Abstract

Drawing upon interviews with representatives of all the major forestry organisations in Sweden, this paper explores how, in their sales and services, they work to overcome the growing distance between forest owners and forests. The results indicate that increasing distance to forest owners in terms of sales and services work is largely dealt with by reorganisation of the sales process. Through trust-building activities such as modifying office structure and local work processes, and use of new technologies such as personalised forest websites/apps, previously local trust-building processes are being deliberately digitized and implemented through new technology and, in some cases, offices in cities. However, the results also suggest that these processes potentially affect the way in which forest as a resource and a place is constructed and interacted with. For example, it can be treated as an object of desire that is produced and marketed; as a place of knowledge and expertise that produces specific social and sales relations; and as a place of production to legitimize modern industrial forestry. Through this, forest management is constructed as an economic or technical issue that can be managed at a distance from the property.

Published in

Forest Policy and Economics
2020, Volume: 118, article number: 102267
Publisher: ELSEVIER

SLU Authors

• Andersson, Elias

  • Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation


UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science
Economic Geography


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2020.102267

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/107251