Sustained-yield forestry reconceived forest as state-managed abstraction rather than commons

Evidence

Under the new method, forests were divided not into equal but into equivalent sections. Coppice woods containing small trees that could be harvested every twenty years for firewood were divided into twenty portions, while stands of large timber for shipbuilding, which could be profitably harvested only every 120 years, were divided into 120 portions, only one of which was to be cut each year. Portions were equivalent with respect to long-term yield, taking into consideration soil variation, exposure, and growth rate, rather than equal as to acreage. The new methods required greater attention to local conditions and types of trees as well as periodic thinning to regulate sustained yield. Forests ceased to be regarded as communal and were instead regulated by the state. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 893

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the polyad’s commons/enclosure thread and to earlier chapters on the tragedy-of-the-commons and the passing of communal land. — connects to: Restoration forestry succeeds as intimate gardening rather than technical management — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 1070; Renewable-landscape culture acknowledges scarcity while extractive-state narratives suppress limits — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 222; Spatial-temporal disconnect makes environmental conservation an abstraction not a necessity — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2529 (+3 more)
• FICTION: The shift from equal to ‘equivalent’ lots — yield abstraction replacing communal space — could seed a story about a landscape reorganized to a ledger’s logic.

Broader Connections

• Spatial-temporal disconnect makes environmental conservation an abstraction not a necessity #corroborates (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2529
• Restoration forestry succeeds as intimate gardening rather than technical management #contradicts (0.82) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1070
• Local commons adapt and persist through contestation and shifting state relations #contradicts (0.80) — Emil Sandström and Ann-Kristin Ekman and Karl-Johan Lindholm, Commoning in the periphery – The role…, 95
• Renewable-landscape culture acknowledges scarcity while extractive-state narratives suppress limits #expands (0.78) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 222
• Commodification of land, not utopian design, universalized abstract space #corroborates (0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1614
• Sustainable harvest rules demand knowing each plant’s specific regeneration limits #complicates (0.72) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 584