Power-knowledge Relations Research Articles

Power Knowledge Contestations at a Transforming Free State Higher Education Institution: Learning Guide as a Metaphor

The purpose of this paper is to examine the connection between power relations and knowledge or truth. Foucault developed the idea of a ‘regime’ of truth. For Foucault, truth/knowledge is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which both produce and sustain it, and also to the effects of power which it induces and which extend it. The status of truth plays an economic political role. Power is produced in (and produces) social relations, and so is closely linked with systems of knowledge or truth; or in other words, with discursive practices. This complex and inevitable drama plays itself out in South African higher education institutions under the context of transformation today. The Author abuses the learning guide as a stage on which the power knowledge relations drama unfolds at two merged historically different institutions of higher learning. Critical emancipatory theory lends itself well to allow a focused gaze on the unfolding engagements between the dominant and privileged group against the dominated, excluded, disadvantaged and marginalized group. The unveiling discourses are given meaning through Textually Oriented Discourse Analysis (TODA).

Fair Value vs Conservatism? Aspects of the History of Accounting, Auditing, Business and Finance from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China

To help understand modern financial accounting theory ('FAT') and its role in the development of finance and business, I consider two current mainstream histories of its development and offer a third alternative. The standard setters’ version is that increasingly FAT is rationally derived from a basically coherent conceptual framework, currently focused on 'comprehensive income' as measured by 'changes in assets and liabilities', in turn preferably measured at fair values. However, examination here of several recent FASB/IASB standards and exposure drafts shows that instead they unavoidably bear the marks of the history of a variety of now embedded practices that have shaped thinking about, and vested interests in, what is 'good accounting'. By contrast, some recent academic versions of history focus on how 'conservative', historical-cost based accounting principles have rationally evolved to provide an anchor on which to base appraisal of firms’ and managers’ performance, prospects and risks, and supply the kind of information that investors and other parties in the capital markets need to help overcome the information asymmetry between them and corporate managers. After analyzing the limitations of this second type of history, I argue that even a brief genealogical examination of the conditions of possibility that have led to the growth and changes in accounting and auditing practices and discourses, and in the power-knowledge relations that they have engendered at different stages over the millennia of recorded history, suggests that their power has always been more that of 'institutional rationalized myth'. The twin rational myths of the objectivity of accounting and of auditing together provide the structure that offers the comfort necessary to enable the various agents in the modern, increasingly global, economy to undertake and finance the risks of acting 'at a distance' and across time. This modern, grammatocentric accountability increasingly extends throughout the institutions that coordinate modern societies, in the rising East as well as in the established West. Exploring how much of FAT is rational and reflects some objective 'economic reality' and how much is myth and is subjectively, socially constructed; and, again, how much might be improved and how much is intractable, are the major questions now for accounting, auditing and finance policy-making and research. This requires further detailed comparative international historical understanding of how accounting and auditing have variously operated, within businesses and other organizations and in shaping markets, across different countries and cultures.

Fair value vs conservatism? Aspects of the history of accounting, auditing, business and finance from ancient Mesopotamia to modern China

To help understand modern financial accounting theory (FAT) and its role in the development of finance and business, I consider two current mainstream histories of its development and offer a third alternative. The standard setters' version is that increasingly FAT is rationally derived from a basically coherent conceptual framework, currently focussed on ‘comprehensive income’ as measured by ‘changes in assets and liabilities’, in turn preferably measured at fair values. However, examination here of several recent FASB/IASB standards and exposure drafts shows that instead they unavoidably bear the marks of the history of a variety of now embedded practices that have shaped thinking about, and vested interests in, what is ‘good accounting’. By contrast, some recent academic versions of history focus on how ‘conservative’, historical-cost based accounting principles have rationally evolved to provide an anchor on which to base appraisal of firms' and managers' performance, prospects and risks, and supply the kind of information that investors and other parties in the capital markets need to help overcome the information asymmetry between them and corporate managers. After analysing the limitations of this second type of history, I argue that even a brief genealogical examination of the conditions of possibility that have led to the growth and changes in accounting and auditing practices and discourses, and in the power-knowledge relations that they have engendered at different stages over the millennia of recorded history, suggests that their power has always been more that of ‘institutional rationalised myth’. The twin rational myths of the objectivity of accounting and of auditing together provide the structure that offers the comfort necessary to enable the various agents in the modern, increasingly global, economy to undertake and finance the risks of acting ‘at a distance’ and across time. This modern, grammatocentric accountability increasingly extends throughout the institutions that coordinate modern societies, in the rising East as well as in the established West. Exploring how much of FAT is rational and reflects some objective ‘economic reality’ and how much is myth and is subjectively, socially constructed; and, again, how much might be improved and how much is intractable, are the major questions now for accounting, auditing and finance policy-making and research. This requires further detailed comparative international historical understanding of how accounting and auditing have variously operated, within businesses and other organisations and in shaping markets, across different countries and cultures.

Political Projects, Changing Urban–Rural Relations and Mediating Investment: Insights from Exploring Dairying and Auckland's Spatial Planning in New Zealand

Le Heron R. Political projects, changing urban–rural relations and mediating investment: insights from exploring dairying and Auckland's spatial planning in New Zealand, Regional Studies. The paper outlines recent attempts by New Zealand geographers to influence the balance of knowledge–power relations in decisions concerning the urban–rural environment in contemporary New Zealand. It argues for a link between ‘situated knowledge’ and ‘geographical imagining’ to strengthen understandings about the mobilization of strategic narratives or ‘political projects’ around visions of futures. These ideas inform a genealogy of significant moments in rural–urban relations, and enquiry into political projects at work in a national mini-conference on competition over land use. The paper concludes that framing changing rural–urban relations through the lenses of situated knowledge, geographical imaginaries and political projects greatly extends geographical insights and the capability to engage constructively in investment mediation in new ways. Le Heron R. 政治计画、改变中的城市—乡村关係与中介投资：探索新西兰酪农业与奥克兰空间规划的洞见，区域研究。本文概述当代新西兰地理学者在有关城市—乡村关係的决策中，企图影响知识—权力平衡关係的晚近尝试。本文主张 “情境化知识” 与 “地理想像” 之间的连结，以强化对于动员策略性论述或有关未来愿景的 “政治计画” 之理解。这些概念构成了乡村—城市关係中显着时刻的系谱学，并探讨有关土地使用竞争的全国小型会议中运作的政治计画。本文在结论中主张，透过情境化知识、地理想像与政治计画的视角概念化变迁中的乡村—城市关係，大幅拓展了地理学有建设性地涉入中介投资的洞见与能力之新方式。 后结构政治经济学 情境化知识 地理想像 政治计画 城市—乡村互动 中介投资 Le Heron R. Des projets politiques, le développement des relations urbano-rurales et la médiation des investissements: de nouvelles perspectives provenant d'un examen de la production laitière et de l'aménagement du territoire à Auckland en Nouvelle Zélande, Regional Studies. L'article esquisse des tentatives récentes par des géographes néo-zélandais d'influer l'équilibre du rapport entre le pouvoir et les connaissances dans la prise de décision à propos du milieu urbano-rural dans la Nouvelle-Zélande d'aujourd'hui. Il plaide en faveur d'un lien entre ‘les connaissances contextuelles’ et ‘les imaginaires géographiques’ afin de renforcer la compréhension de la mobilisation des récits stratégiques ou des ‘projets politiques’ autour des prospectives de l'avenir. Ces idées informent une généalogie de moments critiques dans les relations ruralo-urbaines et une enquête sur les projets politiques menés dans une miniconférence nationale ayant pour thème la concurrence pour l'occupation des sols. En guise de conclusion, l'article affirme que définir des relations ruralo-urbaines dans l'optique des connaissances contextuelles, des imaginaires géographiques et des projets politiques élargit sensiblement les perspectives géographiques et la capacité de s'engager de manière constructive dans la médiation des investissements d'une façon nouvelle. Économie politique post-structurelle Connaissances contextuelles Imaginaires géographiques Projets politiques Interactions urbano-rurales Médiation des investissements Le Heron R. Politische Projekte, veränderliche Stadt-Land-Beziehungen und Investitionsvermittlung: Einblicke von der Untersuchung der Milchwirtschaft und Raumplanung in Auckland (Neuseeland), Regional Studies. In diesem Beitrag werden die jüngsten Versuche von neuseeländischen Geografen beschrieben, im Zusammenhang mit den Entscheidungen über die Stadt-Land-Umgebung des heutigen Neuseelands Einfluss auf das Gleichgewicht in der Beziehung zwischen Wissen und Macht zu nehmen. Es wird für eine Verknüpfung zwischen ‘situiertem Wissen’ und ‘geografischen Imaginären’ plädiert, um das Verständnis hinsichtlich der Mobilisierung von strategischen Erzählungen oder ‘politischen Projekten’ im Zusammenhang mit Zukunftsvisionen zu verbessern. Diese Ideen beeinflussen eine Genealogie signifikanter Momente in den Stadt-Land-Beziehungen sowie die Untersuchung der Praxis von politischen Projekten im Rahmen einer nationalen Minikonferenz zum Thema der konkurrierenden Landnutzung. Die Schlussfolgerung lautet, dass eine Betrachtung der veränderlichen Stadt-Land-Beziehungen durch die Objektive des situierten Wissens, der geografischen Imaginären und der politischen Projekte die geografischen Einblicke und die Fähigkeit zur konstruktiven Beteiligung an neuen Arten der Investitionsvermittlung erheblich erweitert. Poststrukturelle politische Ökonomie Situiertes Wissen Geografische Imaginäre Politische Projekte Wechselwirkungen zwischen Stadt und Land Investitionsvermittlung Le Heron R. Proyectos políticos, relaciones urbanas-rurales variables y mediación en inversiones: perspectivas del análisis del sector lácteo y la planificación espacial en Auckland (Nueva Zelanda), Regional Studies. En este artículo se describen los recientes intentos de los geográficos neozelandeses de influir en el equilibrio de las relaciones entre el conocimiento y el poder en lo que respecta a las decisiones sobre el entorno urbano-rural en la Nueva Zelanda actual. Se aboga por un vínculo entre el ‘conocimiento situado’ y el ‘imaginario geográfico’ para comprender mejor la movilización de los relatos estratégicos o ‘proyectos políticos’ sobre las visiones del futuro. Estas ideas ejercen una influencia sobre una genealogía de momentos significativos en las relaciones rurales-urbanas, y en el análisis de los proyectos políticos en el marco de una mini-conferencia nacional sobre la competencia por el uso del suelo. En el artículo se concluye que entender las cambiantes relaciones rurales-urbanas mediante los objetivos del conocimiento situado, los imaginarios geográficos y los proyectos políticos mejora en gran medida las perspectivas geográficas y la capacidad de participar constructivamente y de formas nuevas en la mediación de inversiones. Economía política postestructural Conocimiento situado Imaginarios geográficos Proyectos políticos Interacciones urbanas-rurales Mediación en inversiones

Mental discipline, punishment and recidivism: reading Foucault against de-radicalisation programmes in the War on Terror

This article uses Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to examine how de-radicalisation programmes in the War on Terror transform power–knowledge relations, mental discipline and punishment by attempting to instil self-governance through non-violence. Foucault’s theories on the evolution of discipline and punishment can be applied to de-radicalisation programmes, but only after considerable revision. By asking questions on the nature of knowledge, practice, state involvement and recidivism of de-radicalisation, I contend that many programmes may be ultimately limited by a disproportionate focus on religious rehabilitation rather than political dialogue regarding the motivations for such violence.

Besley on Foucault’s Discourse of Education

The purpose of this study is to examine Foucault’s discourse-oriented theory, his explanation of the power–knowledge relation, his notions of technologies of domination and technologies of the self, and the Foucauldian critique of the assumed neutrality of education and school counseling. The theory that we shall seek to elaborate here puts considerable emphasis on Foucault’s theory of power, his notion of discourse, his understanding of subjectivity, and his analysis of how power relations and discourses shape processes of ethical self-constitution. The results of the current study converge with Besley’s prior research on Foucault’s analysis of education, his theory of language and social power, his non-essentialist conception of identity, and his emphasis on the centrality of truth in relation to the self.

Decontextualized Knowledge, Situated Politics: The New Scientific–Local Politics of Rice Genetic Resources in Thailand

ABSTRACTRecent practices of scientific–local knowledge interaction in Thailand surrounding rice genetic resources have led to a new phenomenon, which this article calls knowledge inclusion. This study explores several forms of knowledge inclusion —participatory science, localized science, scientized knowledge and hybridized knowledge— as new loci of political practices among government rice breeders, non‐governmental officials and farmers. Ethnographic studies are used to reveal that, through selectively incorporating elements of each other's knowledges, these scientific and local knowledge practitioners have drawn on the discourses of scientific–local knowledges to their political advantage. The ramifications of this new politics vary according to different political arenas in rice genetic resource management. Based on these findings, the article argues that recent practices of knowledge inclusion should not be obscured by the notion of situated knowledge, but should be understood as situated politics of decontextualized knowledge in genetic resource management. The argument reconceptualizes the new scientific–local politics as a synthesis between the power–knowledge relation and the power–structural context in which genetic resource management takes place.

Power/knowledge and impact assessment: creating new spaces for expertise in international development

Impact assessment is an important methodology in information and communication technologies for development. It presents the potential to change power knowledge relations between donors, non‐governmental organizations and beneficiaries. Impact assessment offers a new and subtle form of control—shaped by and shaping expertise—influencing how we understand and undertake development.

Strategy making and power in environmental assessments. Lessons from the establishment of an out-of-town shopping centre in Västerås, Sweden

This paper seeks to provide deeper insights into how EA ineffectiveness is produced in land use planning practice. This is explored in a study of local development planning in the city of Västerås, Sweden. The case in question is the development of a large out-of-town shopping centre, propelled by the establishment of a new IKEA furniture store. The Healey (2007) framework of planning as strategy making is applied as an analytical framework, together with a focus on power-knowledge relations. In the analysis, we identify a range of mechanisms that produced ineffectiveness by limiting the role of environmental knowledge throughout the planning process. The specific mechanisms we identified were related to the overall consensus perspective in local development strategies and plans, a lack of concretisation and integration of various policies and strategies, a range of exclusion mechanisms and an overall focus on mitigation and benefits of the process in question. In practice, these mechanisms were closely intertwined. Our main conclusion is, consequently, that increased effectiveness of EA would require fundamental transformation of the norms, frameworks and routines that implicitly and explicitly guide land use planning in practice.

Critical Pedagogies: A Reflexive Approach to Knowledge Creation in Tourism and Hospitality Studies

Being reflexive about the conditions and claims underpinning academic knowledge is a defining aspect of critical tourism and hospitality studies. In this article we explore how criticality has been conceptualised and consider the implications for addressing a major challenge in the field: that is, surfacing the power-knowledge relations that underpin mainstream or normalised ways of thinking. We aim to be reflexive about some of the dangers that exist in relation to the oppositional stance of critical perspectives. By drawing on examples from our own and others critical research and teaching practices we examine how a reflexive approach can enable different types of dialogue, spaces and relationships. We draw on related work in critical management studies and debates within tourism and hospitality to argue for a critical pedagogy that embraces reflexivity as a ‘practice’—a way of doing, thinking and transforming knowledge as we live it.

Foucault and the politics of our selves

Exploring the apparent tension between Foucault's analyses of technologies of domination -- the ways in which the subject is constituted by power-knowledge relations -- and of technologies of the self -- the ways in which individuals constitute themselves through practices of freedom -- this article endeavors to make two points: first, the interpretive claim that Foucault's own attempts to analyse both aspects of the politics of our selves are neither contradictory nor incoherent; and second, the constructive claim that Foucault's analysis of the politics of our selves, though not entirely satisfactory as it stands, provides important resources for the project of critical social theory.

Partnerships between universities and workplaces: some challenges for work-integrated learning

Under contemporary highly competitive markets, organisations are demanding that any investment in learning be converted into productive outcomes that rapidly progress the organisation towards pre-defined strategic goals. A customised work-integrated learning curriculum has the potential to achieve such productive outcomes because it allows learners to quickly contextualise the study content within the socio-cultural and functional environment of the workplace. However, the development of a work-integrated learning curriculum relies on genuine partnerships between the universities and organisations. These types of partnerships require lengthy processes of negotiating the curriculum and pedagogies to support learning based in the workplace. Predictably, such partnerships challenge the traditional roles of the universities as transmitters of discipline specific knowledge and workplaces as less active partners in the learning processes and products. This paper is based on a case study and relates the challenges of developing a partnership, the transformed role of the academics and a more complex design and facilitation of the curriculum. What became evident was that such a partnership was problematic and demanded redistribution of knowledge-power relations between the university and the host organisation. The findings substantiate that successful work-integrated learning that meets the needs of individuals and their workplaces is premised on a learning partnership where the roles for the curriculum and pedagogy are genuinely shared. That such partnerships are integral to successful work-integrated learning and deeply problematic begs for more research to understand the dynamics and ways to approach learning partnerships between universities and organisations.

Sport physiology research and governing gender in sport—a power–knowledge relation?

This article sets out to show how physiological knowledge about sex/gender relates to power issues within sport. The sport physiology research at the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (Swedish acronym: GIH) during the twentieth century is analysed in relation to the political rationality concerning gender at GIH and within the Swedish Sports Confederation during the same period. The analysis is constituted by Michel Foucault's notion of power–knowledge relations and regimes oftruth. The construction of sex/gender in the physiological research changes over time. Comparative studies on the function of ‘sexual difference’ during strenuous work, which, in hindsight, might be seen to restrict women's sport participation, was gradually displaced by a lack of interest in sexual difference, and later by a growing fascination with sexual difference from a ‘gender perspective’ in terms of women being ‘different but equal’ to men. This displacement goes hand in hand with a displacement of the political rationality concerning gender at GIH and within the Swedish Sports Confederation, where a pre-World War II strategy of excluding women's competitive sport participation, restricting women's physical exercise to gymnastics, was after 1945 followed by a strategy of including women. This was at first in the name of ‘women's right to do sport’—where the physiological research advocated this endeavour—and later in the name of ‘women's right to do sport on their own terms’. However, the research was still being conducted based on the male physiology as the norm.

Imaginary subjects: school science, indigenous students, and knowledge–power relations

The perspectives of indigenous science learners in developed nations offer an important but frequently overlooked dimension to debates about the nature of science, the science curriculum, and calls from educators to make school science more culturally responsive or ‘relevant’ to students from indigenous or minority groups. In this paper the findings of a study conducted with indigenous Maori children between the ages of 10 and 12 years are discussed. The purpose of the study was to examine the ways that indigenous children in an urban school environment in New Zealand position themselves in relation to school science. Drawing on the work of Basil Bernstein, we argue that although the interplay between emergent cultural identity narratives and the formation of ‘science selves’ is not as yet fully understood, it carries the potential to open a rich seam of learning for indigenous children.

A Refugee Responds by Writing

Why Abu-Lughod?. The importance of Abu-Lughod in the Palestinian and international scene is due to its role as an advocate for the Palestinian cause and as one of the most prominent representatives of the Palestinian issue in the United States. He is well known for his inimitable ability to organize people and establish institutions for the support of the Palestinian issue. The forced migration in 1948 was a turning point in Abu Lughod’s life that forced him to dedicate his life to defend the Palestinian question. So the question who is Abu-Lughod seems meaningless. But this paper will try to answer who is Abu-Lughod, through shedding the lights on his writings. This apparently simple question leads us to a number of philosophical questions that overlap with each other and engage in dialogue by virtue of its neighboring such as; the power knowledge relation, the representation issue and the post colonial debates.

Re‐storying and visualizing the changing entrepreneurial identities of Bill Gates and Richard Branson

The storytelling in textual and visual re‐constructions of Bill Gates and Richard Branson by their organizations produces entrepreneurial identities bound into particular social power–knowledge relations. Our purpose is to examine how these organizations, and their critics, mobilize storytelling in acts of re‐storying (enlivening) or re‐narrating (branding a monologic) practices using Internet technologies to invite viewers to frame the world of entrepreneurship. We use visual discourse and storytelling methods to analyze how Microsoft and Virgin Group use various kinds of entrepreneurial images and textual narratives to re‐narrate and produce particular brands of capitalism. These organizations’ scoptic regimes of representation are contested in counter‐visualizing and counterstory practices of external stakeholders. We suggest that the image and textual practices of storytelling have changed as both entrepreneurs court philanthropic and social entrepreneur identity markers. Our contribution to entrepreneurial identity is to apply double and multiple narrations, the appropriation of another’s narrative words (or images) into another’s narrative, and relate such storytelling moves to visuality.

Phronesis Through GIS: Exploring Political Spaces of Education*

Distilling the different ways that neoliberal regimes have impacted the governance of public policy and planning is as much a political maneuvering exercise as it is a scholarly endeavor. The process of empirical research that attempts to uncover such impacts is from the very beginning fraught with numerous problems: sifting through rhetorical ambiguities, dealing with agenda-makers and data gatekeepers, and navigating through complex bureaucratic layers of regulations. These all appear in a concerted effort to maintain and protect the interests of the rational state model. This frustration, although not uncommon in increasingly controlling and risk-adverse regimes, further necessitates that researchers draw on an alternative repertoire of skills and understandings. Flyvbjerg's (2001) argument toward critical social science advocating a phronetic approach—an Aristotelian value-laden concept highlighting the importance of “practical wisdom, practical judgment, common sense and prudence” (Flyvbjerg 2004, 284) balanced by Foucault's power–knowledge relations—provides a useful framework in navigating through these procedural hurdles. Reflecting on the process of research exploring various impacts of the neoliberalization of education in Ontario, this article argues that using a hybrid form of phronesis—engaged in reflexive practices, hidden knowledge and unorthodox sources—combined with the contextual dimensionality of geographic information systems (GIS) is useful to better understand the structural barriers in place and to develop a sensitivity to the political and ethical implications involved in exploring the conflicting spaces of education.

The politics of life after death: Ondaatje’s Ghost

This essay relates Ondaatje’s novel to the philosophical fictions of Foucault and others in order to signal the contribution that literary texts can make to a “political and ethical enterprise that carries anti‐racist dissidence into a deeper confrontation with the history, philosophy, and jurisprudence of ‘transmodernity’” (Gilroy 53). Situating the Sri Lankan civil war within broader geopolitical and legal struggles, Ondaatje’s anti‐war novel diagrams the coming‐to‐dominance of new power–knowledge networks across national and ideological divides – biopolitics (defined by Foucault as the fostering of life in each individual and the population as a whole) as it is overtaken by necropolitics (described by Mbembe as the exercise of power through the wholesale threat and dispensation of death). Anil’s Ghost also elaborates alternate forms of power–knowledge relations with the reader. Thus the novel’s object (emergent transmodernity) and method (experimental dislocation of characters’ and readers’ experiences) can contribute significantly to the rerouting of postcolonial studies towards what Negri terms the “non‐place of Empire” (34). Part I analyses how, through a series of dialogical encounters, Anil’s Ghost displaces fundamental axioms that regulate the politics of truth and the politics of international systems of governance. Part II examines the novel’s method: the aesthetic strategies that both perform the displacements and enlist the reader in this ethical project.

The ‘spirit of education’ in Indonesian Pesantren

This paper employs Foucauldian theory to consider Islamic boarding school experiences in Indonesia. For some pupils ‘the spirit of education’ – a dimension of pleasure – comes to be highly valued, creating a lifelong passion for the pursuit of knowledge. Two school principals (both pesantren [Islamic boarding school] graduates themselves) articulated strong commitment to the ‘spirit of education’. Yet their respective boarding schools were very poor, not only by western standards but compared with Indonesian public schools, and conditions were austere. The embodiment of pesantren discourse as high academic achievement is illustrated by the example of Khadija – a young female pesantren graduate now studying at doctoral level in the United Kingdom. Explaining the embodied production of the ‘spirit of education’ demands looking at charismatic pedagogy, strict rules, austere conditions and sparse provision of learning resources as regimes of truth and power–knowledge relations that inhere in pesantren as lived experiences of pupils.

Pathways to Sustainability in the Forest? Misunderstood Dynamics and the Negotiation of Knowledge, Power, and Policy

This paper addresses the challenges of building pathways to Sustainability in the context of contested knowledge and power relations in environment and development. Drawing on two case studies concerning tropical forests in West Africa and the Caribbean, it explores clashes between the conceptions of social–ecological systems embedded in dominant scientific and policy practices, and the more dynamic, nonequilibrial perspectives that emerge from understandings of forest history and users' own experiences. Forest and conservation policy, I find, have persistently ignored these dynamics. Yet, as people and nature have ‘bitten back’, forest histories are revealed as mutually constituting interplays of ecological process, social practice, policy and intervention, and response. Policy makers often do not see this, and are thus surprised when their schemes fail. In this paper, I argue that alternative analytical approaches are needed that take seriously human-ecological dynamics, history, path dependency, and the ways in which different people frame or construct problems, linked with notions of Sustainability that respect diverse goals—including forest users’ own. This, in turn, suggests the need for alternative approaches to the governance of environment and development issues that are more adaptive, deliberative, and reflexive, and for politically engaged efforts to institute these in contexts where pervasive power–knowledge relations perpetuate less dynamic views.