Reinventing the commons
The thesis explores the emergence of local natural resource management arrangements as a contextual and negotiated process in two rural communities in northern Sweden: Ammarnäs and Coastal Ring. It analyses particular practices and meanings that appear in the struggles to develop local management ar...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2008
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/1798/ https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/1798/1/Avhandling_nr_48.2008_tryckfil.pdf |
| Summary: | The thesis explores the emergence of local natural resource management arrangements as a contextual and negotiated process in two rural communities in northern Sweden: Ammarnäs and Coastal Ring. It analyses particular practices and meanings that appear in the struggles to develop local management arrangements and discusses the observations made in relation to dominant theories in natural resource management. By exploring the emergence of local natural resource management arrangements in a contemporary situation and as a contextual and negotiated process the study seeks to contribute to the debates on how local institutional arrangements for the management of common pool resources emerge. The research design is qualitative, based on interviews and participant observation. Theoretically, the study is grounded in a social constructionist perspective on institutional theory in which institutionalisation processes are conceived of as processes of gaining legitimacy and the construction of shared understandings. The thesis also draws on discourse theory and presents and reflects upon the dominant theoretical approaches to natural resource management. The results reveal that the emergence of local management arrangements was sparked by a combination of interrelated factors, such as contemporary and historical state interventions in resource management, conflicts over natural resources and through international and national policies on natural resource management. The study elucidates how particular meanings and practices were ascribed to local management. People constructed local management discursively by giving legitimacy to local management through a process of reinvention, where narratives from past natural resource management experiences were drawn on and adapted for needs in the present. The struggle to develop local management arrangements also influenced social relations and people’s identification with the surrounding environment as well as people’s constructions of identities vis-a-vis each other. The study ... |
|---|