Instituting Nature : Authority, Expertise, and Power in Mexican Forests.

Intro -- Contents -- Series Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Glossary of Institutions -- Chapter 1. Introduction -- Setting the Stage -- Uncertain Authority -- Indigenous Bureaucracy in Oaxaca -- State-Making and the Production of Knowledge and Ignorance -- Making Things Technical, Making Things Political -- Writing Resistance Into History: Nature, Culture, and Human Agency -- Methods -- Chapter 2. Building Forestry in Mexico: Ambitious Regulations and Popular Evasions -- A Brief History of Mexican Forests -- Revolution and Environmental Order -- Mexican Environmentalism and the Valley of Mexico -- Regulating Forests -- Dangerous Papers: Transport Documents and Burning Permits -- Forest Industrialization as Progress, 1940 - 1972 -- The Decline of Industrial Forestry and the Rise of Community Forestry -- Foresters' Careers: From State Employees to Private Entrepreneurs -- Bureaucratic Transparency and the Opacity of Local Knowledge -- Political Culture: Stable Discourses and Unstable Institutions -- Chapter 3. The Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca: Mobile Landscapes, Political Economy, and the Fires of War -- The Environment of the Sierra Juárez: Topography, Climate, Vegetation, and Cultivation -- Conquest, Demographic Collapse, and Commodity Production -- The Sierra Ju á rez as Military Landscape -- Making Communal Territory in the Sierra Juárez -- The Mining Boom of the Nineteenth Century -- Impacts of Fire and Grazing on Nineteenth-Century Landscapes -- Unleashing the Fires of War: Revolution in the Sierra, 1912 - 1925 -- Mobile Pines and Changing Forests -- Landscapes in Motion: Pines, Oaks, and Fires -- Chapter 4. Forestry Comes to Oaxaca: Bureaucrats, Gangsters, and Indigenous Communities, 1926 - 1956 -- Forestry Comes to Oaxaca -- Cárdenas in Oaxaca: Community Politics and Environmental Restoration.

Zapotec Views of Forests and Agriculture Before the Arrival of Industrial Logging -- Relationship Between Forests and Climate -- The Impact of the Forest Service Between 1930 and 1956 -- Fire Suppression and Climate Control in the Sierra -- State Nature Rituals: The Día del Árbol -- Logging in the Sierra, 1934-1956 -- Biological Impacts of Logging -- The Defeat of State Elites and the Rise of Industrial Logging -- Traveling Theories: Official Ideology and Popular Understandings ofForests -- Chapter 5. Industrial Forestry, Watershed Control, and the Rise of Community Forestry, 1956-2001 -- The Floods of 1944 and the Creation of the Papaloapan Commission -- Industrial Forestry Arrives in Oaxaca -- Forestry Meets Resistance: Negotiations over Logging -- Economic and Ecological Impact of Logging, 1958-1982 -- The Struggle Against FAPATUX and the Rise of Community Forestry -- Indigenous Identity and the Struggle for Control of the Forests -- Land Use Change in Ixtlán, 1945 - 2001: The Decline of Agriculture -- Fire Becomes Wild as People Become Urban: The Decline of Agriculture and the Rise of Forestry -- Community Forestry: Resistance, Hybridization, or Appropriation? -- Imposing Degradation Histories on the State -- Traditional Agroecological Knowledge as a Critique of Modern Forestry -- Discourse, Power, and Memory -- Chapter 6. The Mexican Forest Service: Knowledge, Ignorance, and Power -- Conventional Knowledge at the Convention: Bureaucratic Authority and the Rhetoric of Numbers -- State Power and the Danger of Public Secrets -- Representing Success, Silencing Failure: Rhetoric of Fire and Firewood -- Knowledge-Making in the Labyrinth: Bureaucratic Careers and the Danger of Reports -- Portraits of Three Functionaries -- Institutional Instability and Personal Uncertainty -- Translating and Obscuring within the Bureaucracy.

Obscurity, Numbers, and Translations -- Regulations, Representations, and Alliances: Fire Control, Firewood Cutting, and Tree Planting -- Fire and Firewood Regulations: Performing a Knowing Institution -- Conclusions -- Chapter 7. The Acrobatics of Transparency and Obscurity: Forestry Regulations Travel to Oaxaca -- Institutional Ecologies in Oaxaca -- Daily Paperwork at Headquarters -- Tricky Allies -- Corruption Stories and Professional Life -- Acrobatics of Transparency: Fire, Firewood, and Management Plans -- Fire, Firewood, and the Rhetoric of Transparency -- State-Making and Knowledge -- Chapter 8. Working the Indigenous Industrial -- Traveling to Ixtlán -- Making Knowledge by Appealing to Other Places -- Community and Indigeneity -- Politics and Cargos -- Office Holding -- Building Bureaucracy in the Forest -- Alliance Building and Brokerage -- State and Community Alliances -- Conclusions -- Chapter 9. Conclusion -- Appendix -- Notes -- References -- Index.

A study of how encounters between forestry bureaucrats and indigenous forest managers in Mexico produced official knowledge about forests and the state.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.