BETWEEN A FOREST AND A HARD PLACE: power, subjectivity and resilience in a

Japanese state-managed forest

Eric John Cunningham
Ecological Anthropology Program
University of Hawaii at Manoa,
ericjc@hawaii.edu

ABSTRACT
Approximately 30% of the forests that blanket the majority of the Japanese archipelago are
owned and managed by the national forestry agency (rinyachou 林野庁). Though Japan’s forests
embody a wealth of biological and cultural diversity due to unique ecological and social histories,
institutionally they tend to be conceived of as monolithic entities to be managed for the benefit of
the nation’s people (koku-min 国民). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Japan’s
Kiso Valley, this paper looks at the governance of national forests and argues that subject
formations associated with the emergence of governing institutions have produced categorical
concepts of “national forest” that are meant to meet the needs and desires of an imagined national
citizenry. Moreover, it argues that through their deployment these subjectivities have been, to
different extents, etched onto physical environments through (mis)management practices and
have allowed for the conceptual removal of local human actors from natural environments, while
limiting their ability to engage in governance. This paper concludes with an exploration of
“resilience thinking” as a possible framework for pursuing governance that fosters social-
ecological resilience through the recognition of multiple environmental subjectivities, inclusion
of local citizens, and consensus-building for decision making.

INTRODUCTION
Despite long histories of human interaction that have produced biologically and culturally diverse

forests in Japan, institutionally they tend to be conceived of as monolithic entities, producing

categorical concepts of “national forests” (国有林) that are meant to meet the needs and desires

of the national citizenry (koku-min 国民). With little reference to local human communities these

institutional “national forests” have, to different extents, been etched onto Japan’s physical

environments through governing arrangements and management practices. In many communities

located adjacent to national forests, ecological transformations, coupled with a lack of meaningful

access to economic resources, are resulting in a host of social and ecological problems that are

fostering distrust, uncertainty, and questioning. Such communities face unsure futures that call

1
for reexaminations of their relationships with the national government, the greater Japanese

society, and their own local environments.

In this paper I draw on fieldwork undertaken in the village of Otaki (王滝村) located in Nagano’s

Kiso Valley (木曽谷) and employ the concept of subjectivity to examine the experience of

national forest governance at the local level. I also discuss “resilience thinking” as a potentially

useful framework for thinking about and implementing governance that is capable of fostering

resilient socio-ecological communities by recognizing multiple subjectivities, incorporating local

citizens, and seeking to build consensus for decision making.

Approximately 30% of the forests that blanket the majority of

the Japanese archipelago are governed by the national forestry

agency (rinyachou 林野庁) (Forestry Agency of Japan 林野庁

2007). Humans have lived in, used, and modified nearly all of

Japan’s forests for thousands of years; therefore, it is reasonable

to think of forest environments and their accompanying human

Figure 1: Distribution of
communities as single phenomena (Balée 1998), which I refer to national forests in Japan
(Forestry Agency of Japan 林
in this paper as “socio-natural environments”. Bennett has 野庁 2007)

argued that socio-natural environments are created as nature is incorporated into socio-cultural

realms through the actions of humans (Bennett 1976). Seen in this way, understanding natural

environments is impossible without understanding the socio-cultural processes with which they

are so intricately interwoven.

2
Subjectivity and the environment

Humans encounter the natural world through sets of socio-cultural beliefs and understandings,

which are carried not only in the minds of individual actors, but also stored and distributed by

informal and formal institutions such as religious customs, festivals, educational systems, and

government agencies. Drawing on post-structuralist approaches, environmental anthropologists

have explored the ways in which cultural discourses influence the ways in which humans

subjectively interpret the natural world through processes whereby realms of possible utterances

are either narrowed or expanded according to the subtle workings of power (Dove 2005; Hualkof

& Escobar 1998). When understood as single phenomena, exploring subject formation in relation

to socio-natural environments requires that attention be given to three interrelated notions of

“subject”. The first is “subject” referring to human (and perhaps non-human) actors as self-

referential subjects in their relationships to the socio-natural environment around them. The

second is “subject” as applied to human and non-human actors in the environment whom are

subordinated. The third relates to the environment and/or its constituent parts, which become

“subjects” vis-à-vis human actors (Agrawal 2005; Foucault 1978). Of course these different

“subjects” overlap to varying extents, so it is also important to attend to the “grey areas” that

emerge from this overlap.

In terms of socio-natural environments it is important to note that subjects are not only ideational,

but also come to be expressed in the material environment through the practices of humans.

Socio-natural environments are made and remade through the cyclical interaction of thoughts,

practices, and materializations. In this milieu, subjects are formulated and reformulated through

interplays with power that work to shape socio-natural environments by enabling and disabling

possible forms of expression, which come to be embodied in institutions and materialized through

human use of the natural environment.

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Timber extraction, governance, and subject formation in Otaki

The village of Otaki sits in a narrow mountain valley at the Fig. 2: Map of Nagano showing
the location of Otaki
base of the holy mountain Ontake-san 御 嶽 山 . Lush

forests cover the mountain’s low foothills that surround the

village. While lower sections of these hills, near the

central part of the village, are comprised for the most part

of broadleaf trees including oak, birch and beech, the

upper sections are dominated by pine varieties—including

the “five famous trees” (五木) of the region (see Table 1).

In addition, large swaths of the mountains in Otaki are Table 1: Common trees of Otaki

Japanese name Scientific name Common name

hinoki 檜 Chamaecyparis obtuse Hinoki cypress

sawara 椹 Chamaecyparis pisifera Sawara cypress

Kiso’s
five
famous nezuko 黒檜 Thuja standishii Japanese thuja
trees
Conifer/
木曽五木
softwoods koyamaki 高野槙 Sciadopitys verticillata Japanese umbrella pine

Japanese
asunaro 翌檜 Thujopsis dolabrata
elk-horn cedar

sugi 杉 Cryptomeria japonica Japanese cedar

Japanese
akamatsu 赤松 Pinus densiflora
red pine
Larix kaempferi
karamatsu 唐松 Japanese larch
Larix leptolepis

konara 小楢 Quercus serrata variety of oak

Broadleaf/ buna 椈
Fagus crenata Japanese beech
hardwoods
kanba 白樺 Japanese
Betula platyphylla
white birch

4
covered only in saplings, while patches of

naked earth dot some sections higher up. Forests in Otaki have long been valued as sources of

timber, and therefore embody a history of exploitation by powerful elites.

Though timber extraction in Otaki began in the sixteenth century when Toyotomi Hideyoshi

seized forestlands in the Kiso Valley to secure timber for monumental construction projects, it

intensified after the Meiji Restoration (1868 A.D.). Under the Meiji regime forests in the Kiso

Valley were recast and claimed as private resources of the imperial family. Western ideas of

private property were introduced through the imposition of a tax system in 1874 A.D. and local

residents, who were accustomed to communal-use of forests, were required to submit proof of

ownership regarding forestlands. Those for which ownership was unproven (which was the

majority) became the property of the imperial family; known

as goryourin (御料林) (Ushiomi 1968). Furthermore, in

1903 an Imperial Forest management office was established

in the town of Kiso-fukushima (木曽福島) and three years

later work began on a forest railroad system for hauling

timber. This railroad system eventually stretched into every

Fig. 3: Map depicting forest rail lines in the
crook and cranny of the Kiso Valley, with over 70
Otaki Valley (Morishita 1998:210-211)
kilometers of rail laid in the Otaki Valley alone (see Fig. 3).

It operated almost non-stop until 1976 when the last train loaded with timber rolled out of Otaki’s

Ugui River Valley (Morishita 1998).

5
 This history of timber extraction has profound implications for Otaki’s modern socio-natural

environment. Subjective imagining of the socio-natural environment (“environmental subject”) 1

that was formulated alongside the emergence of the Japanese state under the Meiji regime

included concepts of private property and ownership that allowed for the extension of state

sovereignty over nearly 80% of forestlands in the Kiso Valley (93% in Otaki). Within this

environmental subject, forestlands began to be envisioned as resources in part through a process

of simplification that Scott has characterized as myopia on one or two land values that

misrepresents the broad range of biological, spiritual, social, and other values that lands hold

(Scott 1998). To be sure the socio-natural environment of Otaki contains a multiplicity of other

values, many socio-spiritual in nature due to its proximity to Ontake-san (for a partial treatment

of spirituality related to Ontake-san see the chapter "Mountain Oracles" in Blacker 1999).

Timber and environmental change

In Japan, early deforestation events during the Edo Period were soon followed by the

development of afforestation techniques, to the point that some have called Japan an ecological

success story (see Diamond 2005). Indeed, two-thirds of the nation remains forested. However,

Figure 4: Volume of timber extracted from the Kiso Valley, 1948-2007 this statistic belies a more complicated history
Table 2: Volume of lumber extracted from the Kiso Valley, 1948-2007

800.000 of landscape transformation. The Kiso Valley

700.000

600.000 has undergone several periods of over-cutting

500.000

400.000
and deforestation (Totman 1989), to the
300.000
extent that, even when referring to the Edo
200.000

100.000
Period, “success” may not be the best word to
0.000
1948

1951

1954

1957

1960

1963

1966

1969

1972

1975

1978

1981

1984

1987

1990

1993

1996

2003

2006

describe the governance of forests there.

timber volume (sq.meters)

1
I refer to particular subjective formulations as “environmental subjects”, which I use
heuristically to talk about discursive arrangements that tend to be linked to institutions. In reality,
such subjective formations are much more fluid and dynamic.

6
It’s arguable that the primary goal of afforestation in Japan has for hundreds of years been the

production of timber trees. In this sense, forest environments in the Kiso Valley embody histories

of conversion away from mixed

broadleaf/conifer forests to more simple Figure 5: Present-day structure of Kiso Valley forests

forests comprised mainly of timber varieties

(see Table 1). The post-war years, in

particular, were devastating for forests in the

Kiso Valley, where hageyama 禿山—“bald

mountains”—were common sights. Figure 4

graphs the volume of timber extracted from

the Kiso Valley from 1948-2007 (Hirada 1999). In response to the heavy felling of the post-war

years, forest conversion hastened as timber varieties (especially fast growing karamatsu) were

planted to meet the demands of reconstruction. Figure 5 depicts the present-day composition of

forests in the Kiso Valley.

The consequences of felling and forest conversion in Otaki are many, and difficult to fully

decipher. Among other ecological changes, forest conversion has contributed to loss of animal

habitat, especially mammalian habitat, in the oku-yama 奥 山 (“back” or deep part of the

mountains). Forests located near villages, on the other hand, having not undergone such intense

conversion, tend to be comprised of fruit-bearing trees and therefore remain suitable habitat for

mammalian species. Mr. Kurihara, a lifetime resident of Otaki who maintains his own forest, put

it this way:

Fundamentally, because there is no food in the mountains [animals] come

to the village. And then once they remember the flavor of delicious food,
it’s a matter of course that they will come again. Without humans
knowing it, they made it so that animals come. That’s what I myself

7
 think. It’s because when they plant trees in the mountains, it’s trees that
can turn into money [timber trees]. So, I mean they don’t plant trees that
aren’t . . . like that, you know, [they don’t plant] various kinds. I’ve
always thought that, yeah. So, with this thinking that you can just do as
you please with natural power and create nature the way you think,
there’s no way you can do it (Personnel interview 05/21/08).

As a result, encounters between humans and animals, in particular Japanese macaques (Macaca

fuscata), Japanese moon bears (Ursus thibetanus japonicus, a variety of Asian black bear),

Japanese serow (Capricornis crispus), and wild boar (Sus scrofa), have become commonplace in

many mountain villages, including Otaki (Knight 2003b; Sprague & Iwasaki 2006). The signs of

human/wildlife conflicts are arrayed across the Otaki landscape: nets, wire fences, and other

contraptions are staples of agricultural fields; school children are outfitted with bear bells for the

walk to school; and “monkey dogs” are now being trained to help keep watch over fields.

Subject deployment and the creation of a “resource landscape”

A history of timber extraction in Otaki has contributed to the formation of an environmental

subject in which forests area viewed as resources under the sovereignty of the national

government, to be employed in specific ways for the benefit of the national citizenry. In the

Meiji period this environmental subject was formalized through the creation of an arrangement of

governing institutions, through which it was then deployed and carved onto the land itself through

intensive timber extraction. The result of this social, cultural, political, and physical deployment

was the transformation of Otaki into what I call a “resource landscape”—an ideological and

material manifestation of the environmental subject.

Though restructured after WWII by the Occupation Authority, the governing institutions

established still exist today. A look at current publications of the Forest Agency and its branch

offices in the Kiso Region reveals ideological continuities with the environmental subject first

formulated in the past. For example, a 2008 publication, entitled “National Forest, the people’s

8
forest”, produced by the Central District Forestry Office (chubu-shinrinn-kanri-kyoku 中部森林

管理局), which controls a huge swath of forested land located in four prefectures (including

Nagano where Otaki is located), begins by offering a timeline that works, through images and

text, to genealogically link the office to the Owari Clan that controlled the area’s forests during

the Edo Period (1603-1868). In one small passage it is suggested that:

From the closing days of the Edo Period to the first years of the Meiji Era,
the momentary abandonment of traditional management plans was something
that was unavoidable due to the fragility of the [Owari] clan's finances and
the confusion of the restoration. Still, the forest resources cultivated during
the period when the revolution began far exceeded expectations (Central
District Forest Management Office 2008:3).

Interestingly, no specific history is offered concerning forest management from the Meiji Period

or beyond. In this publication forests are conceptualized as a kind of inheritance of the nation’s

people. In fact, publications such as this often employ the terms kokumin-no-mori 国民の森,

meaning people’s or citizens’ forests, and kuni-no-zaisan 国の財産, meaning the nation’s fortune

or inheritance. Furthermore, the genealogy presented works to legitimize the Central District

Forestry Office’s right to govern these forests as they see fit (presumably for the good the

citizenry). Just as they were in the Meiji Era, forests are formulated as resources, and later in the

publication the reader is presented with a plethora of beneficial purposes to which the government

is putting them to use. The result is a host of hybrid specialized forests, including: “water and

land protection forests”, “forest and human coexistence forests”, “scenery forests” and “resource

recycling forests”. Scott’s idea of myopic land values seems equally applicable here.

I have linked the formation and deployment of the environmental subject discussed above to a

history of timber extraction and environmental modification undertaken by the Japanese state.

However, the arrangement of institutions that draw upon this environmental subject stretches

beyond the level and scope of national and regional governing institutions. Although I didn’t

9
touch upon it above, the history of timber extraction and reforestation in the Kiso Valley is

closely linked to international flows of timber and Japan’s major role as an importer (Knight

1997; 2003a; Seo & Taylor 2003). The development of water resources in Otaki is also linked to

broader flows of capital, both financial and human, but is, in its physical manifestations, on the

whole a localized phenomenon. Here I will give a brief account of the impacts that water and

tourism have had as transformative processes in Otaki’s socio-natural environment.

Water and tourism deployment at the local level

Due to the pervasiveness of the environmental subject linked with state organized timber

extraction, which I argue had transformed the Otaki area into a resource landscape, when a plan

was proposed in the 1950’s to build a large dam in the center of the village, the protests of local

residents were easily subordinated to the needs of the broader nation. Along with (and as parts

of) the Otaki environment, local residents too had become subjects, and were therefore subject

themselves to the influences of the broader national and international socio-natural environments

to which they were now intimately connected.

Makio Dam (牧尾ダム) is part of the larger Aichi-yousui (愛知用水) project, which was funded

in part by the World Bank to deliver agricultural and drinking water to the city of Nagoya and

other communities in Aichi and Gifu prefectures. Completed in 1961, the dam displaced 645

residents from 137 homes and flooded 247 hectares of Otaki’s most scenic and agriculturally

productive land. In fact, another large dam, Miura ( 三 浦 ), was completed in a largely

unpopulated area in 1945 by Kansai Denryoku (関西電力) using forced Chinese and Korean

laborers. In addition to the dam, these laborers also dug by hand a series of tunnels for carrying

water that run, mostly out of sight, through the mountains surrounding the village. The tunnels

transect the major streams in the Otaki watershed, diverting water to locations where it is used to

10
spin turbines for creating electricity to serve the greater Kansai area, including Osaka, Kobe, and

Kyoto. Together, Makio and Miura dams are capable of holding 137,216,000 cubic meters of

water. Through this series of dams and tunnels Otaki’s water, like its trees, have been

conceptually and physically transformed into resources to serve the greater good of the nation.

This sentiment is reflected in the third verse of the Otaki Elementary and Junior High School’s

school song, which was composed soon after the completion of Makio Dam:

Filled with one ton of water,

the ripples of “Lake Ontake”
wish for the glory of the nation
and become a badge of our sincere feelings
for the industry of the blessed nation,
the measure our hometown’s happiness

Today, local residents, who have explained to me ambivalence over lyrics that seem to celebrate

the trauma inflicted by the construction of the dam, skip the third verse when singing the song.

The Otaki Village government received a compensation payment of two hundred million yen

(about two million U.S. dollars) after the completion of Makio Dam in 1961, which they put to

use developing tourist infrastructure on Ontake-san. A ski resort and a nature park were built on

national forest land about 800 meters below the summit of the mountain and forest roads were

paved to provide access. For a time in the 1960’s Otaki boasted the longest ski slope in the

country, and the tourists flocked. I’ve heard from residents stories of garbage bags full of 10,000

yen notes and of cars parked along the roadway for kilometers. These stories are likely

exaggerated, but they make the point: business was booming in Otaki. However, to make a long

story short, excesses and financial mismanagement along with a decline in visitor numbers

brought serious financial crisis to the village. Today, although Otaki is one of Japan’s most

financially troubled municipalities, the ski resort is still in operation. However, serious doubts

remain among residents concerning the decision to pursue tourist development on Ontake-san, a

11
sacred mountain that has long drawn religious worshipers and provided modest but stable

economic benefit to the village.

Local subjects

The decision by the Otaki village government to develop forestlands on Ontake-san suggests that

the environmental subject, which I have labeled “resource landscape”, formulated and

institutionalized in the emergence of the modern Japanese state had by the later half of the 20th

century pervaded to the local level. To say that the broader environmental subject which I’ve

outlined in this paper alone impelled government officials and residents in Otaki to pursue the

path of development would be imprudent. However, it is worthwhile to contemplate the ways in

which in environmental subjectivities, through their cultural, social, and physical manifestations,

interact with and influence the beliefs, views, and practices of actors at the local level of the

socio-natural environment. I abstain in my analysis from characterizing the formation and

diffusion of environmental subjectivities as a process of domination of one over another; and

contend that subject formulations at the local level are not annihilated, or exchanged one for the

other. Rather, I envision the process as occurring through a continuous tension where

subjectivities are formulated and reformulated by actors in response to ideational, institutional,

and material forms and activities of human, as well as non-human, entities in a socio-natural

environment.

For residents of Otaki, why did it make sense to pursue development on Ontake-san, a location of

cultural, spiritual, and economic importance? What can this decision tell us about the

environmental subjects that exist among Otaki’s local residents? And also, what might it suggest

about residents as subjects dwelling in the environment?

12
In my conversations with residents of the village I have not heard of opposition to development

on Ontake-san at the time when it first began. This could of course simply be due to bias in my

own research, or it could point to a lack of recollection on the part of residents. However, I have

heard on several occasions of opposition among residents to the construction of Makio Dam,

which makes the later seem unlikely. Obviously, it is impossible to talk about Otaki’s residents

as a monolithic group, however it is possible to speculate about why dissent to development plans

on Ontake-san didn’t or couldn’t take form, and if it did, why it was ignored. In a 2006

newspaper interview, the former mayor of Otaki recalled a time just after construction on Makio

Dam had begun when a co-worker exclaimed, “From now on there is going to be a lot of

industry” (Tojo 2006). Unfortunately, there is no way to read into the context or get a sense of

the tone with which the co-worker made this statement. However, a quote by the former mayor

himself during a speech given to residents of Otaki in 2004 after a failed attempt at municipal

amalgamation revealed the village’s financial troubles is illuminating. “Perhaps if the ski hill

wasn’t here we could probably have become sufficiently independent. However, because the

dam was built back then, we have to follow this road. The only thing we can do is go with it [the

ski hill] as the core” (Tojo 2006). These statements allude to the realities of a community in the

midst of changes to which its ability to respond is limited. The co-worker’s statement, whether

made in elation or dread, suggests, as does the former mayor’s statement, a feeling of inevitability

concerning the transformation of the Otaki landscape by broader forces. Considering these

statements, it seems that in the aftermath of the colossal Makio Dam project, which deeply

transformed the socio-natural environment of the village, the decision to develop Ontake-san may

have seemed a reasonable, if not necessary, step for the community to take.

Reason, of course, is only one cultural tool employed by actors in their encounters with the world

around them. While development of the local natural environment may have seemed reasonable,

this does not indicate a complete allegiance to the predominant environmental subject of

13
“resource landscape”. Rather, it speaks to the status of residents in Otaki as subjects themselves;

as integral parts of a socio-natural environment, which has been subordinated to help meet the

needs of the broader nation. Otaki’s residents occupy a middle ground where they both formulate

subjects and are formulated as subjects. Though the subjective ways in which residents of Otaki

encounter, think about, and use the local environment differ greatly, several general elements are

discernable. I touch briefly on two here.

First, Otaki is a religious landscape. The village’s social, cultural, economic, and even ecological

histories are closely linked to Ontake-san and its worshipers who, for hundreds of years, have

gathered at the mountain. A physical arrangement of religious objects—spirit stones, shrines, and

statues—on the mountain are a constant reminder of its sacred status. What can be called a

“religious environmental subject” has long been institutionalized in a configuration of rituals,

shrines, mountain huts, and other locations of religious practice in the village that have deep

historical connections to the worshipers of Otake-san.

Second, Otaki is also an agricultural landscape. In the village agriculture has social, economic

and cultural significance for most residents. In particular, red beets, known as aka-kabu 赤カブ,

as well as sunki すんき, which is the pickled leaves of the red beet plant, both have long cultural

histories in the village. Sunki, especially, holds significance because making it requires the use of

sunki reserved from the previous year’s batch, meaning that the main ingredient for and

knowledge of how to make sunki is passed generationally within individual households. In this

sense, household identities are maintained, in part, through food-making activities.

Though it’s important to take note of these alternative subjective conceptions, I argue that the

environmental subject of “resource landscape”, in its cultural, social (institutional), and physical

14
manifestations has come to be a force capable of subordination and transformation of Otaki’s

socio-natural environment. “[. . .] villagers don’t see the forest,” was the assessment of Otaki’s

current mayor in a 2006 newspaper article about the village. He continued, “Otaki is currently

close to zero policy options. You can’t make proposals like, ‘if we do this’. The national forest

and the dam; even though the town has natural resources, they are ‘bureaucratized’, so to speak. I

think the first thing is that ideas that come from the ‘people’ are necessary” (Tojo 2006). The

mayor’s comments speak to the spurious position of village residents as subjects of subordination

(subjects), but also speak to their potential for resistance through the promotion of their own

subjective visions of the socio-natural environment. With a rapidly declining population and

continuing financial instability, the village of Otaki is literally facing an existential crisis.

Resistance to and reformulation of the dominant environmental subject in order to obtain greater

recognition, access, and power regarding the governance of forests in Otaki, I argue, are essential

projects for residents in Otaki to secure a positive future for themselves and the socio-natural

environment in which they dwell. Before concluding, I offer a brief evaluation of resilience

thinking as a conceptual framework for increasing the roles of local actors in environmental

governance.

Subjectivity and resilience thinking

Resilience thinking developed from complex systems theory as a way to think about stability and

15

Figure 6: The Adaptive Cycle (Resilience Alliance 2008)

change in ecological systems. In resilience thinking systems are theorized to be capable of

multiple states of relative stability, called “stability domains”. Change is conceived of as a

ubiquitous and unpredictable component of all systems; one that is capable of collapse, but also

renewal. With change as a driving force, it is theorized that systems move through a series of

four stages in a process termed the “adaptive cycle” (Figure 6). “Resilience” therefore is defined

as the degree of disturbance a system can absorb before the variables and processes that govern

that system’s behavior are altered to the point that its basic character changes and the system tips

into a new stability domain (Holling & Gunderson 2002).

Though resilience thinking developed around studies of ecological systems, increasing

recognition of the unique role that humans play in ecosystems is prompting more and more

research into what have been labeled “social-ecological systems” (Berkes et al 2003; Jianguo et al

2007; Olsson et al 2004; Walker et al 2002). However, many studies in resilience thinking

continue to give only superficial attention to the social realm of humans, and there have been

recent calls for further inquiry into operations of power, discourse, and normative framings in

studies of resilience (Leach 2008).

Resilience thinking is attractive as a conceptual framework for investigating power, subject

formation, and governance in Otaki and elsewhere for several reasons; I will discuss three here.

First, in its focus on complexity, uncertainty and unpredictability, resilience thinking holds

potential for researchers and other actors to offer challenges to traditional forms of governance

that secure power by monopolizing legitimacy through the deployment of “evidence-based”

discourses rooted in “sound-science”. In fact, it has been argued that science-based management

often causes instability in social-ecological systems by isolating and focusing on the optimization

of particular elements without giving proper attention to the overall working of the system

(Holling et al 2002). Through such challenges to dominant ways of knowing come opportunities

16
to raise the visibility of alternative voices and incorporate a greater breadth of knowledge and

information into governing arrangements. Second, the recognition of multiple stability domains

in resilience thinking opens the door for discussions of subjectivity and normative discourses in

studies of governance. The notion of multiple stability domains suggests that there are concurrent

ways of knowing, dwelling in, and engaging with socio-natural environments. There may be a

temptation to link the concept of “stability domain” to the concept of “subject” that I’ve discussed

in this paper. Indeed, because the process of defining “stability domains” is always a social one

that occurs through interactions between various stakeholders: politicians, policy-makers,

residents, activists, scholars, scientists, and others, at times a particular stability domain may

come to embody a particular environmental subject (such as the subject of “resource landscape”).

However, in an applied sense it may be more productive to think of stability domains as potential

locations of convergence and consensus between stakeholders. Social conflict, as much as

anything, has been suggested as a catalyst for sudden change in systems; therefore, finding ways

of widening particular stability domains to accommodate various actors, as well as other non-

human elements, may well work to make systems more robust and stable. Finally, in its focus on

systems 2 , resilience thinking offers a framework for thinking about and implementing socio-

natural environmental governance that is integrative and recognizes the need for networks of

institutions that are capable of bridging levels through active learning and communication. This

type of framework, known as “adaptive governance” or “adaptive co-management” (Folke et al

2005; Olsson et al 2004), opens pathways for the involvement of local stakeholders while

remaining cognizant of the roles that higher level institutions play in the governance of socio-

natural environments.

2
“System” is the nomenclature in resilience thinking, so I’ve used it here. However, I feel the term “socio-
natural environment”, which I’ve used throughout this paper, is more encompassing and may prove to be
conceptually useful as studies of resilience move forward.

17
Conclusions

The formation, institutional formalization, and physical translation of environmental subjects can

have profound impacts on socio-natural environments, and, in particular, on the human

communities that dwell therein. In this paper I’ve shown how the formulation and diffusion of a

particular environmental subject in relation to forests in Japan’s Kiso Valley has had far-reaching

impacts on the local socio-natural environment there. In addition, I’ve touched on the tensions

created at the local level as residents encounter this broader environmental subject, and the

influences it has on both their own subjective formulations of the environment and their activities

as subjects in the environment. Lastly, I offered a brief overview and evaluation of resilience

thinking as a potential framework for thinking about and actively engaging issues of

environmental governance in Otaki and elsewhere.

The case of Otaki offers insights into the diachronic processes whereby environmental subjects

are formulated, institutionalized, and transcribed onto physical environments and the effects this

has on the ways in which local actors encounter, think about, and engage with the socio-natural

environment. In Japan, residents of rural communities like Otaki are beginning to feel the weight

of Japan’s modernity. The consequences of past state policies and practices in relation to forests

and other environments are beginning to manifest just as the central government seeks to wriggle

free from the political entanglements that have tied its fate to rural communities in the post-war

period (Babb 2005; McDonald 1997). The situation in many rural communities is bringing about

reexaminations of relationships with the central government and the larger nation. In Otaki,

notions of monolithic “national forests” are beginning to be challenged by local residents, both

intellectually and through “the politics of daily life” as actors engage with the environment.

Finding open spaces (social, cultural, political, and physical) in the socio-natural environment for

the formulation of new subjectivities—new ways of engaging the natural world—is a vital project

if residents of rural communities are to become viable actors in governing arrangements.

18
More broadly, as humankind struggles to understand our seemingly unlimited abilities to modify

the Earth, as well as our very limited abilities to grasp the complex consequences of those

modifications, issues of governance take on great significance. Anthropologist John Bennett

suggested that, “. . . man’s use of Nature is inextricably intertwined with man’s use of Man, and

[. . .] remedies for destructive use of the environment must be found within the social system

itself” (Bennett 1976:311). We live in a world that increasingly seeks answers supported by

scientific fact, yet we witness again and again in our societies the mutability of “facts” and the

ways they are (mis)used to meet human agendas, whether this be denying climate change or

justifying war. This isn’t to say that scientific knowledge shouldn’t play a vital role; however, the

socio-cultural dimensions of socio-natural environments demand that we give adequate

consideration to operations of power and discourse in relation to environmental governance.

Doing so requires that attention be given to the ways in which environmental and human subjects

are formulated and disseminated and the effects this has on various actors and their ability to

participate in governance. Resilience thinking, with its focus on complexity and unpredictability

in socio-natural environments, and its calls for flexibility, inclusion, and collaboration, has

potential as a constructive framework for future work regarding governance. The active

involvement of social scientists in collaboration with local residents will be vital for adapting and

applying a resilience thinking framework to issues of environmental governance in Japan and

elsewhere.

19
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