ABSTRACT
Southeast Asian forests are amongst the most diverse and extensive in the world (see Figure 30.1). Many of the species and ecologies inhabiting Southeast Asian forests are endemic to the region, contributing to the unique cultures and societies of those evolving with them. In this chapter we explore these forest-society relationships in the context of development. We do so by drawing from recent work that troubles the subject-object binary that has paralyzed so much work on human-nature relations to consider forests as development actors in themselves. This diverts from more common approaches in which forests generally provide a backdrop to development debates, or, at best, are considered in terms of how development impacts forests – usually in terms of forest loss and the associated impacts on human and animal communities. While the impact of development upon forests is a theme within this chapter, we focus more explicitly upon the influence of forests upon development. As such we see forests not as inert objects within development processes but dynamic assemblages of interacting things, whose materiality influences the types of development that can and does occur. This is not a retreat to some sort of restrictive environmental determinism but instead an approach that acknowledges that development is never a purely human endeavor – instead it derives from complex negotiations involving diverse assemblages of human and non-human actors.
