Growing Political: Violence,Community Forestry,and Environmental Defender Subjectivity |
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| Authors: | Hollie Grant |
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| Institution: | Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada |
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| Abstract: | Why do environmental defenders continue to participate in community-based efforts to protect the environment despite threats to their lives and minimal success in deterring or punishing offenders? Examining Community Forestry initiatives in Cambodia, we find that forest protection is not only a means to gain environmental, economic, or social benefits, but also a means for forest defenders to assert themselves as political actors in relation to the state and other citizens. Rather than simply repressing and disciplining forest dwelling populations, violence against defenders shapes their subjectivity and re-politicizes their lives. Distinguishing between various forms of violence associated with different illicit forest users, we highlight how forest protection becomes a means of political self-expression and rights-based resistance as forest defenders reinterpret direct violence through experiences and understandings of structural and symbolic violence. Participation in CF thus unlocks ways of being political and contesting oppressive structures while acting within sanctioned institutions. |
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| Keywords: | Environmental defenders forests land grab political ecology subjectivity violence |
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