gregate can contribute signiªcantly to reducing energy use and carbon emis- sions. Ultimately, this volume suggests that, while technological advances are necessary, they will not be sufªcient to mobilize individuals and communities to take action. Providing guidance to civic organizations and local authorities alike to serve as critical social infrastructure supporting behavior change invites us to reconsider the full range of “multi-level governance” (p. 73) that will be needed to effectively combat climate change. Mathews, Andrew S. 2011. Instituting Nature: Authority, Expertise, and Power in Mexican Forests. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Reviewed by Janette Bulkan University of British Columbia Janette Bulkan The key motif that runs through Mathews’ account of the interactions between government agencies and forest-dependent communities in Mexico is the state as theatre, co-performed by both sets of actors. He explains aspects of the forma- tion of the Mexican state through a study of forestry law and regulations, and policies and practices, in the state of Oaxaca over the twentieth century. He questions naive assumptions of state hegemony and the related belief that a global environmental initiative rolled out by a state and its global partners can determine what really happens in faraway local places. Mathews shows how the combination of the “uncertain predicament of foresters themselves” (p. 55) and resistance by forest communities, resulted in the modiªcation of various state modernization projects such as prohibitions on forest burning and the introduction of industrial forestry. He provides a good synthesis of the distinction between public knowledge and credible knowledge: public knowledge is ofªcial and on-stage, while credible knowledge is synthesized by interactions between ofªcials and knowledgeable locals and occurs off-stage. Local communities and foresters are jointly complicit in what gets recorded in national forestry statistics, so both regard public presentations with disbelief. Mathews could have usefully expanded on his explanation for why public knowledge is not challenged here or in similar contexts globally: the fear of punitive action by state ofªcials with the power to withhold logging or removal permits, loss of subsidies, and so on. Mathews suggests that a great deal of environmental anthropology and history tends to see nature as the canvas on which humans inscribe history. He ascribes more agency to forests, and usefully illustrates “the unruly obstinacy and liveliness of Nature” (p. 26). Pine forests existed in mutually constitutive socio-natural assemblages with the rotational farming practices of the area, which required seasonal burning. In periods when farming was important, communities continued to burn surreptitiously; later, when local dependence on wage earning from forestry superseded farming, local people were trans- formed into ªre suppressors. Participation in ªre ªghting was a necessary ele- Janette Bulkan • 155 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/12/4/155/1817239/glep_r_00145.pdf by guest on 19 December 2023