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Paper short abstract

We introduce the concept of Green Frontiers as a lens for studying new forest dynamics in Europe. We call for Forest Anthropology to investigate how societies perceive, use, and integrate forests into their daily lives; a tool in identifying forest-related transformations within communities.

Paper long abstract

This paper introduces the concept of Green Frontiers as a lens to explore patterns and consequences of new forest dynamic in Europe (and broader – in Global North) and calls for Forest Anthropology understood as a tool for investigating how societies and communities perceive, use, and integrate forests into their daily lives. We present the Forest Anthropology as a systematic approach for identifying forest-related transformations within communities that affect both people and ecosystems and may reproduce patterns of inequality, polarization and harm. We revisit Vandergeest and Nancy Peluso's (1995) concept of the political forest, which is based on the fundamental premise that forests are never entirely natural but are continually shaped through ecological, political, and cultural processes, meaning they are co-produced by nature and society. Focusing on the political nature of forests, we bring into focus a current context in which forests become easy fixes for ongoing crises – social, ecological, political, just to name a few. It has been observed that new social, economic, and political forest expectations and obligations are emerging globally. We understand this shift as a “green turn” - a moment of intense forest interest, and we are particularly interested in the uneven geographies through which it manifests in and around Europe. We do it by concentrating on single case studies that are lived locally but connected to broader currents.