State sciences and development histories: Encoding local forestry knowledge in Bengal

Informed by debates on development discourse, local knowledge, and the hist ory of colonial conservation, this article argues for a careful historical investigation of the manner in which scientific managerial knowledge emerge s in the field of forestry. It makes its case by focusing on the specific p eriod in the history of Bengal (1893-1937) when scientific forestry was for malized and institutionalized. The processes and conflicts through which lo cal knowledge gets encoded as scientific canon have to be understood to gen erate effective managerial devolution in participatory projects. This requi res an engagement with public understandings of science as practice that ar ises from a dynamic critique of static, and undifferentiated, notions of de velopment discourse or local knowledge.