Do Differences in Framing Affect Disciplinary Collaborations in Environmental Sciences? The Case of Forestry Research in India

• In Event: Struggles for Power, Legitimacy, and Control between Disciplines within Interdisciplinary Research Organizations - I

Abstract

The Indian foresty debate has been stagnant in the last forty years. The fundamental issue in this debate is the directionality of power: whether the state government or community-based organizations make management decisions about the country’s forest resources. The two opposing forest narratives represent two very different positionalities, with different histories, professions, sensibilities, and relationships with the forests. Assumptions about the perspectives and values held by each side often lead to polarization and further aggravation of the forestry debate.
This paper examines the differences in epistemic framing about forest uses, inhabitants, and forest rights among scientific publications on the Indian Forest Rights Act (2006). This seeks to identify the systemic differences in power that different disciplines accord to different stakeholders in the forestry sector. Based on frame analysis of 120 papers, the results show that when there is a lack of understanding about who is saying what in the debate, and how the dominant narratives get noticed, while the narratives of the less powerful agents get pushed to the margins.
Understanding the differences in how the forests and their stakeholders are seen by the different academic disciplines will be useful in fostering more meaningful interdisciplinary collaborations in environmental management, by accounting for differences in power not only in terms of disciplinary hierarchy but also in terms of how these disciplines approach the things that they study.

Author

• Vanya Bisht, Arizona State University