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