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Abstract:
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"The need for a Perspective on Commons drawing from several disciplines has become indispensable considering the significant multi dimensional role and wide ranging impact it has on community living, collective action and livelihoods. While studies go deeper in each discipline and stream of thought, various approaches to understand social problems and work for social change are beginning to realize the necessity and strength of convergence and a fundamental need to perceive them together in order to enrich intervention.
"In the past five decades of active Planning, Development paradigms have influenced national policies aimed at bringing about social change and improvements in conditions of living. Most of the policies and programmes align with certain Theory, based on what they identify and focus on as a problem and what they want to achieve.
"Feminist theories examine specifically the social constructs around women, their position in the society and the impact of Development processes on women. Various approaches to understanding Society and the position of women within the feminist theory reflect, on the one hand, divergent perceptions, and on the other, different social and historical locations in which feminists exist.
"Commons are essentially part of a dynamic eco-system, and the contemporary social, economic and political processes involving surrounding communities. Their existence and character is affected by changes that come upon in any of the above. Various assumptions underlying the nature of Commons and assessment of the Environment at large, stemming from Development paradigms, Feminist theories (and many other Theories) culminate into programmes intending to bring about certain changes in the state of Commons and its users.
"This paper would attempt to bring together to the discourse, the fundamental understanding under Development, Gender and Commons and locate the concerns regarding women's participation in common property resource management. Tracing history, matching with contemporary development and feminist thinking in order to find how these have designed and affected lives of women as beneficiaries, stakeholders and participants of CPRM programmes and examine few relevant Institutional arrangements.
"The aim to interface theoretical frameworks originates from a need to relate one issue to another in the attempt to generate comprehensive understanding. Frameworks are not static and evolve over time, although their underlying assumptions usually endure, and these enable us to distinguish one framework from another, even when some elements are common to more than one framework.
"This paper would engage in understanding the insufficiency of any single approach and the need for inter-disciplinary understanding, approach and a holistic perspective to working on Commons. The paper would delve into the criticality of recognising how we formulate our understanding, the specific historical, cultural, and economic context; the analysis and the mechanisms that emerge from such understanding."
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