are being used to tap the potential of ‘storytelling as a means to reveal
meaning without committing the error of defining it’ (Arendt, 1973 : 107). The difference
between stories and traditional analysis is the mode of explanation and its effects on the
reader. According to Ellis and Bochner (2006), traditional analysis is about transferring
information, whereas narrative text emphasizes communication and creates dialogue by
‘staying open to other meanings and sharing the platform with readers’.

My use of a collage of vignettes and poems to illustrate issues of positionality,
reflexivity, and voice draws from this increasing use of narrative text in social inquiry. In
recent years, qualitative researchers have used poetry to represent data (Richardson,
1990, 1994, 1997; Poindexter, 2002) or to make sense of data (Glesne, 1997; Prendergast,
2006). As Butler-Kisber (2002:235 cited in Prendergast, 2006) suggests, poetry can bring
the researcher closer to the data in ‘different and sometimes unusual ways that can yield
new and important insights.’ Poetry has the ability to bring forth a different mode of
knowing (Hirshfield, 1997) and offer alternate ‘way of seeing’ (Allison, 2003). Poetry
may be considered a ‘special language’, to help communicate instances in the fieldwork
when we feel that ‘truth has shown its face’ (Richardson, 1998), a language to access
what we feel and to represent it more fully than other modes of representation (Faulkner,
2007), to explore knowledge claims and to write with more engagement (Denzin, 1997;
Richardson, 1997), and to reach more diverse audiences (Richardson, 2000, 2002). To

me, poetry provided a means of reaching the inner creases of my experience. In the

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collage of vignettes (cf. Ronai, 1992) and poetry that I present, I use some of the poems
that formed the ‘data’ to reflect on my own role as well as issues of power and voice in
my research setting.

Research Context

My dissertation research examines collective action by rural communities in Orissa,
India, to conserve state-owned forests, and the role of community forestry federations in
democratizing forest governance. It is estimated that 8,000 to 10,000 villages in Orissa
protect and manage state-owned forests over which they have no legal rights, through
self-initiated collective arrangements.

I first came across these community forestry initiatives when I went to Orissa to work
with a Swedish consulting firm providing technical assistance to a social forestry project
in 1990. Social forestry projects were based on the premise that valuable natural forests
could be saved from local people by creating plantations of fuel and fodder on village
common lands. Villagers would thus meet their needs from these plantations and not
destroy government-owned natural forests. In amazing contrast, I found that villagers
were protecting state-owned natural forests through elaborate patrolling arrangements
and by regulating and restricting their own use.

After learning about these community forestry initiatives, I got involved in a research
project to document and understand these initiatives. 1 later founded Vasundhara (which
means ‘Mother Earth’ in Sanskrit and Hindi), an NGO, to work with these community
forestry groups and support their struggle to gain rights over these forests. I worked with

Vasundhara until 2001, when I decided to pursue a PhD. This background is an important

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part of my positionality that shaped not only what I saw in the field but also how I was

seen.

My Positionality: Insider/Outsider

A certain identity is never possible; the ethnographer must always ask not, ‘Who am
I?’ but ‘When, where, how am I?’ (Trinh, 1992: 157)

May 2004: My 11-year-old son and I settle down in our seats. It is a relief to escape
the heat and get inside the air-conditioned compartment of the train. The co-
passengers in the compartment appear Oriyas (from Orissa) who are probably going
to visit family during the kids’ summer vacation. Someone asks the usual ice-
breaking question: ‘Where are you from?’ I tell them, ‘From Orissa.’ So, what if I
have been away? I am returning home. There are signs of disbelief. . .I don’t look
like I belong. Why is that so? 13 it my appearance, possibly my hair—cut short?
Maybe it is my son’s American accent, picked up during several years in the US. I
wonder and reflect on the dilemmas of belonging or not, of being an insider/outsider
in a place I consider home.

(Note: From the train trip from Delhi to Bhubaneswar on returning to India for
dissertation fieldwork after three years in the US.)

As an Indian I am an insider in the broadly generalized terms of being an Indian
researching in India, but an outsider to the Orissan cultural context. I grew up in Delhi
and had very little exposure to rural India until my fieldwork in central India as part of
my training in forestry management. Despite living in Orissa for several years, I remain a
cultural outsider as I am not a native Oriya.

In contrast to early discussions that assumed that a researcher was predominantly
either an insider or outsider, more recent discussions indicate the complexity of the status
of insider/outsider and highlight how these statuses and identities are more fluid,
complex, and shifting (Merriam et al., 2001). Feminist researchers especially suggest that
one can be simultaneously an insider and an outsider within a research setting (Deutsch,

2004). As nobody can be ‘socially marked in only one way’ (di Leonardo, 1997), all

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human relationships encapsulate multiple subject positions that take on different salience
and meaning in different contexts (Bloom, 1998). There can thus be multiple ways in
which we can be both part of and excluded from almost any social situation. My situation
exemplifies these fluid, complex, and shifting subject positions.

In the conversation on the train trip that I describe above, the follow-up question is,
‘So, you went there after getting married?’ (As if, I was following a man who makes such
choices). Orissa is considered the backwater of India, and it is considered unusual for
someone from Delhi to be there by choice, much less for a woman to do 30. Another
salient part of the identity that I bring to the field is my gender. Being a woman affects
how well I can assimilate in the local cultural contexts. As a woman, I gain easy access to
the women’s world, while with men I face the dual barrier of being a woman and a non-
Oriya outsider. Due to my outsider status and ‘expert’ position, men show more respect
than they would to a local woman. But the relationship is formal and distant.

Other than being a cultural insider/outsider, I also constantly negotiated being an
institutional insider/outsider. During my fieldwork, I had to resume a leadership position
in Vasundhara. Being in Vasundhara made me insider of sorts within the NGO sector, but
my relationship with the state federation of forest protecting communities, Orissa Jungle
Manch (OJM) was complex. Due to my involvement in the process of reviving OJM, I
was often treated as an insider. At the same time, OJM had ambivalent feelings towards
NGOs in general. NGOs often tend to co-opt people’s organizations and are seen to
disrupt local processes. My association with Vasundhara brought these dynamics to my

relationship with OJM. My additional identity as a researcher, and my part-time and

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transient status in Vasundhara, possibly assuaged some of this and put me in a more
neutral position within the somewhat murky NGO politics. How I was actually seen will
remain unknowable to me.

Identities are not fixed positions. Rose (1997) says that ‘facets of the self—
institutional privilege, for example, as well as aspects of social identity—are articulated
as “positions” in a multidimensional geography of power relations.’ It is common for
feminist scholars to draw attention to the multiple facets of the self (Madge, 1993, cited
in Rose, 1997) that are not just brought to but are also created in the field (Reinharz,
1997). Of the ‘multiple selves’ that one brings to the field, ‘being a researcher’ is only
one aspect of the researcher’s identity and often one of the less salient ones from the
perspective of community members (Reinharz, 1997). It is the intersectionality of race,
nationality, age, gender, social and economic status, sexuality, life experiences, and one’s
assumed role that shapes the self of a researcher and influences the data collected and
knowledge produced. Moreover, the multiple identities that a researcher assumes are not
fixed but are ‘performed’ (Butler, 1990) in complex and unpredictable ways.

Blurred Boundaries: The Researcher and Activist Selves

I went to the field with a neat research design which sought to compare and contrast
the experience of ‘federated’ villages with that of ‘non-federated’ villages and to study
the role of federations in bridging power asymmetries of different forms. I realized that
these neat categories of ‘federated’ and ‘non-federated’ villages did not exist in the field
in such a cut-and-dried form. Moreover, community forestry federations were struggling

with issues of power, representation, internal democracy, and cooptation. While

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preparing my research design, I had considered and set aside the possibility of using a
participatory action research (PAR) approach since I felt that a dissertation research
format was not conducive to a free-flowing collaborative inquiry process. But when I
returned to Orissa, I realized PAR was a necessity. Given my embeddedness, it was
impossible for me to pursue relatively detached inquiry. When I started my fieldwork, I
found that the state-level federation OflVl was partly defunct. Instead of changing my
research to ask different questions, I got involved in the process of reviving and
strengthening OJM, and this process became a central piece of my research. The process
of reviving OJM gradually turned into a collaborative learning process. While OJM
members did not consciously engage in PAR, they discussed their problems and felt their
way through these problems. A process of action and reflection unfolded as the federation
leaders discussed problems relating to leadership, representation, communication,
funding, and NGO politics, among other things. I became an active participant and an
insider/outsider, actor-participant-researcher in this collaborative learning process.

I agonized over some of the ethical dilemmas. Was I mining information and insights
and being more of a researcher than a participant in the process? Everyone knew of my
role as researcher, as I followed consent procedures at many of the meetings where I
brought my researcher self in. At times it did not seem appropriate to bring my researcher
self to a meeting. Often, I was an actor and a participant more than a researcher. The
researcher in me stayed out on those days. I did not take notes and did not switch on my

tape recorder. But what could I do with the insights that came with me out of these

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meetings and then shaped the questions that I asked in the interviews that I conducted
thereafter?

Why did I feel the need to keep my researcher self separate from my participant-actor
self? I think this came from the pressure relating to establishing my credibility as a
researcher and concerns for validity. This was also linked to research protocols relating to
human subject reviews, consent forms, and procedures that tend to come in the way of a
dialogic exchange and meaning-making process in a research setting that goes beyond
performed interviews.

There were also other circumstances that aided the process of my getting back into
practitioner-activist mode. Vasundhara, the NGO I had founded, was facing a leadership
crisis. Since I was ‘back’, it was natural for my colleagues to expect me to step in and
help out. Ethically, there was no way of turning down such a request. After a few months
of informal involvement, I agreed to become the part-time director of Vasundhara. I
justified it to myself as ‘20 hour a week’ work that I might have taken up along with my
research had I been doing my research in the US. The only problem was that this was not
part-time work! My involvement in Vasundhara also accentuated power asymmetries. In
some of the vignettes that follow, I discuss different dimensions of power asymmetries.

When I went to the field after three years of academic training in the US, I was in
rigorous academic research mode. I saw and presented myself as a researcher. However,
my prior practitioner engagement came in the way of my maintaining the ‘researcher’
identity as my dominant identity. My travel to Orissa for fieldwork was seen as return to

Orissa instead of a opting for a life in the US. My former colleagues and activist friends

98

were quick to recruit me into ongoing processes of social change. This gave me
incredible access to local processes that I would not have gained if I had been seen as a
researcher. Now, as I get ready to embark on an academic career in North America, I
wonder if I cheated. However, my life situation and choices changed over time and I had
no way of knowing that they would.

For activists and NGO practitioners, academic research is elitist and is seen as an
exercise in proving and establishing what people who live the lives that researchers study
already know. My Indian colleagues barely concealed their contempt for meticulous
interviews and transcribed notes. I have no doubt that I would not have gained access to
spaces and processes that I was able to witness if I had not been as embedded as I was, or
if I had been seen only as a researcher. ‘Siting’ no doubt played an important role in the
‘sighting’ that I was able to do. Moreover, ‘sighting’ is not a solitary endeavor but a
collective process in which one starts making sense of what one sees through a
collaborative learning process.

Initially, I spent several miserable months trying to keep my researcher self and
activist self separate. I felt guilty all of the time about not being able to do justice to
either of these roles. Gradually, I began to find ways of combining research and action
and appreciated the need for what Michelle Fine (1994) calls ‘working the hyphen’ and
being more reflexive about the blurred boundaries between researcher and actor, instead
of trying to keep the two roles separate. I stopped labeling my days as ‘researcher today’

and ‘day off and became comfortable as an actor-participant-researcher.

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My position as an NGO chief executive possibly accentuated power asymmetries
with my research participants and complicated my relationship with women I
interviewed. Take for example this description in my journal:

On one hot summer afternoon, I am sitting in my office, the office of Director of Vasundhara,
at a huge L-shaped table. I don’t like the size of the table, but I am only here in this position
temporarily and don’t want to fuss over the furniture. A couple of village women from
Ranpur, Kuntala and Bisika mausi walk 37in. Kuntala is a young woman about 25 years old,
and Bisika is older, about 50. Along with other women from Ranpur, they are in Bhubaneswar
to sit in a dharna” to demand kendu leaf collection centers in their area. As they pass through
my room, they look in. I get up, walk to the door, greet them, and hold their hands and invite
them in. They walk in very tentatively, hesitate and then sit on the chairs in front of my table. I
step back in, to a revolving computer chair. Even though the office is modest by all standards,
no air-conditioning, not many frills; but I can imagine how it would look opulent to Kuntala
and Bisika. Not just the office, but with it the realization that I am the boss here. I am instamly
acutely aware of the power differentials, and cringe at what that means to my relationship to
them. Last week, I was in Mardakote village where Bisika mausi lives. I had waited in the
verandah of her hut, while she was busy with some household chores. We had sat on the floor
of her verandah and had talked. As part of my dissertation research, I interviewed her about
her involvement in the community forestry federation. I was all ears for her stories. Today in
this setting, we are both feeling very uncomfortable.

With village women, I feel, I could still be just a woman (maybe), but with men it
was harder to bridge power asymmetries. At the same time, my practitioner engagement
helped signal my continued commitment to local processes and generated trust that
helped bridge these power asymmetries. It also gave me interesting insights. There was
an element of immediacy in the conversations that I had with men and women. The
interviews would turn into conversations about what could be done to address the
problems at hand. This helped minimize performative aspects of interviews and added

more depth and action-orientation to these conversations.

 

’7 Mausi is the term used for maternal aunt.
3" demonstration

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Feminist researchers tend to focus on power relations between the researcher and the
researched. Yet, in research contexts such as mine, power asymmetries between
researcher and the researched can be a very small part of the power matrix that the
researched negotiate on daily basis. In such contexts, other power relations can be more
critical, and academic power might seem remote and be poorly understood. The role of
the researcher in bridging other forms of power asymmetries can become more critical.
As my research took on the forms of PAR, I reflected on the contours of power in
different settings and how people negotiate complex fields of power that permeate their
lives. The following section is a collage of vignettes and poems that have helped me to
reflect on issues of power and on my own positionality.

The Contours of Power: Visioning Orissa’s forest

June 2003: It is 13 years from the time I was first frustrated at the invisibility of
community efforts. I am in Orissa for pre-dissertation work. The Forest Department has
convened a meeting to discuss and work out Vision 2020 for Orissa’s forests. The
meeting is being held in a posh hotel in Bhubaneswar. The room seems dark, in contrast
to the bright summer day outside, despite being lit with several chandeliers. One of the
walls of the conference room has a very large framed painting of dense forests, with no
people. A retired forest official points to this as his vision for the forests of Orissa. Years
ago, the same forest official had vociferously asserted that people are protecting social
forestry plantations but not natural forests (on state-owned lands). He continues to
rubbish community forestry, and dream of dense forest, tall trees with no people. In

contrast, the visualization of heaven for a tribal is ‘miles and miles of forest without any

101

 

forest-guards’ (Elwin, 195 8). The two dreams collide; there seems no meeting ground—

even though the rhetoric is of joint forest management.

*Ill

September 2004: There is now more sophistication to the Visioning exercise. A
consultant has been hired to bring different perspectives together and facilitate the
emergence of a vision. This consultancy firm has undertaken widespread consultations all
over Orissa. In September 2004, I attended one meeting where the consultants presented
the vision document that they had prepared. This vision document, 20 pages in English,
was circulated at this meeting and the consultant from Delhi made a power-point
presentation, again in English, to an audience that was primarily Oriya speaking. I wrote
the following poem to vent my frustration.

‘We talked to 625 people over 22 meetings,
different ‘stakeholders’ were brought to the table’

illicit wood traders,
sawmill owners,
the suited forest bureaucrats,
and the poor widow - who gathers mahua flowers
dries
stores
sells little by little
as and when
she needs some cash
for a fistful of rice to fill her stomach...

They are all stakeholders
they all came, talked and you heard,
filtered these voices
prepared a ‘vision’
that negotiates conflicting dreams needs aspirations...

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I feel like asking:
what did you do with the silences?
did you hear them?
Did you have space for them to breathe
pause
yell
scream. . .?
did the poor widow get any place at the table. . ..
and her voice any ears?

I wonder...
Here I am, at one of your consultations
we are here to provide feedback
and validate the process
you will add this to your number of consultations...

there are no women this time around,
except a couple from NGOs
and a researcher me...
I come to this,
wearing multiple hats
researcher,
activist,
actor,
participant...
Would you call me a stakeholder?

I don’t know which one of these is entering the room today,
which one will sit in a comer,
leave in a haste
sustain through the day
we will see. ..

I sit through this
and watch the drama unfold

There is a faint attempt to address the language problem

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4.!

 

some use of Hindi
but then words like ‘sustainability’, ‘sustainable-use’, ‘eco-tourism
don’t translate very well

no one even attempts...

,

The agenda of the meeting is structured
‘allow us to finish first -
we will take the questions at the end...’

Power asymmetries are huge
language, discourses, scientificity, managerialism,
and the tyranny of agenda
How does one break it?
No one does,
For quite some time...
don’t quite know how
The room, the air conditioning,
and the white sheet covered table
with a number of microphones
yet no one quite ready to speak...
There is an ‘agenda’
silences and awkwardness are beginning to yell
but no one quite listens

I was hoping to remain a researcher
a mere observer
but the silences are yelling.

I decide to speak
and break the structure of the ‘agenda’

Let us question some of the basic assumptions, I ask..

Many start nodding
silences have a voice
the tyranny of the agenda is broken
more concerns are voiced...

104

The structure of the meeting is disturbed
four hours of presentations, followed by an hour of ‘open-house’ . ..

The organizers look hassled

‘this is the problem with NGOs

we won’t be able to cover anything, why don’t we go “point-wise’
what do you think of Section 1.1.12?’

How do we start discussing 1.1.12...
when there are serious problems with the approach
the worldview
and drastically different visions

The response:

Oh...okay. . .let people write their suggestions
on pieces of paper. ..

...again the filterll

the tyranny of agenda and silenced voices...

**

This meeting took place in September 2004, at the beginning of my dissertation

research when I was still in researcher mode and would have ideally liked to ‘observe’
rather than be an engaged participant. This poem as data on my own positionality helped
highlight the conflict that I faced in my role as a researcher and as someone who is
embedded and is drawn in to participate. This also helps bring out the dialogic nature of
interactions in field settings. Though researchers don’t typically write about how their
presence changes things, it is now well established that even the act of observing changes
the observed or the situation. And in situations that involve human interactions, the
process is inherently complex. For example, while for me my identity as a researcher was

salient, for other participants at that meeting my identity as an ‘expert’ and advocate of

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community forestry was possibly more central. In such a situation, there was possibly a
default dependence on the ‘experts’ to take the lead in questioning the information being
presented. Against the backdrop of such an expectation, my presence and choice to
remain only an observer would have distorted the outcomes.

This poem marked for me a transition from researcher to researcher-actor mode. A
few days before this workshop, I met the consultants who prepared the vision document. I
was trying to maintain an emotional distance between my research and me, not in a very

positivist frame, but in terms of ‘holding back’ and not getting pulled into the realm of

 

action. After this meeting with the consultants I felt very angry. Nothing seemed to have
changed despite years of being away. The Forest Department and their perspective
dominated the vision document. The problem of millions of people who lived on forest
lands that they had cultivated for generations was labeled as, ‘Oh, the encroachment
problem,’ even if the state was the biggest encroacher on people’s lands and their lives. It
was difficult to remain a researcher-observer and not get involved. Writing this poem also
helped in reflecting on my own role at that meeting, I realized that I was translating
across discourses, and through this translation breaking barriers created by power
asymmetries. The researcher in me has no way of knowing what would have happened in
that meeting if I had remained a mere observer. Maybe someone else would have broken
the barriers. Maybe not. The poem also helped in making visible power asymmetries that
framed seemingly open spaces of so-called consultations. Language, discourse, spatial

scales, knowledge systems, epistemologies, and world views intersect and create huge

106

 

power differentials. Communication formats and structured agendas can accentuate or
ameliorate these power asymmetries.

I remained in the meeting until lunch. In the post-lunch session, I heard that the
meeting was back to the structured agenda. Different elements of the vision document
were discussed section-wise and the problems with the overarching framework remained
unaddressed. Suggestions through email were invited. The vision of a poor woman who
gathers forest produce, a shifting cultivator who remains an encroacher on his ancestral
land, and the communities who protect, regenerate, and create forests and remake
themselves and their identities, remained on pieces of papers—blown in the wind.

At another meeting where path-breaking legislation for forest rights was being
discussed, a leader from one of the community forestry federations said, ‘It is difficult for
us to understand these legislations. They are all written in English. We read the
translations provided by organizations like yours. We don’t know if the translations are
authentic. When we read through these Bills/Acts/Proposals, all seem great. For example
Vision 2020 also had wonderful dreams, and sweet sounding words. It is only when
people like you interpret and read between the lines that we begin to see how we are
being fooled.’

* III

My present work and past involvement with Vasundhara allow me to enter these
spaces, to participate and be an actor, but it also closes spaces. Take for example this case
when I visited a district forestry federation to discuss with the federation leaders the

possibility of detailed study, expectations from my research and such. I was considering

107

this federation as a candidate for detailed study - I was still with my neat design. This is
an initial visit to discuss. I was surprised at the number of people who came for the
meeting. I wrote this in my journal:
The moment I arrived, I realized that the setting was tricky. Several of the Executive
Committee members were present. Obviously, this assembly was not for a researcher.
I started off by clarifying that today, at that moment; my identity was that of a
researcher. I used the word “student”. After leaving this place in the evening, I would
step back into my role with Vasundhara. Someone from the group countered that after

my role as a researcher was over today, they wanted to have a discussion with me as
Director, Vasundhara.

My roles got conflated and confused so hopelessly. It turned out that this federation
wanted some support from Vasundhara as they were struggling with a lack of resources.
With the power asymmetries coming into play, I am not sure if I as a researcher was
welcomed, or tolerated due to this possibility of funding. I decide not to pursue the case
study due to the power asymmetries at play.

On reflecting on this choice, I now feel that I should not have overreacted to the
power asymmetries that came into play due to the federation’s expectations of funding
support. This is one of the oldest and most vibrant federations in the state. I would have
gained by studying this federation and my research could have informed and shaped the
relationship of this federation with Vasundhara. On reflection, it seems that a productive
action-research opportunity was lost due to an attempt to maintain discernible boundaries
between research and action.

11”!

There are also the usual power asymmetries—me as a researcher, and the research

participants whose lives I seek to understand and represent. Consider this description of

108

my interaction with another woman present at one of the OJM meetings. The state
federation of community forestry groups is a male-dominated body. Very few women
attend OJ M meetings that are usually held in Orissa’s capital city, Bhubaneswar. In the
interaction that I describe, the woman participant came from Koraput district, encouraged
by a local NGO to come to the OJM meeting.

She is the only village woman at this meeting. This is the first time that she has come
to an OJM meeting. She looks tired and bored. It would have been a long journey for
her. About 14 to 15 hours by bus. She looks sleep deprived. When the men go on and on
with their discussion she dozes off. She keeps looking at me. We are the only two
women here. We are at different corners with a wide gaping space in between. Both of
us are silent; our silences have different textures. As soon as the gathering breaks for

lunch, we seek each other out. I write the following poem in my journal later.

You searched my face

my hands and feet

for markers defining my identity
perplexed,

you ask me , ‘what does your husband do?’
On not getting a prompt answer,

you hesitate.

and change the question and ask about my father...

109

A woman
defined by the identity of a husband
or a father
nowhere in the picture
yet,
who needs to be located to complete the picture.
You look at me again,
in admiration,
awe,
maybe disapproval?
of my independence and ability to defy the markers
that you seek
our hands held,
and silences overlap,
as we try to bridge the gulf that separates us
and fathom the life worlds that are ours
the disjuncture
and connections
that bind

and separate us

**

In my other interaction with women in Ranpur, where the comfort level is greater due

to longer interaction, women ask more directly. Why don’t I put on a bindi, verrnillion in
my hair parting, and what about a toe ring to mark my married status? There used to be a
time when I would take care to put these markers on when I went to the field. That was
years ago. Yes, I had toe-rings and bangles as part of my ‘field-kit’. I no longer feel the

need to conform, and am comfortable in shaking the norms a bit. Now, I ask them—what

110

about the man? Does he wear these signs of being married? I wonder what, if any, ripples
these questions create. Ripples, simmering fires, and unanswered questions that we carry '
and deal with, in our respective worlds.

**

There are also numerous individual-level interactions that do not find a place in the
writing of the aggregate story that one tends to privilege. For example, the young woman
who asks me why don’t I have another child? She pointedly asks me if I ‘cannot’. She is
dealing with infertility, but does not have the money to consult a doctor. She babysits the
child of visiting migrant laborers, and then cries for days after the migrant laborers and
the child are gone. Or the woman who talks enthusiastically about going from house to
house in her village and neighboring villages, getting parents to immunize their kids. Her
11-year-old daughter, born after 16 years of marriage, is affected by polio. Many, many
faces, and their stories - what does a researcher do with these? They do not fit in and are
not written about.

*1!

Why do you come knocking at my door?

random memories

of a wistful smile, raised eyebrows,

restrained giggles and
bewildered looks
wondering at the luxury of a researcher, perhaps?

A researcher
who has options...
to be here or someplace else
to wander in your world

111

share a moment or two
gather stories
pain
hopes
and more...
and then leave...
to weave stories
in solitary places
stories
that may travel and find their way back
or get lost

Why do you come knocking at my door?
Memories of shared life spaces
and broken promises... ..

Most of my interactions in my research setting make my researcher identity non-
salient. However, there are also some interactions in which my researcher identity is i
brought center stage and employed in the politics of legitimacy, and in which my
researcher voice might or might not count. When I objected to donor funding for OJM on
the grounds that it would disrupt the federation-building process, another NGO leader
commented snidely that maybe I was concerned that my research would be dead and my
PhD in jeopardy if that happened.

a a:

17 May 2009: I have just finished a nice lunch of gobhi-paratha39 and methi-mutter‘m.
My son walks into the kitchen and I take out another packet of frozen parathas from the

fridge for him. I slowly take out individual parathas separated by plastic foils from a

 

’9 Indian flat-bread stuffed with cauliflower.
’0 A dish made with fenugreek leaves and green peas.

112

pack that says ‘Product of India’. I am at the last stages of finishing my dissertation and
have been relying on frozen food. As 1 transition from the packaged food to my
dissertation packet and get back to writing about environmental subjectivity, I wonder
about my own environmental ‘subjectivity’ and ecological footprints consuming food
shipped from India and imported by a company based in California.

To calm my disquiet, I step out into the garden, an artificially constructed landscape,
but a ‘field’ that allows me to explore how my own relationship with the plants that grow
here is embodied and shaped by the care (or not) that I put into this space. I walk back
and shift from this paper to one that discusses environmental subjectivity in the forested
landscapes of Orissa. Despite my commitment to reflexive text, my ‘self’ is missing from
that text, and local voices are missing from this text. I do not know how to bring the two

together.

Concluding Thoughts: Evocative Ethnography as a Si(gh)ting
Technology

Reflexivity involves constant dialogue between researcher, data, and the research
process, and constant scrutiny of the basis of knowing what we know (Hertz, 1997) in
order to question the construction and interpretation of one’s field experience (Clifford
and Marcus, 1986; Rabinow, 1986; Van Maanen, 1988). It involves looking both inward
and outward, in terms of the researcher’s relation to her research and in terms of ‘the
wider world’, while being cognizant of the limitations of the transparently knowable self
(Rose, 1997). Instead of keeping research-related dilemmas private, a reflexive text
invites readers into the world of situated and partial knowledge construction. In this

paper, I have reflected on my positionality and issues of power in my research context. In

113

a reflexive text, as the analytical gaze shifts to the self, the boundaries between the
researcher and the researched, and ‘field’ and ‘not field’, become blurred. The self also
becomes the researched and the field.

I shared an earlier version of this paper in the form of a collage of vignettes and
poems with my practitioner colleagues in Orissa. Unlike my academic writing, which no
one bothered to read, my colleagues read this and said that this writing spoke to them. It
stirred emotions and brought forth other stories and reflections. I experienced what Behar
(1996) describes as, ‘When you write vulnerably, others respond vulnerably.’ Some of
the readers felt like writing similarly. More importantly, it made my colleagues pause and
reflect on the richness of their everyday experience and its value. To them, such writing
demonstrated alternate ways of expressing, connecting, or making sense of the context
that frames their lives. I was struck by the power of narrative writing in helping liberate
practitioners’ voices. During my work as a practitioner, I have been continually frustrated
at the stifling of local voices due to the tyranny of academic speak. Activists involved in
processes of social change have special knowledge, but this knowledge tends to get lost
due to the hold of ‘academic styles of writing’ and formal modes of ‘presentation’,
representation and knowledge production.

Furthermore, my colleagues’ response and the extent to which they related to this
writing made me realize that such writing can help create ‘sites’ from collective sighting.
This allows people to view and make visible the matrix of power that they face, but
which they do not always see or find the time and space to reflect and vocalize. It made

me appreciate narrative writing as a Si(gh)ting technology that allows creation of

114

 

spatialized localities from which to see from below and with which to de-center dominant
ways of seeing and knowing. In some ways, such writing—especially, for example, the
description of the meeting to discuss Vision 2020 for Orissa’s forests—created sites or
spatialized localities from which to sight and make power terrain more easily visible. And
this form of writing made this process of Si(gh)ting a collective process. Such writing
draws readers in to show rather than tell, and the ‘sight’ or the ‘show’ quality of such

writing opens spaces for speaking to power and for alternate imagination.

115

 

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