Transgressing boundaries : Gendered Spaces, Species and Indigenous Forest Management in Uganda

Forest resource access is often conceptualized as a `bundle of rights` held by different social groups at different times. In Uganda, similar to other parts of the world, professional foresters and scientists concerned with resource conservation have conceived of forests mainly in terms of access rights that are formalized through legal boundaries based upon a strong notion of property (especially State and private) This study argues that local people's access to forest resources is not only based on such formal bundles of legal rights, but also entails local norms and `morals` that regulate access to land and other forest resources. Such `bundles of rights` or `powers` are embedded within specific cultural social, political and economic contexts and are related to intra-community and intra-household power relations, and particularly to gender relations. The most important `bundle of rights` to resources is usually considered to be that relating to land, where it is widely recognised that legal (de jure) and customary (often de facto) tenure may differ significantly