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Non sovereign, symmetrical cartography as a road to sustainability: Insights from a participatory forest mapping exercise

Participatory mapping is popular as a means to secure customary rights of marginalized communities and as a tool for sustainable natural resource management. It is therefore seen as a grassroots exercise in the articulation of the ‘sovereignty’ of indigenous people over their ‘resources’. Consequently, much attention is given to making the mapping (the process) more inclusive and improving the techniques of cartography instead of reading the map (the product). However concepts such as sovereignty and resources cannot be taken for granted. Based on observation of a participatory forest mapping exercise among the indigenous Gonds of Adilabad in South India, and also drawing from concepts such as “epistemological symmetry” and “ecological sovereignty” this article aims to read their map for what it reveals about agents of conservation and sustainability. By mapping non-human actors (natural and supernatural) as equally potential agents of conservation, the Gonds have produced a non-sovereign, symmetrical map that challenges notions of human sovereignty over ecology. 