Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Local forest-dependence in postcommunist Bulgaria: A case study

  • Published:
GeoJournal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Altvater E., 1993: The Future of the Market: an Essay on the Regulation of Money and Nature After the Collapse of Actually Existing Socialism, translated by P. Camiller, Verso, London. Analytical Creative Group, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman Z., 1992: Intimations of Postmodernity. Routledge, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernath J., 1999: Biological and economical aspects of utilisation and exploitation of wild growing medicinal plants in Middle and South Europe. Acta Horticulturae 500: 31–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blagoevgrad Regional Statistics Office, 2000: Statistics on Industrial Structure in the Razlog and Bansko Municipalities (in Bulgarian).

  • Binkley C.S., 2000: A crossroad in the forest: the path to a sustainable forest sector in British Columbia. In: Salazar D.J. and Alper D.K. (eds.), Sustaining the Forests of the Pacific Coast, UBC Press, Vancouver, pp. 174–192.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blagoevgrad Regional Forestry Directorate, 1996: Analysis of organisation, management and results of forestry activities in Blagoevgrad district and its divisions in the period 1990–1995. Internal Report, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, (in Bulgarian).

  • Bristow J., 1996: The Bulgarian Economy in Transition.Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryant R. and Bailey S., 1998: Third World Political Ecology. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burawoy M. and Verdery K. (eds.), 1999: Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Post-Socialist World. Rowman and Littlefield, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carter F.W. and Turnock D. (eds.), 2002: Environmental Problems of East-Central Europe, second edition. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cellarius B.A., 2000: You can buy almost anything with potatoes: an examination of barter during economic crisis in Bulgaria. Ethnology 39(1): 73–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cellarius B. and Staddon C., 2002: Environmental non-governmental organisations, civil society and democratisation in Bulgaria. Eastern European Politics and Societies 16: 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crampton R.J., 1997: A Concise History of Bulgaria. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evans S., 2001: Community forestry: countering excess demands in England's National Parks. In: McCool S.F. and Moisey R.N. (eds.), Tourism, Recreation and Sustainability: Linking Culture and the Environment. CABI Publishing, Wallingford, UK. FAO, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • FAO, 2002: FAOStat Forestry Data. FAO Website, Geneva, http://www.fao.org

  • Foucault M., 1991: Governmentality. In: Burchell G., Gordon C. and Miller P. (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 87–104.

    Google Scholar 

  • Government of Bulgaria, 1997: Law on forestry. In: Durzhaven Vestnik (State Gazette, 29/12/97). Government of Bulgaria, Sofia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Government of Bulgaria, 1997: Law on restitution of forested lands. In: Durzhaven Vestnik (State Gazette, 25/11/97). Government of Bulgaria, Sofia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gregory D., 1994: Geographical Imaginations. Blackwell, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey D., 1996: Environment, Justice and the Geography of Difference. Blackwell, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey D., 1985: The Urban Experience. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

    Google Scholar 

  • Held D., 1987: Models of Democracy. Blackwell, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kornai J., 1992: The Socialist System: the Political Economy of Communism. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leff E., 1993: Capitalism and nature. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 4(1): 44–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meurs M., Morissey M. and Begg. R., 1998: Village to state to market: agricultural ecology and transformation – the Bulgarian experience. In: Paskaleva K., Shapira P., Pickles J. and Koulov B., (eds.), Bulgaria in Transition: Environmental Consequences of Political and Economic Transformation. Ashgate, pp. 23–38.

  • Medved M. and Winkler I., 1995: Changes in the forest structure due to denationalisation and the impact on forest management. In: Brandl H. (ed.), Private Forestry: Chances and Challenges for Countries in Transition. Ministerium fur Landlichen Raum, Ernahrung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten, Baden-Wurttemberg, pp. 55–73.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muth B., 1998: Illegal harvest of renewable natural resources in North America: toward a typology of the motivations for poaching. Society and Natural Resources 11(1).

  • Naidenova R., Popov P., Michev N. and Ilieva M., 1989–1990: Natural and Economic Potential of the Mountains in Bulgaria, two volumes. Bulgaria: Bulgarian Academy of Science, Sofia, (in Bulgarian).

    Google Scholar 

  • National Forestry Administration, 2000: Claims for Forest Restitution in Bulgaria, 1999.

  • Natsionalien Statistichecki Institut, 1998: Statistical Yearbook. National Statistics Institute, Sofia, Bulgaria.

    Google Scholar 

  • O'Connor J., 1988: Capitalism, nature, socialism: a theoretical introduction, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 1.

  • Pavlinek P. and Pickles J., 2000: Environmental Transitions: Transformation and Ecological Defence in Central and Eastern Europe. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peet R. and Watts M. (eds.), 1996: Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Penin R., Traikov T. and Sultanova M., 1998: Geography of Bulgaria: Natural and Social-Demographic. Sofia.

  • Petersen D.J., 1993: Troubled Lands: Environmental Pollution in the Former Soviet Union. UCLA/RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perry III C. and Johnson A., 1997: Observations: Tourism Bansko. Business Centre 'Mesta', Razlog, Bulgaria.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pickles J. and Smith A. (eds.), 1998: Theorising Transition: the Political Economy of Postcommunist Transformations. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pred A., 1995: Recognising European Modernities: a Montage of the Rresent. Routledge, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pred A. and Watts M., 1993: Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raev I. and Grozev O., 2000: Forests, bioproductivity and climate change. In: Staneva M.P., Knight C.G., Hristov T.N. and Mishev D. (eds.), Global Change and Bulgaria. Centre for Integrated Regional Assessment, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Randall J.E. and Ironside R.G., 1996: Communities on the edge: an economic geography of resource-dependent communities in Canada. Canadian Geographer 40(1): 17–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Razlog Employment Bureau, 2000: Statistics on Employment Trends in Bansko and Razlog Municipalities (in Bulgarian).

  • O'Riordan T., 1989: The challenge for environmentalism. In: Peet R. and Thrift N. (eds.), New Models in Geography, vol. 1, Unwin Hyman, Boston, pp. 77–104.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rocheleau D., Thomas-Slayter B. and Wangari E. (eds.), 1996: Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott J., 1998: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, Yale.

    Google Scholar 

  • Staddon C., 1999: Economic marginalisation and natural resource management in Eastern Europe. The Geographical Journal 165(2): 200–208 (also published in Bulgarian, in Problemite v Geografia, 1999, #1).

    Google Scholar 

  • Staddon C., 2000: Restitution of forest property in post-communist Bulgaria. Natural Resources Forum 22(3).

  • Staddon C., 2001: Restructuring the Bulgarian Wood Processing Sector: linkages between resource exploitation, capital accumulation and transition in a post-communist locality. Environment and Planning A 33(4): 607–628.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Staddon C. and Cellarius B., 2002: Paradoxes of conservation and development in postsocialist Bulgaria: recent controversies. European Environment 12: 105–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stark D., 1996: Recombinant property in Eastern European capitalism. American Journal of Sociology 101(4): 146–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stoyanov N., 1995: Restoration of property of forest lands and forest plantations in Bulgaria. In: Brandl H. (ed.), Private Forestry: Chances and Challenges for Countries in Transition. Ministerium fur Landlichen Raum, Ernahrung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten, Baden-Wurttemberg, pp. 78–83.

    Google Scholar 

  • Swyngedouw E., 1997: Neither global nor local: 'glocalisation' and the politics of scale'. In Cox K.R. (ed.), Spaces of Globalisation: Reasserting the Power of the Local. Guilford Press, New York, pp. 167–200.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warren M., 1995: The self in discursive democracy. In: White S.K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Habermas. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 167–200.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watts M.J., 1998: Recombinant capitalism: state, de-collectivisation and the agrarian question in Vietnam. In: Pickles J. and Smith A. (eds.), Theorising Transition: the Political Economy of Postcommunist Transformations. Routledge, London, pp. 450–505.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson J., 1997: Implementing forest policy change in British Columbia: comparing the experiences of the NDP governments of 1972–1975 and 1991–?. In: Barnes T. and Hayter R. (eds.), Trouble in the Rainforest: British Columbia's Forest Economy in Transition. Western Geographical Press, Vancouver, pp. 75–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wypych S., 1995: A few aspects of private forests management in the area of the regional directorate of the state forests (RDSF) Katowice. In: Brandl H. (ed.), Private Forestry: Chances and Challenges for Countries in Transition. Ministerium fur Landlichen Raum, Ernahrung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten, Baden-Wurttemberg, pp. 269–282.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography and Environmental Management, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of the West of England, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY, U.K.

    Caedmon Staddon

Authors
  1. Caedmon Staddon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Staddon, C. Local forest-dependence in postcommunist Bulgaria: A case study. GeoJournal 55, 517–528 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021736827234

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021736827234

Search

Navigation