Fashioned forest pasts, occluded histories? International environmental analysis in West African locales

This article considers how environmental problematics are produced and inte rpreted, using case material from West Africa's humid forest zone. framing the experiences of several countries over the long term, it is possible to identify a deforestation discourse produced through national and internatio nal institutions. This represents forest and social history in particular w ays that structure forest conservation but which obscure the experience and knowledge of resource users. Using fine-grained ethnography to explore how such discourse is experienced and interpreted in a particular locale, the article uncovers problems with 'discourse' perspectives which produce analy tical dichotomies which confront state and villager, and scientific and 'lo cal' knowledges. The authors explore the day-to-day encounters between vill agers and administrators, and the social and historical experiences which c ondition these. Instances where the deforestation discourse becomes juxtapo sed with villagers' alternative ideas about landscape history prove relativ ely few and insignificant, while the powerful material effects of the disco urse tend to be interpreted locally within other frames. These findings pre sent departures from the ways relations between citizen sciences and expert institutions have been conceived in recent work on the sociology of scienc e and public policy.