Bringing together case studies from Canada, the Nordic countries and Russia, this book is the first to provide a comparative examination of the current transformations in the forest industry regimes and the challenges these make for the communities dependent on this industry. It focuses on individual forest companies and argues that these are the main motors of the industry's internationalization, often without taking due consideration of the complex interrelations between society, the environment and forest trade. It concludes by highlighting instances of processes working towards homogenization and diversity, and suggests that while Anglo-American management practice is increasingly important across the northern forest regions, it is also meeting with resistance, due to historical and political conditions.

Both at the University of Joensuu, Ari Aukusti Lehtinen is a Professor of Geography and Jakob Donner-Amnell is a Researcher in Social Policy/Environmental Policy. Bjornar Saether is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Geography at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Contents: Part I: Circuits of Wood and Power: Timber Frontiers and Paper Landscapes of the North: Introduction: northern forest regimes and the challenge of internationalization, Ari Aukusti Lehtinen, Jakob Donner-Amnell and Bjrnar Sther. Part II: Canada: Freeing from the Colonial Heritage?: Requiem for a 'local' champion: globalization, British Columbia's forest economy and MacMillan Bloedel, Roger Hayter; Beyond L'Erreur borle: the forest industry, environmentalism and image production in Quec, Canada, L. Anders Sandberg, Nicolas Houde and Patrick Lavoie. Part III: Russian Forest Industry: Eroding the Patrimonial Hegemony: Russian Taiga: regional fabrication of the Federal Forest Regime, Ari Aukusti Lehtinen; Forest regimes as heterogeneous networks: polarization of the Russian forest industry, Jarmo Kortelainen; Shifting between the East and the West, switching between scales: forest-industrial regimes in northwest Russian borderlands, Juha Kotilainen; Co-managing the Taiga: Russian forests and the challenge of international environmentalism, Maria Tysiachniouk and Jonathan Reisman. Part IV: Nordic Forest Regimes: Success and its Price: To be or not to be Nordic? how internationalization has affected the character of the forest industry and forest utilization in the Nordic countries, Jacob Donner-Amnell; The emergence of two national concepts and their convergence toward a common Nordic regime in the global forest industry, Christer Peterson; From national to global agenda: the expansion of Norske Skog 1962-2003, Bjrnar Sther. Part V: Conclusions: Comparing the forest regimes in the Conifer North, Jacob Donner-Amnell, Ari Aukusti Lehtinen and Bjrnar Sther; Index.