Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork in South East Estonia, I will consider how indifference to and trivialisation of potentially damaging increase in logging arises in socially fragmented rural regions, and what role do cultural heritage allegiances play in this.

Paper long abstract:

Since several recent changes in logging policies, Estonian population has become alert to the possibility of unsustainable forest loss. This awareness has triggered intense debates in the conventional and social media, but has also led to actions such as protests and new organisations set up in response to legally questionable or unethical logging. In several communities in the North Eastern Estonia, logging has, through the aesthetics of destruction, ruination and loss, activated people to organise in previously unforeseen ways.

On the other hand, similar scale of logging has failed to have a similar effect in the South Eastern part of the country, despite the fact that the forest produce (e.g. berries and mushrooms) has been an important source of income for many locals ever since the difficult post-socialist years in the 1990s.

Drawing on my long-term fieldwork in rural Seto country in the South East, I will discuss how the same level of ruination in the forests is presented and perceived differently in regions with high social fragmentation. Seto country is recognised as a cultural heritage region, and boasts a considerable "heritage elite". I will reflect on the different views the members of this elite have on destruction of the culture and the forest, and the juxtaposition of this with the lives of the emerging lower classes.