Forestry in interaction. Shedding light on dynamics of public opinion with a praxeological methodology

Abstract

Forestry institutions integrate divergent interests in forest uses into their management concepts, like recreation, timber production and nature protection. In this context, knowledge on public expectations of forestry is valuable to forest owners as well as administrations, especially in the face of the growing critical citizenship they encounter during their work. This paper examines findings from opinion surveys as well as studies of conflict and participation in order to describe the current dynamics in the relationship between forestry and the general public. It then explains in detail how a praxeological research design, grounded in American pragmatism, helps to conceptualize forest conflicts as interactional phenomena. The value of such an approach is exemplified through one case analysis from a broader “Sociocultural Forest Monitoring” carried out by institution anonymized. The article concludes with an assessment of the knowledge to be gained by the conceptualization of citizens' relationship to forestry as dynamic opinion formation with the help of a praxeological epistemology and methodology.

Introduction

Forests are important and contested resources, not only in the economic sense but for society's diverse and at times contradictive needs (McDermott et al., 2010). Especially in densely populated areas, the diversity of interests occasionally takes the shape of a conflict (Konijnendijk, 2008; Gritten et al., 2012). One widespread discord around forest uses is grounded in the competing rationales of timber production versus nature conservation, the latter having developed into a major policy objective on regional, national, and international level in the last decades (Niemelä et al., 2005). The resulting complex network of regulations, gives ongoing occasion for negotiation and struggle about the legitimacy of forestry practices. While many of these conflicts have developed into fairly institutionalized processes with political and administrative agencies, NGOs and associations as routine actors (cf. Krott, 2005, pp. 69–149), the interest of the study at hand is in understanding a more recent and a less established frontline: regional conflicts between citizens and forestry administrations or forest owners when forest management is perceived to be in opposition to public expectations of recreation or nature conservation. In such cases, the ‘opponent’ to forestry practices is a heterogenous general public, comparatively unorganized, and accordingly difficult to grasp. Broader developments in forest policy leave their mark on such conflicts, e.g. a general commitment to the importance of nature conservation on the part of citizens, but they usually occur and evolve outside of political arenas. In Germany, several forestry administrations were shaken by conflicts of this kind in recent years. The instances are few when measured against the overall contentment with forestry, as several surveys have pointed out (cf. Bethmann and Wurster, 2016). But contextualizing them within Europe-wide tendencies for an erosion of trust in administrations and changing expectations of forests in urbanized societies, they demand administrative, political and scientific attention.

In several countries, politicians and administrations have begun to actively request social scientific support to facilitate foresighted management and conflict resolution with regard to demands of the general public and civil stakeholders.¹ For some administrative goals, for example in the case of sustainable development, it is common practice to include the public in management decisions to some degree (Primmer and Kyllönen, 2006). Strategies range from incorporating evidence from social science research, to providing information for the public unilaterally, and to participatory committees with or without real political influence. In this context, the survey has become an important instrument to understand the public's relationship with forestry. But opinion surveys have limitations, especially when it comes to understanding challenges in the communication between forestry officials and citizens.

A growing corpus of literature on conflicts and participatory process sheds light on these blind spots (Eckerberg and Sandström, 2013). These studies show that the relationship to forests and opinions of forestry are dynamic phenomena that are partly shaped by communication and interaction with forestry representatives. Often, they mainly focus on procedural issues and put less effort into systemizing the attitudes citizens hold on the institutions they engage with. In the following section, we bring together insights from public opinion surveys as well as more process-oriented research into conflict and participation in forestry. From the literature, we bring out the argument that opinion is something that takes shape and is expressed situationally, and we suggest to explore the role of public opinion in forest conflicts as a dynamic object. After that, we unfold a methodology driven by a theoretical conception of interaction informed by the praxeological theory of American pragmatism. Specific methodological principles are defined so as to enable the analysis to establish a connection between the actions of conflict opponents and the contradictive worldviews that are documented within such actions. The methodology is put to practice with one case study from the Sociocultural Forest Monitoring research project (2015–2020), a study with a regional focus on forest-related conflicts in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, funded and conducted by institution anonymized. The article concludes with an assessment of the knowledge to be gained from the conceptualization of citizens' relationships to forestry as dynamic opinion formation.