The forest industry, community and place: Currents of ecological redevelopment in three forest sector impacted British Columbia communitie

This thesis is an interdisciplinary social scientific study of the history and structures which shape forestry practices in British Columbia, the community-based opposition to those practices, and the debates which result. Rather than a contribution to the inconclusive economic and ecological arguments which have characterized this conflict, it asks why such different perspectives have emerged and how they are related to social perceptions of community and of place.;This research suggests that the divisions are linked to different ways of perceiving the land in relation to community. Industrial forestry has emerged out of a conceptual separation between place and community resulting from a prioritization of the economic benefits derived from forested lands. Indigenous and non-native people in the study areas do not make the same distinction between community and place, since historically they have not had their relationship with the land mediated through dependence on centralized corporate and government structures.;Further examination of these two relationships, identified as communities of affiliation and communities of place, resulted in the conclusion that the pattern of development in industrial forestry in British Columbia is problematic both in terms of long term sustainability and immediate potential to resolve forestry conflicts. More promise is held in the substantial departure from that pattern reflected in the place-centred initiatives emanating from the study communities. Although those initiatives developed in the specific conditions of individual forestry impacted communities, they draw upon a growing body of place-centred theory and practice which includes social ecology, bioregionalism, community economic development, traditional environmental knowledge and community forestry. A brief critical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each initiative and the traditions upon which each draws concludes the thesis. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).