Forest and Society: Initiating a Southeast Asia Journal for Theoretical, Empirical, and Regional Scholarship

The journal aims to cultivate a scholarship of the region, focusing on the dynamics of change in social and ecological processes. It takes a broad understanding of the forest, encompassing its politico-administrative unit, geographic area, and ecological unit. The journal seeks to engage on a broad set of themes through the application of targeted research related to timely issues affecting the human-environment interface in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is a diverse region, comprising 11 countries with a population of approximately 600 million people and a forest area covering 1,904,593 square kilometers. The region has a unique cultural context, with a collective memory of colonial and postwar state-building efforts. The power, actors, and institutions involved in forest politics are relevant to the journal's discussion. Land use in Southeast Asia is characterized by perplexing drivers and implications of change, emerging from the friction of distant initiatives interacting in localizing terms. The journal emphasizes the importance of developing research approaches and communicating their message. It aims to build a Southeast Asia research community on Forest and Society, leveraging the richness of potential study areas from the region and for the world. The journal's scope encompasses various themes, including the study of forests, land use, society, community, and mixed methods. It seeks to provide a conduit for sharing Southeast Asia scholarship to engage in contemporary research and policy. Southeast Asia's forests are rich in and dependent on forest resources, both for local and national uses, as well as for global trade. The region is home to significant timber trade, with Indonesia and Malaysia sharing 80 percent of the global tropical timber trade. The cultivation of palm oil and other commodity crops, as well as mining resources, define trends taking place across Southeast Asia's landscapes. Local communities have been impacted by these changes, with some mobilizing to counter the powers deployed to exclude them and to implement exclusions of their own. The journal's inaugural issue features studies on historical political ecologies of land use around opium cultivation in Thailand, emerging governance regimes of corporate social responsibility in Myanmar, the capacity of new state institutions to manage land conflict in forest estate lands in Indonesia, a close analysis of forest harvesting and management in a mangrove forest in Malaysia, and an economic valuation of non-timber forest products in a national park in Indonesia. These studies highlight the complexities of forest and society in Southeast Asia, underscoring the need for a nuanced understanding of the region's dynamics.