Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThe three environmental policy positions and their exemplary representatives would be enough to turn the study into a cutting edge look at the recent past and present of one of the world's most controversial and at the same time most vulnerable ecosystems. Blavascunas can and wants to do more, namely not only to write ethnographically, but also to convince. It expressly does not absolutize the Kossaks, Szumarskis and Korbels, as would contemporary historical approaches, whose narratives cannot do without heroes and a simple conclusion: for or against the jungle and its preservation or deforestation. But it sets other accents; it is about a mapping of what would be possible outside of this pro-contra dichotomy. . . . Foresters, Borders, and Bark Beetles . . . dares a partisan intervention for the not so human actors in an ancient forest.
-- Bruno Arich-Gerz * TEXTEM *
Table of Contents1. Puszcza: Of Forests and Time
2. The Forester
3. Scientists and the Communist Past: Syndromes, Disorders, and a Proper Elite
4. Post-peasant Cosmopolitics: Man of the Forest
5. Borderline Engagements: Relict Forest, Relict Communism
6. Resurgence: Outbreaks of Bark Beetle and Right-wing Nationalism
7. Temporal Dimensions: The Past is not Safe at all