Browsing by Author "Ubukata, Fumikazu"

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Changing Boarders of the Management Unit: An Effect of Decentralization and Formalization in Communal Forest Management, Yasothon, Thailand
(2008) Ubukata, Fumikazu
"Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is often regarded as one of the vital options to achieve environmental protection and social justice in rural area. Here local communities are assumed to be more effective than state in managing their resources, and the smallness of communities and resources themselves partly presuppose this assumption. In many cases, decentralization of natural resource management thus aims to 'scale-down' formal operational management unit in order to achieve better resource governance. On the other hand, recent administrative reforms in developing countries sometimes require larger area as a management unit, in order to formalize local management institutions. Through the coordination of these contradicting forces regarding management units, it appears that communities and authorities try to establish 'nested enterprises' of resource management. How then can communities and authorities institutionalize these 'nested enterprises' What problems will arise in the process? And how will the process affect potentiality of management performance? Taking two contrasting processes of the 'scaling-up' attempts in communal forest management in Thailand as examples, this study examined similarities and differences in the process of coordination of management units. "The study found that, firstly, both cases had experienced two-stage process of development in resource management institutions, although the influential actors in the process were different. Second, each process had faced its unique set of problems in resource management, indicating their path dependency. Third, local enclosure or 'territorialization' process, which is prone to broke off existing network of resource use, was more representative than internal institutional evolution process within the community. This process is considered to be one of the key concepts in understanding current coordination process of community resource management in Thailand, as well as 'networking' process in the case of community forest movements in the Northern area."
Rule Formation Process in Communal Forest Management: Cases in Yasothon Province, Northeast Thailand
(2006) Ubukata, Fumikazu
"During the last 20 years, theories regarding common property resource management had developed in many fields of research, particularly in economics and anthropology. There are a lot of disagreements between them, however, especially on how the community members come to form groups and take collective action to manage these resources. In fact, the importance of the anthropological approach seems increasing, as rural communities in many development countries are increasingly involved in the process of social, economic, and cultural globalization, or under the strong influences of external actors. So how the community members can develop managing their resources under such contemporary social settings? Taking the cases of 113 villages in K district, Yasothon province, northeast Thailand, this study tries to examine the rule formation processes in communal forest management. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected to examine the decisive factors of rule formation and to conceptualize the process of rule formation. The results suggested that, firstly, the induced institutional innovation theory, which insists the resource scarcity is the main driving force for the local collective action, could not solely apply to the study area. Secondly, different rule formation processes were observed according to the geographical and social conditions, and type of interactions between community members and external actors. This led to the different consequences and problems in managing the resources. I categorized these into four outstanding types of process. Each process seems to require different explanation, which varies from economic theory to anthropological understandings. In the study area, it is considered that the strong effect by the external actors after the 1990s altered and diversified the logic of collective action, and so did the situation of resource management."