The Practical Politics of Knowing: State Environmental Knowledge and Local Political Economy*
通过印度拉贾斯坦邦Kumbhalgarh野生动物保护区的案例，研究国家与地方环境知识在阶级、种姓、性别和官僚机构中的差异，发现知识联盟而非简单对立决定了自然资源管理政策。
Abstract: Study of local environmental knowledge has led to a general critique of state epistemology, positing a controlling, official knowledge that crushes competing accounts of nature. Skeptical of that claim, in this paper I assess the differences between state and local knowledge empirically, using a case study of the Kumbhalgarh Wildlife Sanctuary in Rajasthan, India, to explore the way knowledge varies across class, caste, gender, and affiliation within the state forest bureaucracy. The results show that state versus local knowing is not the most meaningful division in epistemology, and that it is the daily struggle over resources in local political economy that gives rise to contending accounts of nature and environmental change. The conclusions further point to knowledge alliances between state and local actors that render certain claims powerful and so determine natural resource management policy and direct landscape change.