What ‘counts’ in international forest policy research? A conference ethnography of valuation practice and habitus in an interdisciplinary social science field

Abstract

In this paper, we examine implicit values, norms and orientations that guide international forest policy research (FPR). We link Bourdieu's praxeological theory and valuography to empirically grasp disciplinary habitus manifesting in valuation practice at International Forest Policy Meetings. Conferences provide spaces where scholars negotiate ‘what counts’. In presenting and discussing research, they enact values of ‘good’ scholarship that reflect basic orientations of doing science in the field.Based on conference ethnography and reflexive interviews with participants, we identify two dispositions characterising dominant habitus in FPR: an objectivistic understanding of scientificity, and an affective orientation towards forest practice. They reflect in the set of values enacted, including methodical rigour, representativeness, innovativeness, responsiveness and usability/applicability, along with an attachment to forests as shared and connective subject of concern.We explain the prevalence of these values through field-habitus theory with the socio-historical conditions from which FPR in the Global North emerged. Accounts of its history emphasise the emancipation from scientific forestry, and its distinctive identity as a forest-focused field encompassing a wide range of social sciences. However, our findings suggest that FPR has not yet achieved full autonomy, as the value characteristics of ‘good’ science are still aligned with those of the ‘mother disciplines’ and oriented at expectations of external actors.FPR has not yet developed a regime of valuation that does justice to its interdisciplinarity, which prevents the field from utilising its full potential. Prevailing habitus lowers the relevance of normative scholarship that expresses more radical or transformative visions challenging orthodox paradigms. It entrenches an inequality between different strands of research within the field, without anyone intending this. Our study gives input for reflecting values, norms and orientations underlying FPR, and seeks to inform the on-going discourse on its nature, purpose and future in science and society.