Saint Catherine St.

The silvicultural agenda of colonial foresters working in the Himalaya was the transformation of mixed forests of conifers and broad-leaved species into pure strands of commercially valuable conifers. this manipulation of a delicate and imperfectly understood ecosystem was further complicated by the competing demands exercised on the forest by the peasantry even if the assertion of the forest by the state redefined customer use as forest ‘crime’, it could not, within the framework of colonial administration, completely eliminate ‘illegal’ use by peasants. Like the German counterpart, colonial foresters had therefore to overcome the social obstacles to sustained yield. Faced with a set of constraints that were both ecological as well as social, British foresters arrived at two mutually reinforcing solutions and instrumental level, they carefully regulated peasant access by restricting it to areas of forest not deemed commercially profitable. While completely forbidden to enter areas under commercial working, peasants were by no means at liberty to use the rest of the forest at will. The detailed provisions of the 1878 act sharply defined (and delimited) the amount of fuel, fodder, etc. each family was allowed to take from the forest. at the same time, the punitive sanctions of the act were strong deterrence to its transgressions at a deeper epic level. The language of scientific forestry worked to justify the shift towards commercial working. The terms ‘valuable’ and ‘desirable’ and the prefix ‘inferior’, used mainly to refer to oaks, bear no relation to ecological and other functions of species thus described may perform for the surrounding countryside. By a similar act of redefinition, one that rested on the prior usurpation of ‘legal’ rights of ownership by the state, many uses the forest were designated its enemies. Thus the management profile of each forest division, the so-called ‘working plans’, while indicating possible sources of injury to the forest crop, includes men in the same category as natural hazards and wild animals.

[…] The strategies forged by forestry science and legislation manipulated agrarian practices by carefully regulating the intrusion and exclusion of ‘man’, classified in the terminology of forestry science as one of the ‘enemies’ of the forest. Not surprisingly the dislocation of agrarian practices that follow the imposition of state monopoly was to have far reaching consequences.

Has Been (2004, Shout! Factory, SHO 518535 2)

Like turning the pages of a novel I once read, I remember Your black hair, the faint scent of jasmine, gathered in my arms. If you would understand these feelings of mine, Show me your usual smile. Once in their life, a person throws away everything and tries to risk it all.

GARRY WINOGRAND (1928 - 1984)

Untitled,New York City, 1968