Shifting images of the ‘community’: community-based politics and women's citizenship in India and Sweden

Abstract

The 1990s have been the decade of state decentralisation both in India and in Sweden. Decentralisation of political power has been accompanied by the rhetoric of community participation in natural resource management and rural development initiatives. In light of this, questions about whom or what constitutes the ‘community’ and ‘the local’ take on important connotations. Women and men living in many rural areas (often peripheral in relation to State and other decision-making structures) have sought to ‘redefine’ community citizenship and their relationships with the forests and nature around them. They have tried to play a more active and responsible role in the relationships that they already share by virtue of living together with the forests. Although considerable research has now turned to look at these processes, the gendered nature of these efforts is often subsumed in all-encompassing terms such as community, state or forests. Research with women in two forest communities, one in Sweden and the other in India illustrated that natural resource management is clearly gendered and has tangible effects on the gendering of citizenship in rural areas.