This article examines the concept of`jointness' in India's Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, understood as an engagement between the state (in this case the Forest Department) and people organized into`communities', with NGOs, where available, acting as the interface. By examining the commonalities between older examples of joint or co-management of resources and current practices of joint forest management, the article challenges the notion that`jointness' is a new feature of forest policy, or that it represents a resurgence of civil society against the state. Further, insofar as the basic agenda of the programme is pre-determined, it cannot be considered very participatory in nature. None the less, within the limited degree of choice that JFM allows, there is a new and joint construction of needs.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Anthropologists concerned with political violence and justice must engage in a comparative examination of culpability for past and ongoing crimes. When powerful states use reparations, truth commissions, or war crime tribunals to attribute culpability to others, including their past selves, they often, paradoxically, legitimize ongoing injustices. As against culturalist explanations for mass violence, which set up a hierarchy of cultures, we need to look at the institutional sites through which public morality is constructed. This approach is illustrated with reference to the killing of Muslims in Gujarat, India, in 2002 and to the invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003.