ABSTRACT
If forests are essentially about trees, and forestry principally about people (Jarvis, this volume), then this is a book about forestry. It is informed by the firm belief that forestry is not a simple reflection of an unchanging biophysical reality (Hannigan, 1995). It is neither self-creating nor produced in a vacuum. Indeed, in West Africa, as elsewhere, forestry is constituted by individual practices, societal institutions, cultural beliefs and global-local environmental discourses, among other things. As editors, we believe this has three main implications. First, to conceive of forestry as constructed in this way is to deliberately disrupt its 'self-evidence' as a 'natural' entity or phenomenon (Braun and Castree, 1998). Second, it is to make it possible to recast forestry as a nexus of varied ideologies and practices which fluctuate over time and vary across space – a nexus, that is, which is situated, both historically and geographically, as well as in lots of other ways. Third, it is to underscore the need for acknowledging the role of conflict, negotiation and dialogue in forestry's production – to recognise, in other words, its contested nature. The eighteen contributions which make up this book aim, in the first instance, to demonstrate the value of these linked processes of construction, situation and contestation in producing a nuanced understanding of forestry in a multiplicity of contexts.
