Community Economies in a Global Marketplace

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Date

2004

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Abstract

"Despite substantial scholarship documenting the continued relevance of common property resource management systems, many policy officials continue to view such traditional modes of organization as vestiges of the past, out of sync with a modernizing, global economy. This paper examines cases of popular mobilization in two post-conflict societies that aim at once to reassert the value of community and the viability of community economies where local livelihoods depend on constituting and maintaining a commons. Recent policy reforms addressing forests in Guatemala and fisheries in Cambodia have each responded to local demands by curtailing commercial concessions in favor of community management of common- pool resources. In this paper, we assess and compare the experiences of two members of the Association of Forest Cooperatives of the Petén (ACOFOP) in Guatemala, and two fishing villages of the Tonle Sap (Great Lake) in Cambodia, highlighting the links between community economies and sustainability, the way community economies seek to engage the market on terms that do not sacrifice their commons, and the role of the state in influencing the prospects for establishing and maintaining community economies."

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IASC, livelihoods, community participation, forest management, fisheries, common pool resources, sustainability

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