Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Swedish forests are predominantly managed by rotational forestry in monocultures. This management approach dominates as an industrial paradigm oriented toward economic optimisation and comes with implications for the socio-ecological landscape. Private forest management constitutes an element of this paradigm, due to the provision of materials to industries, the consumption of advisory services coupled to these industries, and the utilisation of machinery. Yet a few scattered private forest owners enact through local situated practices clearcut-free forest management. Illuminating these practice accounts creates understanding on what clearcut-free management is as a set of practices. In this thesis, I investigate what clearcut-free forest management constitutes in practice. This is to understand how practices interact in complexes in the wider social settings they are embedded in. I do so by drawing on social practice theory undertaking a secondary analysis of 25 practice accounts of private forest management performing clearcut-free management in Sweden. Interviews with private forest owners, sampled using a snowballing approach, were analysed in three coding steps. In these 1) data was inductively coded dismantling interview narratives, 2) practices were reconstructed, and 3) patterns of shared elements and complexes investigated as their reconfiguration of private forest management and embeddedness in wider settings. The analysis shows that it is not solely alternative silvicultural methods, but a reconfiguration of conventional private forest management. Two configurations are identified; i) partial estate clearcut-free management, emerging opportunistically in response to disturbances or testing-oriented in particular areas of a holding, and ii) whole-estate clearcut-free management rearticulates a rethinking of how forest is planned, managed, and worked. Across both configurations, established industrial practice elements, relationships, and economic meanings are reproduced. The here investigated clearcut-free management practiced in the private sphere is not understood as a departure from the industrial forestry paradigm, rather conventional practice elements are selectively retained and/or modified. It also includes forest owner pro-activeness, practical know-how, peer-based learning and legitimising, and reconfigured relations to advice. Peer networks can contribute to the reproduction of the practice through knowledge exchange, material examples and a sense of belonging, while trusted individual advisors can help owners to translate their visions into practice. Overall, clearcut-free forest management represents a partial reconfiguration of conventional private forestry strongly remaining embedded in the materials and meanings of the industrial forestry complex in Sweden. A few scattered private owners actively negotiate what meaningful clearcut-free forest management can be. This is investigation is a first step in dissecting alternative practiced forestry in Sweden. More research looking at actual practiced realities is needed.