ABSTRACT
With an emphasis on the challenges of sustaining the commons across local to global scales, Making Commons Dynamic examines the empirical basis of theorising the concepts of commonisation and decommonisation as a way to understand commons as a process and offers analytical directions for policy and practice that can potentially help maintain commons as commons in the future.
Focusing on commonisation–decommonisation as an analytical framework useful to examine and respond to changes in the commons, the chapter contributions explore how natural resources are commonised and decommonised through the influence of multi-level internal and external drivers, and their implications for commons governance across disparate geographical and temporal contexts. It draws from a large number of geographically diverse empirical cases – 20 countries in North, South, and Central America and South- and South-East Asia. They involve a wide range of commons – related to fisheries, forests, grazing, wetlands, coastal-marine, rivers and dams, aquaculture, wildlife, tourism, groundwater, surface freshwater, mountains, small islands, social movements, and climate.
The book is a transdisciplinary endeavour with contributions by scholars from geography, history, sociology, anthropology, political studies, planning, human ecology, cultural and applied ecology, environmental and development studies, environmental science and technology, public policy, Indigenous/tribal studies, Latin American and Asian studies, and environmental change and governance, and authors representing the commons community, NGOs, and policy. Contributors include academics, community members, NGOs, practitioners, and policymakers. Therefore, commonisation–decommonisation lessons drawn from these chapters are well suited for contributing to the practice, policy, and theory of the commons, both locally and globally.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|23 pages
Introduction
chapter Chapter 1|21 pages
Framing commons as a process
part II|56 pages
Roots of decommonisation
chapter Chapter 4|14 pages
Governing fluvial commons in Colonial Bihar
part III|83 pages
What enables commonisation?
chapter Chapter 5|19 pages
Five key characteristics that drive commonisation
chapter Chapter 6|21 pages
Vicuña conservation and the reinvigoration of Indigenous communities in the Andes
part IV|144 pages
Commonisation and decommonisation as parallel processes
chapter Chapter 9|24 pages
Commoning and the commons as more-than-resourcesA historical perspective on Comcáac or Seri fishing
chapter Chapter 10|20 pages
Concurrent processes of commonisation and decommonisation of Guadalquivir River (south Spain)
chapter Chapter 11|19 pages
Creating a commons for global climate governance
chapter Chapter 13|28 pages
Decommonisation–commonisation dynamics and social movements
chapter Chapter 14|26 pages
Decommonisation and new-commonisation of mountain commons in northern Pakistan
part V|39 pages
Closing