Reframing Governance: Understanding Deliberative Politics in Nepal’s Terai Forestry

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The book develops a fresh approach to understanding governance using key concepts of Pierre Bourdieu (symbolic violence, doxa, field and habitus) and Jurgen Habermas (deliberative politics). Taking a case study of forest governance in Nepal Terai, the book analyses Habermasâ€™s ideal of deliberative governance from the perspective of Bourdieuâ€™s theory of practice. The case study shows that despite growing rhetoric of participatory and decentralized governance of forestry in Nepal, the actual practices of forest governance in Nepal Terai are controlled by dominant actors (mainly techno-bureaucratic and feudal political agents), with limited deliberative spaces actually available to, or proactively claimed by, the disadvantaged groups of people dependent on forests. The book demonstrates how rhetoric of participation and inclusion is actually a part of symbolic instrument of domination, and reproduction of pre-existing power relations. The analysis shifts the usual emphasis on â€˜conscious willâ€™ and â€˜rational behaviourâ€™ of individual human agents as the key elements for understanding governance, to an approach that interrogates the often overlooked symbolic structures of governance that systematically disadvantage some and priviledge others. Thus, the book proposes that the analysis of governance and politics should be expanded to include the processes of domination and hegemony in the symbolic domain, including language and processes of deliberation, through which power relations are reproduced in a society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Hemant R. Ojha

Dr. Ojha has over 15 years of experience in research studies and development actions. He is a founder of Forest Action Nepal and continues to be its advisor. He has worked as researcher/specialist/consultant for several Nepal-based and international agencies. He did doctoral research in Development Studies (with a focus on Natural Resource Governance) from School of Development Studies, University of East Angila, Norwich, UK. His current research works include natural resource governance and social justice, deliberative processes in the context of environmental policy-making, community based forest governance, adaptive co-management of ecosystems, protected area and local people, participatory action research methodologies, and local and meso level forest governance. His research works span a wide range of geographic regions Nepal, South Asia, Himalayas, South-East Asia, and West Africa. He has written and edited over a dozen scientific papers, as well as several practitioner-oriented products such as manuals, guidebooks and policy briefs. He has published peer-reviewed papers and articles in various international journals such as Policy and Society, International Development Planning Review, International Journal of Social Economics, International Forestry Review, Forestry Chronicle, and Policy Matters on diverse topics, encompassing policy, institutions, knowledge systems, resource management, conflict, and livelihoods. He co-edited a book â€œKnowledge Systems and Natural Resources: Management, Institutions and Policy in Nepalâ€ which is published (2008) by Cambridge University Press India in collaboration with International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada.