"Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 2"

Vandergeest, Peter, and Nancy Lee Peluso. “Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 2.” Environment and History 12, no. 4 (Nov., 2006): 359–93. doi:10.3197/096734006779093640. This paper examines the origins, spread and practices of professional forestry in Southeast Asia, focusing on key sites in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Part One, in Environment and History 12, no. 1 (Feb., 2006), challenged popular and scholarly accounts of colonial forestry as a set of simplifying practices exported from Europe and applied in the European colonies. Here, in Part Two, the influence on forestry of knowledge and management practices exchanged through professional-scientific networks is examined. The authors find that while colonial forestry established some management patterns that were extended after the end of colonialism, it was post-colonial organisations such as the FAO that facilitated the construction of forestry as a kind of empire after World War II. In both periods, new hybrid forestry practices were produced as compromises with the ideal German and FAO forestry models through interactions with local ecologies, economies and politics. These hybrid practices were incorporated into and helped constitute the two empire forestry networks. All rights reserved. © 2006 The White Horse Press