Post-human lawscapes of Indigenous community forests in Central India

Abstract

The increasing interest in post-human legal geographies is evident in the Anthropocene, but the agency of place calls for more attention in the discussion. This post-humanistic study explores the production of lawscape – the bringing together of multiple forms of law and place – in three Indigenous (Adivasi) communities in Central India. According to the interviews and observation conducted in these remote villages, the lawscape of the community forest emerges in encounters between humans and non-humans, which intertwine with assemblages of formal law. In these community forests, law and place constitute each other in multiple ways. The customs, norms, and relations of the lawscape are not only relationships among people with respect to the land, forest, and resources, but among the whole more-than-human community, including the forest itself, with respect to its constituents. The territories and their (external and internal) boundaries are defined through bodily and material practices and in the interaction between different actors. The community forest extends as far as the residents are able to actively protect the forest. The degree of exclusion of the boundaries depends on how actors from outside the villages are perceived to treat non-humans in the forest, and for what purposes. Inside the boundaries of the community forest there are small patches that have their particular functions and rules: a variety of places for humans and non-humans. Inside the community forest assemblage, movement, encounters, and materiality constitute these subtle lawscapes, with their particular norms.