| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, October 4, 2013 | 4:00PM - 6:00PM | Seminar Room 108N, Munk School of Global Affairs 1 Devonshire Place |
In the Indian state of Odisha, several thousand villages are protecting state-owned forests through community-based arrangements. In this paper, I illustrate how through the daily practices of conserving forests, villagers have not only enriched their landscapes but have also transformed their individual and collective subjectivities. Using ethnographic research, I show how subjects are not only ‘made’ (through ‘governmentality’ and technologies of power) but ‘become’ through embodied practices of ‘living in the environment’ and through affective relations with their human and non-human environment. I discuss how villagers practices of caring for the forests and assisting in its regeneration can be seen as what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri term as ‘affective labor’ in which the mind and the body, reason and passions, intellect and feelings are employed together. I show how affect and emotions are central to local conservation practices that are similar to farming practices of helping plants and animals to grow. I conclude by elaborating on the ‘biopower from below’ of such practices and discuss how this biopower provides ways of challenging capitalist projects of commodifying nature. I will briefly present how I am extending these ideas by considering reframing of transactions in the so-called ecosystem services using ideas of gift and reciprocity to enable more equitable and respectful ways of sharing the burden and the joy of environmental care. Drawing lessons from my use of participatory videomaking in the forested landscapes of Odisha, I will also discuss methodological challenges of studying the ‘liveliness’ of life and paying attention to intersubjective communication between humans and other-than-humans.
Neera Singh is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on democratization of forest governance, forest tenure and local rights and affective dimensions of people’s relations with forests. Prior to her academic career, she founded and led a non-profit organization in India, Vasundhara that works on community forestry and sustainable livelihood issues.
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