Stinting the Intertidal Zone: The Many Dimensions of Privatizing a Commons

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2011

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Abstract

"This paper examines struggles around the governance of an intertidal commons on the both the east and west coasts of Canada. It relies on Foucault and on subsequent governance literature to address questions of rules of access, legal and institutional complexity, social and political power, and identity. Case material includes efforts by government to privatize access and other rights to shellfish beaches and by local communities to resist such efforts. The paper employs concepts of ‘rendering technical’, of ‘switch points’ and of ‘technologies of power’ to explore a variety of competing sources of rule-making and socio-political authority. Here, rapid social or economic change has put existing rules of access under pressure--opening up access to other actors and encouraging new approaches to governing natural resource use. These case studies highlight the complexity of how commons institutions are nested within larger mechanisms of natural resource governance."

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privatization

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