This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant funds an in-depth ethnographic investigation of knowledge production in the context of negotiations over forest certification. Emerging discourses of nature and science mark Chilean forest politics as a crucial location for the production of environmental knowledge; that is, new definitions of key concepts like sustainability, scientific credibility, and even forest. Certification documents the sustainable management of a given forest property, allowing the owner to access the growing market for sustainably grown wood products. As a non-state market-driven (NSMD) approach, certification represents an innovative new form of private regulation (Cashore et. al. 2004). This project will address major questions about forest certification that remain unanswered; in particular, concerns about the capacity for scientific or technical standards to address social issues related to forestry. As Brosius (1999a) has pointed out, negotiations over standards for sustainable production have tended to prioritize scientific values over social ones. The objective of this research, then, is to understand the interplay of culture and power in the context of Chile's certification system. Who are the primary actors defining certification standards, and what values and interests do they bring to the negotiating table? What forms of knowledge (natural sciences, policy expertise, indigenous knowledge) do negotiators privilege in defining standards? How do actors marginal to the negotiating process (assessors, forest owners, and workers) contribute to the construction and interpretation of standards? These questions will be addressed through archival work, interviews and participant-observation with all relevant actors in the Chilean Forest Stewardship Council certification process. The research project described herein addresses theoretical issues of importance to anthropology, science studies, and social science in general. Concern with the cultural politics of commodity flows reaches back to Marx's foundational work on commodity fetishism (1967), and has provided the foundation for major innovations in cultural anthropology (Appadurai 1986, Comaroff and Comaroff 1990, Taussig 1980). Ethnographic documentation of knowledge production in a natural resource commodity chain will demonstrate the relevance of this classic Marxist formulation to contemporary politics, while continuing to erode the artificial boundary between 'cultural' and 'economic' practices as objects for social science research. As Fairhead and Leach (2003) have argued, the field of science studies has tended to emphasize knowledge production in the high-tech core of Europe and North America. The proposed project will help extend debates about science and society into the domain of the rural and developing world while incorporating insights from environmental anthropology. An empirical study of how knowledge production in an out-of-the-way place is integrated into an emergent free-market regulatory regime will help move science studies towards a more truly global perspective. Research that untangles the social and ecological factors currently shaping Chile's forests will contribute to a better understanding of global forest dynamics. Because Chile has been a model of neoliberal reforms for Latin America and the world, forest trade policies adopted in Chile are likely to be adopted elsewhere. The proposed in-depth ethnographic study of the Forest Stewardship Council certification process in Chile will track an emergent regulatory regime that is likely to be influential worldwide. By contributing to debates about the meaning and impact of ethical trade networks, this research will support efforts by civil society to make international trade more socially just and ecologically sustainable. Furthermore, empirical detail about the role of the natural sciences in shaping environmental policy will contribute to more effective and equitable policy-making in the future. Finally, this dissertation research will play an important part in the education of a young social scientist.
