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Out-migration from rural areas and generational shifts create conditions whereby increasing numbers of private forest owners live at a distance from their forestland. Geographical distance and non-residency have been raised as issues that may possibly weaken these owners’ relationships with their properties. Drawing on the “sense of place” concept as a frame of analysis for 51 qualitative interviews with resident and nonresident private forest owners from two areas in Sweden, this study provides in-depth understanding of how geographical distance and place of residency shape owners’ feelings about their forest properties. The study shows that sense of place is constructed in complex and multifaceted ways over time and that social and historical contexts and processes beyond the forest environment can make owners feel closeness to their distant properties. Thus, geographical distance or residency alone does not explain variations in these forest owners’ feelings of distance or closeness to their properties.

Globally, gender has been identified in research as a salient dimension embedded in the social relations of forests. While research related to the Global South is abundant on this topic, the scholarly output from the Global North is sparser. Based on the theoretical understanding of gendering as ongoing contested spatial and constitutive differencing practices, this study, through a qualitative approach, aims to examine and analyse the constitution of private forest ownership in the boreal and production-oriented setting of Sweden. A thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 25 female and 26 male forest owners was conducted. Many of the interviewees did not express a gendered experience of their forest ownership, and a diversity in practices of gendering was demonstrated. Also, the analysis highlighted how the gendering of activities, experiences, expectations, and forest values was constructed by emphasising differences through a complementary or dichotomy-related understanding of gender, and by associating specific bodies (women/men) with specific spaces (forest/household), tasks (manual forest labour/domestic labour), characteristics (strong/caring), and perspectives (economic/ecological). This construction contributes to a reproduction of the power of specific production-oriented masculinities and values, e.g. by marking distance or difference to femininities. In the gendering of forest ownership, doing ‘difference’ was highlighted both as a means of ‘othering’ and as a positive and innovative way of resisting and negotiating, as well as a way of reasserting and constituting the current gendered forest ownership and the production-oriented context of forestry in Sweden.

By adopting a qualitative approach and considering the case of Sweden, the aim of the paper is to investigate and analyse how private forest owners' experiences and emotions related to their private forest ownership manifest themselves in their relationship to public use of their forests and public planning for recreation and biodiversity on their land. The study incorporates and elaborates upon a conceptual framework related to the dimensions of property rights, feelings of ownership, and sense of place in its analysis of the private forest ownership context. Fifty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with forest owners owning land in two geographically different areas. The results demonstrate the important role of the 'social contract' of rights and responsibilities, which are associated with the concept of property rights, and are embedded in the relationship between private ownership and the Swedish custom of the Right of Public Access to nature in the broad acceptance of public use of private forestland. The forest owners' relationships with public planning are diverse and complex, illustrating the various dimensions of private forest ownership, the heterogeneous forest owner corps, and the different geographical contexts. The dimensions of ownership feelings and sense of place, and the interplay between them, are shown to contribute to enhanced sentiments linked to forest ownership, expressed in ambivalence or lack of conviction about public planning. An important point of resistance to public interests is owners' identity as stewards or long-term custodians of their particular forestland. The article ends with a set of recommendations for public policy and planning processes regarding public interests related to private forest ownership.

Forest social values has been put forward as an umbrella term for a new and less material relationship between people and the forested landscape, a relationship that more recently has become a policy issue. In this case study we explore how forest-related values are conceptualised in the case of Dalasjo, in Vilhelmina, Sweden, where a recent process involving determining protection for social values took place in relation to, and simultaneous with, governmental considerations regarding the application of a social values concept. By means of focus group and key informant interviews, the study demonstrates that forest social values are not only about forest per se, or even the physical and user values per se. Further, the diverse but still general understanding of forest social values on a policy level is demonstrated. This stands in contrast to the specific and place-based understanding of the local community, emanating from both individual and collective experiences. Thus, it is concluded that a policy use of social values terms, which may be difficult to identify from the outside, makes the definition of values in specific land use conflicts more complex rather than offering a possibility to immediately provide clear basis for planning tools.