Practices of assemblage and community forest management

Abstract

Abstract Abstract Governmental interventions that set out to improve the world are assembled from diverse elements – discourses, institutions, forms of expertise and social groups whose deficiencies need to be corrected, among others. In this article I advance an analytic that focuses on practices of assemblage – the on-going labour of bringing disparate elements together and forging connections between them. I identify six practices that are generic to any assemblage, whatever its specific contours: 1) forging alignments, 2) rendering technical, 3) authorizing knowledge, 4) managing failures, 5) anti-politics, and 6) reassembling. I demonstrate the power of this analytic through an extended study of community forest management. This is an assemblage that brings together an array of agents (villagers, labourers, entrepreneurs, officials, activists, aid donors, scientists) and objectives (profit, pay, livelihoods, control, property, efficiency, sustainability, conservation). Its very unwieldiness helps to sharpen analysis of how such an assemblage is, in fact, assembled, and how it has been sustained for more than thirty years, absorbing hundreds of millions of dollars in programmes from the west coast of Canada to the eastern islands of Indonesia. I do not attempt to adjudicate the rights and wrongs of this assemblage. Rather, I deploy an analytic of assemblage to explore the practices that fill the gap between the will to govern and the refractory processes that make government so difficult. Keywords: governmentalityassemblagecommunityforestrypoliticsIndonesia Thanks to John Clarke, Donald Moore, Jesook Song and the journal's reviewers for critical comments on earlier versions. My work has been supported by Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council through standard grants and through the Canada Research Chair program, and by a writing grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation programme on Global Security and Sustainability. Notes 1. See also Dean (1999: 21) and Rose (1999: 52). 2. For an outline of the concept of government as the ‘conduct of conduct’ and intervention in the relations between ‘men and things’ to secure the welfare of the population, see Foucault (1991 Foucault, M. 1991. “‘Governmentality’”. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Edited by: Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]). See also Dean (1999), Gordon (1991 Gordon, C. 1991. “‘Governmental rationality: an introduction’”. In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Edited by: Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]) and Rose 1999). I explore ‘the will to improve’ in Li (2007). 3. Barry (2001 Barry, A. 2001. Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society, London: Athlone. [Google Scholar]: 10–11, 218, fn. 38) similarly stresses agency, process and emergence over the kind of completed order suggested by Foucault's term dispositif. See the extended ethnographic treatment of assemblage as emergence in Moore (2005 Moore, D. 2005. Suffering for Territory: Race, Place, and Power in Zimbabwe, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 4. See Rose (1999 Rose, N. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 19) and Dean (1999 Dean, M. 1999. Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, London: Sage. [Google Scholar]: 31). In Li (2007 Li, T. M. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) I argue for bringing studies of government into dialogue with histories and sociologies of rule without collapsing one into the other. My argument builds upon those of Clarke (2004 Clarke, J. 2004. Changing Welfare, Changing States: New Directions in Social Policy, London: Sage. [Google Scholar]) and O'Malley et al. (1997 O'Malley, P., Weir, L. and Shearing, C. 1997. ‘Governmentality, criticism, politics’. Economy and Society, 26: 501–17. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) who critique the neglect of practice and instability in studies of government. 5. Rose (1999 Rose, N. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 48) calls this process ‘translation’, a term that suggests the uni-directional conversion of something that is fixed. I prefer ‘forging alignments’, which leaves open the question of how lines are adjusted to accommodate divergent agendas. See O'Malley (1996 O'Malley, P. 1996. ‘Indigenous governance’. Economy and Society, 25: 310–26. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Li (1999 Li, T. M. 1999. ‘Compromising power: development, culture and rule in Indonesia’. Cultural Anthropology, 14: 1–28. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) for empirical studies of how programmes were altered by their ‘target groups’. 6. See Rose (1999 Rose, N. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 33) on the bounding and dissecting of a technical domain. 7. See Ferguson (1994 Ferguson, J. 1994. The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]: 270) and Mitchell (2002 Mitchell, T. 2002. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Technopolitics, Modernity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 8. On the attempt to constitute active citizens while containing critique, see Cruikshank (1999 Cruikshank, B. 1999. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 9. For a helpful discussion of changing concepts of agency in the earlier and later Foucault, see Dupont and Pearce (2001 Dupont, D. and Pearce, F. 2001. ‘Foucault contra Foucault: rereading the “governmentality” papers’. Theoretical Criminology, 5: 123–58. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]: 144). 10. Scott (1998 Scott, J. C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]) outlines the combination of utopic dreams and concentrated powers under which high modern schemes emerged. I situate Scott's approach in relation to studies of governmentality in Li (2005 Li, T. M. 2005. ‘Beyond “the state” and failed schemes’. American Anthropologist, 107: 383–94. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Compare Cruikshank (1999 Cruikshank, B. 1999. The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 42) on government as an accretion of ‘small things’ rather than totalizing systems. Karl Polanyi neatly captured the contrast when he argued that the creation of an unfettered market for land and labour in the nineteenth century was a grand utopian scheme – ideologically driven then as it is in its contemporary neo-liberal guise. Yet the array of interventions needed to keep populations alive and productive under market conditions emerged in piecemeal and pragmatic fashion: ‘Laissez-faire was planned’, he argued, ‘planning was not’ (Polanyi 1957 Polanyi , K. ( 1957 [1944] ) The Great Transformation , Boston, MA : Beacon Press . [Google Scholar] [1944]: 141). 11. Deleuze and Guattari (1987 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]: 85–91, passim). 12. Scott (1995 Scott, D. 1995. ‘Colonial governmentality’. Social Text, 43: 191–220. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 202) citing the ‘preeminent governmentalist’ Jeremy Bentham. 13. For an example, see Banuri and Marglin (1993 Banuri , T. and Marglin , F.A. (eds) ( 1993 ) Who Will Save the Forest? Knowledge, Power and Environmental Destruction , London : Zed Books . [Google Scholar]). 14. See Rose (1999 Rose, N. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 174). 15. See Gauld (2000 Gauld, R. 2000. ‘Maintaining centralized control in community-based forestry: policy construction in the Philippines’. Development and Change, 31: 229–54. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) on the Philippines and Fairhead and Leach (2003 Fairhead, J. and Leach, M. 2003. Science, Society and Power: Environmental Knowledge and Policy in West Africa and the Caribbean, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: 142–5, 150) on Guinea. 16. Huijsman and Savenije (1991: 25, quoted in Benda-Beckmann and Benda-Beckmann 1999a Benda-Beckmann , F. von and Benda-Beckmann , K. von ( 1999a ) ‘Community based tenurial rights: emancipation or indirect rule?’ , In K. von Benda-Beckmann and H. F. Finkler (eds) Papers of the XIth International Congress of the Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism, Moscow August 18–22, 1997 . [Google Scholar]: 1, n. 3). 17. Similar strategies that blend discussion of rights with projects for improvement are present in texts by Owen Lynch and collaborators (Lynch and Harwell 2002 Lynch, O. and Harwell, E. 2002. Whose Natural Resources? Whose Common Good? Towards a New Paradigm of Environmental Justice and the National Interest in Indonesia, Jakarta: Lembaga Studi dan Advokasi Masyarakat (ELSAM). [Google Scholar]; Lynch and Talbott 1995 Lynch, O. J. and Talbott, K. 1995. Balancing Acts: Community-Based Forest Management and National Law in Asia and the Pacific, Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. [Google Scholar]) and the advocacy group Down to Earth (DTE 2002 DTE ( 2002 ) Special Report: Forest, People, Rights , Down to Earth. Available at: . [Google Scholar]). 18. See, for example, the study of invisibilities in the forests of British Columbia by Willems-Braun (1997 Willems-Braun, B. 1997. ‘Buried epistemologies: the politics of nature in (post)colonial British Columbia’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87: 3–31. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 19. Struggles of this kind in Southeast Asian contexts are described in Hirsch (1993 Hirsch, P. 1993. Political Economy of Environment in Thailand, Manila: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers. [Google Scholar]) and Li (2007 Li, T. M. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). See also Rocheleau and Ross (1995 Rocheleau, D. and Ross, L. 1995. ‘Trees as tools, trees as text: struggles over resources in Zambrana-Chacuey, Dominican Republic’. Antipode, 24: 407–28. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 20. In Indonesia, the ‘cases’ of Krui in Sumatra and Bentian in Kalimantan loom large in the advocacy literature. See Fried (2000 Fried, S. G. 2000. “‘Tropical forests forever? A contextual ecology of Bentian rattan agroforestry systems’”. In People, Plants and Justice: The Politics of Nature Conservation, Edited by: Zerner, C. New York: Columbia University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Michon et al. (2000 Michon , G. , Foresta , H. de , Kusworo and Levang , P. ( 2000 ) ‘The Damar agroforests of Krui, Indonesia: justice for forest farmers’ , in C. Zerner (ed.) People, Plants and Justice: The Politics of Nature Conservation , New York : Columbia University Press .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 21. See Agrawal and Gibson (1999 Agrawal, A. and Gibson, C. 1999. ‘Enchantment and disenchantment: the role of community in natural resource conservation’. World Development, 27: 629–50. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 22. My own critical engagement with community forestry fits this pattern (Li 2002 Li, T. M. 2002. ‘Engaging simplifications: community based resource management, market processes and state agendas in upland Southeast Asia’. World Development, 30: 265–83. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 23. On coercive conservation see Neumann (1998 Neumann, R. P. 1998. Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa, Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]) and Peluso (1993 Peluso, N. 1993. ‘Coercing conservation? The politics of state resource control’. Global Environmental Change, 3: 199–217. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 24. See Lynch and Harwell (2002) for the legal advocates’ position and Benda-Beckmann and Benda-Beckmann (1999b Benda-Beckmann, F. von and Benda-Beckmann, K. von. 1999b. “‘A functional analysis of property rights, with special reference to Indonesia’”. In Property Rights and Economic Development: Land and Natural Resources in Southeast Asia and Oceania, Edited by: van Meijl, T. and von Benda-Beckmann, F. London: Kegan Paul International. [Google Scholar]: 19, 37–8) for the anthropologists’ critique. 25. See Baviskar (2001 Baviskar, A. 2001. ‘Forest management as political practice: Indian experiences with the accommodation of multiple interests’. International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, 1: 1–21. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Li (1999), Pannel and Benda-Beckmann (1998: 12, 18), Peluso (1992 Peluso, N. 1992. Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Vandergeest and Peluso (1995 Vandergeest, P. and Peluso, N. L. 1995. ‘Territorialization and state power in Thailand’. Theory and Society, 24: 385–426. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 26. Campbell (2002 Campbell, J. 2002. “‘Differing perspectives on community forestry in Indonesia’”. In Which Way Forward? People, Forests and Policy Making in Indonesia, Edited by: Colfer, C. P. and Resosudarmo, I. A. P. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future/ CIFOR/ISEAS. [Google Scholar]: 115) and Li (2001 Li, T. M. 2001. ‘Masyarakat Adat, difference, and the limits of recognition in Indonesia's forest zone’. Modern Asian Studies, 35: 645–76. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 27. On the rise of managerialism in environmental discourse to the displacement of politics, see Brosius (1999 Brosius, J. P. 1999. ‘Green dots, pink hearts: displacing politics from the Malaysian rain forest’. American Anthropologist, 101: 36–57. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Hajer (1995 Hajer, M. 1995. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) and Scoones (1999 Scoones, I. 1999. ‘New ecology and the social sciences: what prospects for a fruitful engagement?’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 28: 479–507. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Harmony practices are described in Keeley and Scoones (1999 Keeley , J. and Scoones , I. ( 1999 ) Understanding Environmental Policy Processes: A Review , Institute of Development Studies Working Paper 89 . [Google Scholar]). 28. Schroeder (1999 Schroeder, R. 1999. ‘Community, forestry and conditionality in the Gambia’. Africa, 69: 1–22. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) describes the numerous and stringent ‘conditionalities’ applied to community forest management in the Gambia. 29. The donor demand for NGOs to have authentic constituencies is discussed by Jim Igoe (2003 Igoe, J. 2003. ‘Scaling up civil society: donor money, NGOs and the pastoralist land rights movement in Tanzania’. Development and Change, 34: 863–85. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 30. See Anau et al. (2002 Anau, N., Iwan, R., Heist, M. van, Limberg, G., Sudana, M. and Wollenberg, E. 2002. Forest, Science and Sustainability: The Bulungan Model Forest: Technical Report Phase 1 1997–2001, ITTO Project PD 12/97 Rev.1(F), Bogor: CIFOR. [Google Scholar]), Lynch and Harwell (2002: 87–90) and McCarthy (2000 McCarthy, J. 2000. ‘Wild Logging’: The Rise and Fall of Logging Networks and Biodiversity Conservation Projects on Sumatra's Rainforest Frontier, Bogor: Center for International Forestry Research. [Google Scholar]). 31. Fairhead and Leach (2003: 151–3) describe the role of donor funds in assembling community forestry in Guinea. 32. I make this argument in the context of Indonesia in Li (2001). 33. The World Bank's new version of the programme has attempted to correct the problem, apparently without success (World Rainforest Movement 2005). 34. The Joint Forest Management programme in India has received massive donor investments, mainly in the form of loan funds from the World Bank (Sundar 2000 Sundar, N. 2000. ‘Unpacking the “joint” in joint forest management’. Development and Change, 31: 255–79. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; World Rainforest Movement 2005 World Rainforest Movement ( 2005 ) ‘The great “community forest management” swindle in India: critical evaluation of an ongoing World Bank-financed project in Andhra Pradesh’ , WRM Bulletin 93 . [Google Scholar]). In Francophone West Africa a similar approach, known as ‘gestion des terroires’ (territorial management), has been widely pursued. There have been forty projects covering 2500 villages at a cost of US$280 million in Burkina Faso alone (Batterbury 1998 Batterbury, S. 1998. ‘Local environmental management, land degradation and the “gestion des terroirs” approach in West Africa: policies and pitfalls’. Journal of International Development, 10: 871–98. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 872). 35. An evaluation of the community management programme of Canada's International Development Research Center applauds its provision of well-documented case studies of pilot projects as ‘learning opportunities’ that prove ‘the validity of the concept’ and demonstrate to policy-makers that alternatives to (failed) state management do exist (Gonsalves and Mendoza 2003 Gonsalves , J. and Mendoza , L. ( 2003 ) External Review of IDRC's Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) Program Initiative (PI) in Asia, Final Report , International Development Research Centre. [Google Scholar]: 4). The authors note that the programme has not yet produced policy shifts or commitments by government agencies to scale up pilot projects, although they expect this ‘pay off’ to occur in future years (Gonsalves and Mendoza 2003: 14, 28, 37, 41). Nowhere do they raise the possibility that existing state management regimes serve vested interests. All that is lacking for improved management is perfected technique, generated in projects and packaged in ‘methods briefs’ and ‘policy briefs’ (see Gonsalves and Mendoza 2003: 24–5, 38). Fairhead and Leach (2003: 48) also note the intrinsic anti-politics of donor-sponsored ‘projects’ that supply resources without threatening entrenched interests. 36. Fairhead and Leach (2003: 150) describe donors’ narration of their role in protecting forest villagers from corrupt state foresters. 37. Ford's work on community management in India was dominated by an ‘exemplary place’ – a village called Sukhomajri in which the model was perfected. The model proved very expensive to create and maintain and could not be replicated in large part because the state bureaucracy saw little to gain from it. The institutional imperatives of the village were studied exhaustively, but those of the state apparatus were overlooked. See Baviskar and Saberwal (2002: 54–9). 38. ‘Reform’ signals the period that began in 1998 with the resignation of Suharto, president for thirty-two years. Decentralization of control over natural resources to hundreds of district governments was a measure introduced by his successor, Habibie, with donor support. 39. Fairhead and Leach (2003: 101–5) describe a corralled consultation process convened by Conservation International that was set up to confirm prior framings, although various sets of participants ‘saw through’ the process leaving it unclear whether ‘consensus and support’ had in fact been produced. 40. This document is in Indonesian. All translations are my own. 41. See McCarthy (2006 McCarthy, J. 2006. ‘Neoliberalism and the politics of alternatives: community forestry in British Columbia and the United States’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96: 84–104. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) on the neoliberal inflection of community forestry on Canada's west coast. 42. See critiques in Food First (2002 Food First ( 2002 ) ‘Land for those who work it, not just for those who can buy it: negative impacts of World Bank land policies’ , Food First: News and Views 25 . [Google Scholar]). 43. See (accessed 30 January 2007) for an updated statement of this platform. 44. See Fairhead and Leach (2003: 42).