Nationalism, (Dis)simulation, and the Politics of Science in Québec's Forest Crisis

Abstract

This article explores the controversy over the management of the boreal forest of Québec in Canada. Most academic attention describing forest conflicts in North America has focused on the polarity between environmental nongovernmental organizations and First Nations on the one hand and the forest industry lobby and scientific forestry on the other, but little has been said about the role played by nationalism in orchestrating the overexploitation of the forest. By investigating the underlying effects of Québec's nationalism, this article illustrates how the institutional realignment following the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s positioned simulation science at the center of a negotiation process allowing the realization of both nationalist economic agenda and industrial interests to materialize, a relationship between nationalism and science that made Québec's forest crisis a distinct event in North America. Whereas political ecology has asserted the significance of exploring scientific discourses and practices in the production of cultural politics of nature, this article draws on science and technology studies to demonstrate that the so-called complexity, rationality, and certainty associated with forestry science function to disguise the deeply political nature of the production and use of scientific knowledge. With its focus on the development and usage of simulation modeling in forestry, this article concludes that what is at stake in using science in the management of Québec's boreal forest is not merely related either to the forest industry or to expansion of powers of government but, rather, to its weakness in gaining the public and the industry's trust in the management of the public's forests.

本文探讨加拿大魁北克北方森林管理的争议。描绘北美森林冲突的学术关注, 多半聚焦非政府环保组织与原住民, 及其和林业游说团体与科学林业之间的两极分化, 但却鲜少提及国族主义在策划森林过度剥削中所扮演的角色。本文透过探讨魁北克国族主义的下述效应, 描绘1960年代宁静革命之后的制度重组, 如何将模拟科学置于同时使国族主义经济议程和工业利益得以实现的协商过程之核心, 此一存在于国族主义和科学之间的关联性, 使得魁北克的森林危机成为北美的特殊事件。政治生态学强调探讨科学论述与实践在生产自然的文化政治中的重要性, 本文则运用科学与科技研究, 证实关乎林业科学的所谓的复杂性、理性与确定性, 实则用来蒙蔽科学知识生产与使用的深刻政治内涵。本文聚焦模拟模型在林业中的建制与使用, 并在结论中主张, 运用科学进行魁北克北方森林管理的当务之急, 并不仅是在于森林产业或政府权力的扩张, 而是关乎其在公共森林的管理上无法取得公众与产业信任的弱点。

Este artículo se refiere a la controversia generada en torno al manejo del bosque boreal de Québec, en Canadá. La mayor parte de la atención académica para describir los conflictos forestales en Norteamérica se enfoca sobre la polaridad entre organizaciones ambientales no gubernamentales y las Primeras Naciones, por una parte, y el cabildeo de la industria forestal y la silvicultura científica, por la otra, aunque poco se ha dicho del papel jugado por el nacionalismo sobre el manejo de la sobreexplotación del bosque. Investigando los efectos subyacentes del nacionalismo de Québec, este artículo ilustra la manera como la realineación institucional, que siguió a la Revolución Callada de los años 1960, colocó a la ciencia de la simulación en el centro de un proceso de negociación que permitiera simultáneamente la realización de una agenda económica nacionalista y se materializaran intereses industriales, relación entre nacionalismo y ciencia que convirtió la crisis forestal de Québec en evento importante en Norteamérica. Mientras que la ecología política ha reafirmado la significación de explorar los discursos y prácticas científicas en la producción de la política cultural sobre la naturaleza, este artículo se apoya en estudios de ciencia y tecnología para demostrar que las denominadas complejidad, racionalidad y certidumbre que se asocian con la ciencia forestal tienen la función de disfrazar la naturaleza profundamente política de la producción y uso del conocimiento científico. Al concentrarse en el desarrollo y utilización del modelado de simulación en silvicultura, este artículo concluye que lo que está en juego en el uso de la ciencia para el manejo del bosque boreal de Québec no se relaciona meramente con la industria de la silvicultura o con la expansión de los poderes gubernamentales, sino más bien con su debilidad para ganarse la confianza pública o la de la industria en el manejo de los bosques del público.

Key Words:

• forest crisis
• nationalism
• Québec
• simulation modeling.

关键词:

• 森林危机
• 国族主义
• 魁北克
• 模拟模型。

Palabras clave:

• crisis forestal
• nacionalismo
• Québec
• modelado de simulación

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank David Demeritt for challenging me to write this article and for his constructive and generous comments on several drafts. His sharp mind and incomparable critical skills have helped me shaping the article to its final form. I am also grateful to Eric Alvarez, who kindly let me reprint Figure 3 from his PhD thesis. Simon Tessier provided invaluable help in tracking down archival documents at the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec in Montréal and in sending them to me in London. Many thanks to Clemens Driessen, John Downer, Angela M. Filipe, and Jan Penrose for helping me refine my thoughts at different stages of the writing process. I would also like to thank five anonymous referees and the editor, Bruce Braun, for their insightful comments and suggestions. Finally, this article would not have been possible without the involvement of those interviewed for this research. All of them have been crucial to my understanding of Québec's forestry.

Notes

1. All translations from French to English have been made by the author.

2. By strategy of impersonality, I refer to Porter's (1996) work on impersonal objectivity whereby accountability for political actions and ideology disappears behind the objectivity and rationality purported by scientific discourses and practices.

3. As a segment of Québec's history, the Quiet Revolution (1960–1970) is characterized by a combination of liberalism and nationalism that gave substance to major reforms in both public and political institutions, along with the development of an interventionist economy and a focus on social equity. The main desire was to allow francophone Québécois to access the upper level of Québec's economy. It was with the election of the LPQ in 1960 that the Quiet Revolution became associated with the electoral slogan maîtres chez nous—“master in our own house.”

4. Before the Quiet Revolution (1960–1970), the term Québécois was used to define inhabitants of Québec City; others were known as French Canadians (see Miner 1939). With the modernization of governmental institutions, the definition of Québécois became territorial, associated with Québec as a nation state rather than a province within Canada (Balthazar 1992).

5. René Lévesque resigned from his post as provincial Minister of Energy in 1967 to create the mouvement souveraineté-association, which later became the Parti Québécois (1968) for which he stood as a Member of the National Assembly at Québec's National Assembly. The party formed its first government in 1976 and Lévesque became Québec's Premier.

6. It is important to know that this claim was also made in the documentary film l’Erreur boréale.

7. Although Université Laval's School of Forestry has taught forestry science in similar ways to other North American Schools (i.e., Yale, Toronto), its francophone uniqueness has generated a context in which self-criticism between its graduates working for the industry, the MTF, and at Laval's School of Forestry became almost inexistent.

8. The interest from the federal government in developing the nuclear sector through the CANDU reactors throughout the 1980s played a role in maintaining the attention of environmental groups on nuclear energy, but also revived the nationalist interest of francophones in defending Québec's environmental issues against the Canadian government. It is also worth noting that Hydro-Québec's ambition to develop large hydroelectric projects such as the Great Whale project (see Desbiens 2004) also captured the attention of environmental groups during the 1990s.