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Building the town in the country: official understandings of fire, logging and biodiversity in Oaxaca, Mexico, 1926–2004

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2006

ANDREW S. MATHEWS
ANDREW S. MATHEWS
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Florida International University, University Park, DM 336A, Miami, FL 33143, [email protected]
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Abstract

In this paper I outline the institutional history of forestry and conservation in Mexico and describe changing understandings of fire and forest production. Industrial forestry has lost legitimacy with urban audiences, whilst conservation and biodiversity protection have gained increasing moral authority and financial clout. Conservationists in Oaxaca see forests as a location for biodiversity protection and ecotourism. Conservationists' representations of logging and agropastoral fires are widely supported by urban audiences, and may threaten the economic base of Mexico's community forestry movement. Paradoxically, these conceptions of nature suppress the ecological knowledge both of conservationists and rural people.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Anthropology , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , October 2006 , pp. 335 - 359
Copyright
Cambridge University Press 2006

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Footnotes

The data presented in this article is drawn from ethnohistorical research on Mexican forestry and conservation institutions in Oaxaca and Mexico City, and in forest communities in the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca, carried out between 1998 and 2002, including over 140 interviews, notes from meetings, and archival and biological data.