Narratives, Shifting Cultivation, and Knowledge Projects in the Philippines, 1901–1941: A Cautionary Tale

Information and empire are closely connected. In this article, I introduce a number of knowledge projects initiated by the Bureau of Forestry in the Philippines during the period of American rule from 1901 to 1941. These included the development of typologies of forest law violators, surveillance of forest communities, agroforestry schemes, public relations efforts, and the creation of a legal infrastructure to support prosecution of forest law violators. All of these projects related to the aim of the bureau to contain and control small farmers, a group that competed with their own dreams of creating scientifically managed forests in the country. The story of these knowledge projects, and the misleading nature of the narrative that propelled them, serves as a more general warning of the fallibility of dominant knowledge-production systems and the concomitant need to engage constantly in their critique.