ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to problematise practices and discourses of forestry-related environmental management within the context of socially differentiated regional economies in Ghana's forest zones. Here, as elsewhere, there are no monolithic 'local communities'or undifferentiated 'forestry societies'. At the village level, conflicting forestry-related viewpoints and agendas struggle constantly to gain hegemony, with dominant economic, political and institutional interests routinely claiming to represent either entire communities, or, more frequently, the 'common good' (see also Schroeder, and Ribot, this volume). Similarly, fractions of communities with views which easily approximate those of 'development' institutions are promoted by the latter as representing 'the community'; concerns that do not reflect these shared strategic interests frequently become marginalised, and are rendered invisible. Furthermore, in spite of claims to neutrality and objectivity, science (in this case as deforestation and fallow management discourses, and as agro-forestry and timber technologies) often reflects powerful institutional, political and business interests.
