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Author Blavascunas, Eunice, author

Title Foresters, borders, and bark beetles : the future of Europe's last primeval forest / Eunice Blavascunas
Published Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2020]

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Time Line -- 1. Puszcza: Of Forests and Time -- 2. The Forester -- 3. Scientists and the Communist Past: Syndromes, Disorders, and a Proper Elite -- 4. Postpeasant 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 -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author
Summary "In Europe's last primeval forest, at Poland's easternmost border with Belarus, the deep past of ancient oaks, woodland bison, and thousands of species of insects and fungi collides with authoritarian and communist histories. Foresters, biologists, environmentalists, and locals project the ancient Białowieża Forest as a series of competing icons in struggles over memory, land, and economy, which are also struggles about whether to log or preserve the woodland; whether and how to celebrate the mixed ethnic Polish/Belarusian peasant past; and whether to align this eastern outpost with ultraright Polish political parties, neighboring Belarus, or the European Union. Eunice Blavascunas provides an intimate ethnographic account, gathered in more than 20 years of research, to untangle complex forest conflicts between protection and use. She looks at which pasts are celebrated, which fester, and which are altered in the tumultuous decades following the collapse of communism. Foresters, Borders, and Bark Beetles is a timely and fascinating work of cultural analysis and storytelling that textures its ethnographic reading of people with the agency of the forest itself and its bark beetle outbreaks, which threaten to alter the very composition of the forest in the age of the Anthropocene"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references
Notes Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on February 24, 2021)
Subject Forest conservation -- Bialowieza Forest (Poland and Belarus)
Forest conservation -- Bialowieza Forest (Poland and Belarus) -- International cooperation
Forest protection -- Bialowieza Forest (Poland and Belarus)
Forest management -- Bialowieza Forest (Poland and Belarus)
Bark beetles -- Conservation -- Bialowieza Forest (Poland and Belarus)
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural
Forest conservation
Forest conservation -- International cooperation
Forest management
Forest protection
Europe -- Bialowieza Forest
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2020015940
ISBN 9780253049599
0253049598
9780253052285
0253052289