Tracking Invasive Land Covers in India, or Why Our Landscapes Have Never Been Modern

Abstract

The effects of rationalization and bureaucratization on the landscape are myriad and contradictory. The unforeseen environmental consequences resulting from modern planning create new geographies far beyond those of the planner’s design. This article explores the land‐cover effects of state‐sponsored modernization efforts in the semiarid Godwar region of Rajasthan, India. Using satellite imagery, historical data, household production information, and the discourse of state planners, the research described here explores the land covers that result from agricultural intensification, biodiversity preservation, and resource conservation in postindependence development. The study demonstrates that through these efforts, state planners have attempted to physically partition those land uses seen as “social” from those seen as “natural” and thereby enforce a modernist purification of land covers. Despite these efforts—indeed, because of them—hybrid and “impure” land covers, which mix social and natural characteristics and combine exogenous and indigenous species, have proliferated across the landscape. Moreover, these quasiforests have proven impossible to control or quarantine. The results of analysis, therefore, suggest that these sorts of unexpected land‐cover changes necessarily grow out of the very attempts to halt them through modernization, and that, despite our best efforts, following Bruno Latour, our landscapes have never been modern.

Pour une autre représentation métaphorique des invasions biologiques

“…Elle s'articule avec des travaux préalables de Larson (2005de Larson ( et 2010, dans la continuité desquels nous nous inscrivons. Nous reprenons également l'idée de Robbins (2001), selon lequel l'invasion biologique est un concept hybride, et la développons en référence aux conflits de représentation et aux espaces d'incompréhension qui en résultent. Nous proposons enfin des pistes pour imaginer de nouvelles métaphores et en suggérons des exemples.…”

Whose Diversity Counts? The Politics and Paradoxes of Modern Diversity

“…Drawing on previous scholarship by authors like Fairhead and Leach [9], Bruce Braun [37] and Paul Robbins [23], and ethnographic fieldwork in Madagascar and Ecuador, we reveal the values and biases embedded in these mapping projects, and point to the hybrid landscapes and histories that are themselves valid expressions of diversity, yet are decried or obscured through these efforts to map and represent diversity. Our first example examines and critiques a frequently utilized standardizing tool-a map of forest types, in this case one that was developed and utilized in Madagascar.…”

“…Drawing from the insights of political ecologists who have debunked assumptions of local peoples' actions degrading the environment [9,22], we propose that hybridity is a form of diversity unto itself-albeit a form of diversity that is more complex, and thus harder to codify and categorize. This mirrors a movement in the ecological sciences, geography, and history to reassess hybrid, seemingly -impure‖ landscapes as places of diversity rather than degradation [10,[23][24][25]. For example, following Latour, Robbins [23] designates -impure‖ landcover as hybrids of the natural and social in a study of India.…”

“…This mirrors a movement in the ecological sciences, geography, and history to reassess hybrid, seemingly -impure‖ landscapes as places of diversity rather than degradation [10,[23][24][25]. For example, following Latour, Robbins [23] designates -impure‖ landcover as hybrids of the natural and social in a study of India. Evoking the paradoxical relationship between modernity, purity, and diversity, Robbins argues that -all efforts to fit landscapes into abstract and purified modern categories actually increase the proliferation of hybrid and impure landforms‖.…”

Forest transitions: a new conceptual scheme

“…For instance, the observational moment goes a long way to explain the attitude of Indian state foresters to the spread of invasive mesquite in Rajastan. They welcomed the expansion of the thorny plant, despite local peoples' concerns, because increased tree cover of any kind was classified as meeting reforestation goals by Indian government metrics (Robbins, 2001).…”