Anthropogenic grasslands in Southeast Asia: Sociology of knowledge and implications for agroforestry

Anthropogenic grasslands, meaning grasslands that have been influenced and modified by humans, are one of the most important land covers of the tropics, but their management is dominated by conflicted and contested views, which is reflected in the problematic record of grassland development intervention. This chapter analyzes the historic, cultural, political, and institutional factors that affect the way grasslands are viewed, drawing largely on data from Southeast Asia. These data suggest that perceptions of grasslands are colored in part by the marginal place that they occupy in the cosmology of western industrialized societies, which idealize forest covers. Consequently, national and international agencies view grasslands not as a common land cover but as a development problem. The agendas of government and development agencies are often not grounded in a proper understanding of the local human and bio-physical ecology of grasslands or of successful local agroforestry practices; and research on many of the most important dimensions of grassland management is poorly conducted and/or utilized. The recent rise in scientific interest in indigenous knowledge, environmental history, and non-equilibrium systems, has opened up new possibilities for the study of grasslands. Agroforestry, given its inherent bridging of nature and culture, is ideally suited to benefit from these possibilities, by focusing research attention on the bio-social factors that determine the appearance, disappearance, and maintenance of anthropogenic grasslands.