Common Property Resource Management in Transitional Villages

Abstract

"Reality today is one of rapid and expanding processes of urbanization, globalization and industrialization resulting in a constant flow of information, money, objects, ideologies, and people. It is crucial to understand the ambiguous complexity that arises from the nexus of such flows and dynamics. These flows increase interactions and heterogeneity, change social relations and communities, and reshape identities and boundaries. Within this nexus, societies are becoming more and more transitional, to varying degrees and forms. It tends to complicate social transformations, each and every society, to various degrees and brings significant changes in almost every aspect of social life.

"This paper is an attempt to grasp the complex dynamics that characterize transitional societies in relation to the impact on the management of common property resources due to the transitions in social, economic, political, and cultural processes and conditions. The study of common property resources today focus on communities those are reasonably free of the influence of significant externally induced change. These external interactions bring changes that, directly or indirectly, undermine common property systems and weaken the possibility for collective action. The transitions are economic socio-cultural and political in nature and tend to influence all spheres of village life.

"This paper helps to identify potential vulnerable areas in the management of common property resources in the transitional villages especially the decrease in the perceived need to rely on local resources; change in the individual preferences; enhanced economic, social, and geographical mobility of the villagers; high opportunity costs of social arrangements to manage local resources; gradual loss of common interests and group identity, and integration to the market that encourages higher spending and an increasing desire for immediate consumption. The shape and the role of the institutions managing commons under such circumstances have been under-conceptualized. The paper attempts to examine the characteristics of the CPR institutions in the changing scenarios and the need for support mechanisms for effective governance of the commons."