Forest claims, conflicts and commodification: The political ecology of Tibetan mushroom-harvesting villages in Yunnan Province, China

China Quarterly

Volumn , Issue 161, 2000, Pages 264-277

  Yeh, Emily T ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

FOREST MANAGEMENT; HARVESTING; LAND USE; MUSHROOM; PROPERTY RIGHTS; RURAL ECONOMY;

CHINA;

EID: 0034010606     PISSN: 03057410     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0305741000004021     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. Louise Fortmann and John Bruce, "Introduction," in Louise Fortmann and John Bruce (eds.), Whose Trees? Proprietary Dimensions of Forestry, Rural Studies Series of the Rural Sociological Study (Boulder: Wcstview Press, 1988), p. 4.
2. The data used in this paper were gathered during field research in the summer of 1997 (and a follow-up visit in August 1998) in Zhongdian and Deqin counties of Diqing TAP. Primary research methods used were observation, semi-structured and unstructured interviews with matsutake harvesters, buyers and sellers in the two county seats and their surrounding villages. In addition, I interviewed representatives from several export companies, and government and academic forestry institutions in Kunming.
3. Ann Anagnost, National Past-times: Narratives, Representation, and Power in Modem China (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 4.
4. Tibetans comprise 40% of Zhongdian county's population of 130,000 and 80% of Deqin county's population of 60,000. These statistics are from Steven Marshall and Susette Cooke, Tibet Outside the TAR: Control, Exploitation and Assimilation, Development with Chinese Characteristics (Washington, D.C: Alliance for Research in Tibet, available through International Campaign for Tibet, CD-ROM); and from Wang Hengjie, Diqlng zangzu shehni shi (Social History of Diqlng Tibetans) (Beijing: China Tibetan Studies Publishers, 1995), p. 8.
5. Marshall and Cooke, Tibet Outside the TAR, p. 246. However, according to the 1995 State Statistical Bureau report, Diqing TAP per capita GDP in 1994 was 1,490 RMB as compared with the national average of 3,755 RMB. Another report gave annual rural net per capita income as 605 RMB in one pan of the report and 321 RMB in another; a third source cited annual per capita income in Zhongdian in 1994 as 727 RMB. However, the Party secretary of Zhongdian county informed me in 1998 that the figure was actually 836 RMB. He also stated that matsutake income is "of course" not included in their calculations even though it is "the most important income source for villagers."
6. James Ogilvie, "Forestry in Diqin prefecture, northwest Yunnan province, China," Commonwealth Forestry Review, Vol. 75, No. 4 (1996), p. 293.
7. Qi Zala, Zlionggiio zangqu xianyujingji tansno (An Exploration of County Economy in Tibetan Regions of China) (Kunming: Yunnan Nationalities Publishing House, 1997), p. 4.
8. Scott Redhead, "The pine mushroom industry in Canada and the United States and where it's going," in Mary E. Palm and Ignacio Chapela (eds.), Mycology in Stistainable Development: Expanding Concepts, Vanishing Borders (Boone, IS'C: Parkway Publishers Inc., 1997), pp. 17-18.
9. David Pilz and Randy Molina, "American matsutake mushroom harvesting in the United States: social aspects and opportunities for sustainable development," in Palm and Chapela, Mycology in Sustainable Development, p. 68.
10. Author interview. 60% was the lowest figure I was given.
11. Qi Zala, Zhongdian county Party secretary, "Qingzang gaoyuan kechixu fazhan de shixian yu tantao - yi Diqing zangzu zizhi zhou Zhongdian xian weili de fenxi" ("Practice and investigation of sustainable development on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau - Using Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture as an example for analysis") (unpublished paper, 1998), p. 13.
12. By which I mean both male and female businesspeople; however, there are more men than women.
13. See for example, Sara Berry, No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); Nancy Lee Peluso, "Fruit trees and family trees in an anthropogenic forest: ethics of access, property zones, and environmental change in Indonesia," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 38, No. 3 (1996), pp. 49-74; and Jesse Ribot, "Theorizing access: forest profits along Senegal's charcoal commodity chain," Development and Change, Vol. 29, ( 1998), pp. 307-341.
14. See for example Carol Rose, Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory and Rhetoric of Ownership (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994) and C. B. Macpherson (ed.), Property: Mainstream and Critical Positions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978).
15. Ribot, "Theorizing access," p. 310.
16. Lester Ross, Environmental Policy in China (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988).
17. N. Tapp, "Social aspects of China fir plantations in China," Commonwealth Forestry Review, Vol. 75, No. 4., (1996), pp. 302-308. Note Tapp mentions only counties, townships and administrative villages under collective forests, but in Diqing the collective ownership of the./V/1/in often belongs to a natural village. Also personal communication with Xu Jianchu, Yunnan Institute of Botany.
18. Lindsay S wope, Factors Influencing Kates of Deforestation in Lijiang County, Yunnan Province, China (Masters thesis, University of California Davis, 1995).
19. Nicholas K. Menzies and Nancy Lee Peluso, "Rights of access to upland forest resources in southwest China," Journal of World Forest Resource Management, Vol. 6 (1991), pp. 1-20.
20. Zuo Ting, "Institutional contraints of social forestry development in Yunnan China based on the case study of Yunnan social forestry project," in Community Forestry at a Crossroads: Reflections and Future Directions in the Development of Community Forestry. Proceedings of an International Seminar held in Bangkok, Thailand, 17-19 July 1997. (Bangkok: RECOFTC, 1997).
21. This type of tenure proliferation has been documented in other studies of the effects of commodity booms in other parts of the world. For example, in Upland Java (see Krisnavvati Suryanata, "Fruit trees under contract: tenure and land use change in upland Java, Indonesia," World Development,Vo\.22,No. 10, pp. 1567-1578) commercialization and integration with the market economy led to a changed set of access conventions to apple trees, increased control by tree lessees over the landscape, and gradual dispossession of some farmers from their lands.
22. Yoruba communities described in Fortmann and Bruce, Whose Trees? p. 109.
23. See Louise Fortmann, "Bonanza! The unasked questions: domestic land tenure through international lenses," Society & Natural Resources, Vol. 9 (1996), pp. 537-547; Rose, Property & Persuasion, pp. 1-7, 39-43; and Tania Murray Li, "Images of community:
24. discourse and strategy in property relations," Development anil Change, Vol. 27 (1996), pp. 501-527.
25. Sara Berry (1993) quoted in Fortmann, "Bonanza!" p. 540.
26. Sara Berry, 'Tomatoes, land and hearsay: property and history in Asante in the time of structural adjustment," World Development, Vol. 25, No. 8 (1997), pp. 1225-1241.
27. Louise Fortmann, 'Talking claims: discursive strategies in contesting property," World Development, Vol. 23, No. 6 (1995), pp. 1053-63.
28. Li Lianjiang and Kevin O'Brien, "Villagers and popular resistance in contemporary China," Modern China, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1996), pp. 28-61.
29. Ibid. p. 41.
30. Ibid. pp. 54-55.
31. Donald C. Clarke, "The execution of civil judgements in China," The China Quarterly, No. 141 (1995), pp. 65-81.
32. Katherine Verdery, What was Socialism and What Comes Next? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
33. Matsutakc prices reported in the paper are based on 1997 and earlier rather than 1998 prices.