Local forest-dependence in postcommunist Bulgaria: A case study

Staddon, Caedmon

Abstract

This paper explores the changing relations between a community and its forested hinterland in postcommunist Bulgaria. While there has been much attention paid to general and national-scale issues in postcommunist environmental reconstruction (e.g. Carter and Turnock, 2002; Petersen, 1993), relatively little research exists that examines the specifically local impacts of broader postcommunist transformational processes. Environmental issues especially have tended to be treated at the national scale and through the lenses of either policy reform or overall environmental quality assessment. Little has been said about the mutually constitutive interactions between communities and their natural environments during periods of wholesale social transformation. Moreover, there is a need to move beyond empirical description and towards the theorisation of the changing relations between localities and their resource hinterlands. This paper develops further ideas about the role of rural, non-core, localities in the processes of postcommunist transformation, in particular the ideas of a 'transition model of development' (Staddon, 1999) and 'natural resource dependence' (Beckley, 1998; Randall and Ironside, 1996). Case study material is used to further develop a theoretical framework and to illustrate its immediate application and relevance to the worlds of scholarship and policymaking.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2001
• Journal: GeoJournal
• Print ISSN: 0343-2521
• Electronic ISSN: 1572-9893
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 55
• Issue: 2-4
• Pages: 517-528
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A%3A1021736827234
• Keywords: Bulgaria, community impacts, forest dependence, forestry, transition model of development
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1092042
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1021736827234
• Additional Information: Additional Information : One of a series of outputs developed from an ESRC-funded project on the changing nature of relations between communities and their forested hinterlands in postcommunist Bulgaria. This detailed case study initiates the project of developing a critical political analysis of forest communities in postcommunist Bulgaria.