Placing the Commoning First: Getting Beyond the Patronage Trap in Natural Resource Decentralization Policies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24259/fs.v7i2.25926Keywords:
Commoning, State informality, Decentralization, Developing countries, Political ecologyAbstract
Research on the commons have been an inspiration for initiatives on natural resource decentralization over the past three decades. Researchers are increasingly recognizing however, that these commons initiatives are mostly failing to support rights, improve livelihoods, and conserve natural resources. These “commons projects,” defined as approaches that claim to devolve natural resource governance to local institutions, have their origins in various formulations of theories of the commons but are usually interpreted and applied by states and donor organizations. This paper identifies and analyzes deficiencies in theories of the commons through the slight but significant refocusing on perspectives of commoning. We found that commons scholarship lacks a grounding in power relations, and furthermore, tends to portray commons-governing groups as homogenous communities enacting long-established practices. Conversely, a commoning perspective provides a more dynamic and relational approach, and thus distinctly centers political dimensions of collective practices among diverse groups of citizens. We also extend this argument by showing that a fundamental shift in understanding commoning will help advocate for, and anticipate what commoners can actually do in regions of the Global South undergoing widespread enclosures in the face of powerful informal patronage networks controlled by state power actors and interests.
References
Agrawal, A. & Ribot, J. (1999). Accountability in decentralization: A framework with South Asian and West African cases. The Journal of Developing Areas, 33(4), 473-502.
Agrawal, A. (2000). Small Is Beautiful, but Is Larger Better? Forest-Management Institutions in the Kumaon Himalaya, India. In C. C. Gibson, M. A. McKean, & E. Ostrom (Eds.), People and Forests: Communities, Institutions, and Governance (pp. 57–86). MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/5286.003.0009
Agrawal, A. (2001). Common property institutions and sustainable governance of resources. World Development, 29(10), 1649-1672. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0305-750X(01)00063-8
Agrawal, A. (2002). Common resources and institutional sustainability. In National Academy of Sciences (Ed.), The Drama of the Commons (pp. 41–85). The National Academies Press.
Agrawal, A., & Gibson, C. C. (1999). Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in Natural Resource Conservation. World Development, 27(4), 629–649. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(98)00161-2
Annavarapu, S., & Levenson, Z. (2021). The Social Life of the State: Relational Ethnography and Political Sociology. Qualitative Sociology, 44(3), 337–348. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-021-09491-2
Apostolopoulou, E., Bormpoudakis, D., Chatzipavlidis, A., Cortés Vázquez, J. J., Florea, I., Gearey, M., … & Wahby, N. (2022). Radical social innovations and the spatialities of grassroots activism: navigating pathways for tackling inequality and reinventing the commons. Journal of Political Ecology, 29(1), 144–188. https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2292
Aspinall, E., & van Klinken, G. (2011). The state and illegality in Indonesia. In Aspinall, E. & van Klinken, G. (Eds.), The State and Illegality in Indonesa (pp. 1-28). KITLV Press.
Aspinall, E., & van Klinken, G. (Eds.). (2011). The state and illegality in Indonesia. KITLV Press.
Astuti, R., & McGregor, A. (2017). Indigenous land claims or green grabs? Inclusions and exclusions within forest carbon politics in Indonesia. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(2), 445–466. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2016.1197908
Baggio, J. A., Barnett, A. J., Perez-Ibarra, I., Brady, U., Ratajczyk, E., Rollins, N., … & Janssen, M. A. (2016). Explaining success and failure in the commons: the configural nature of Ostrom’s institutional design principles. International Journal of the Commons, 10(2), 417. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.634
Barletti, J. P. S., & Larson, A. (2019). The role of multi-stakeholder forums in subnational jurisdictions: Framing literature review for in-depth field research. Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). https://doi.org/10.17528/cifor/007150
Basurto, X., & Lozano, A. G. (2021). Commoning and the commons as more-than-resourcesA historical perspective on Comcáac or Seri fishing. In P. K. Nayak (Ed.), Making Commons Dynamic: Understanding Change Through Commonisation and Decommonisation (pp. 167–190). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/97804290 28632-13
Batiran, K., Sirimorok, N., Verheijen, B., Fisher, M. R., & Sahide, M. A. K. (2021). Creating Commons: Reflections on Creating Natural Resource Management Regimes in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Feminist Studies: FS, 5(2), 619–630. https://doi.org/ 10.24259/fs.v5i2.14768
Berenschot, W., & van Klinken, G. (2018). Informality and citizenship: the everyday state in Indonesia. Citizenship Studies, 22(2), 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621 025.2018.1445494
Berenschot, W., & van Klinken, G. (eds.) (2019). Citizenship in Indonesia: Perjuangan Atas Hak, Identitas, dan Partisipasi. Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia
Berkes, F. (2021). Advanced Introduction to Community-based Conservation. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
Blaikie, P. (1999). A Review of Political Ecology: Issues, Epistemology and Analytical Narratives. Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie, 43(1), 131–147. https:// doi.org/10.1515/zfw.1999.0009
Boucquey, N., & Fly, J. (2021). Contested Commoning: Urban Fishing Spaces and Community Wellbeing. International Journal of the Commons, 15(1), 305–319. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1095
Bresnihan, P., & Byrne, M. (2015). Escape into the city: Everyday practices of commoning and the production of urban space in Dublin. Antipode, 47(1), 36–54. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12105
Buehler, M. (2010). Decentralisation and Local Democracy in Indonesia: The Marginalisation of the Public Sphere. In E. Aspinall & M. Mietzner (Eds.), Problems of Democratisation in Indonesia: Elections, Institutions and Society (pp. 267–285). ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.
Buehler, M. (2014). Elite Competition and Changing State-Society Relations: Shari’a Policymaking in Indonesia. In M. Ford & T. B. Pepinsky (Eds.), Beyond Oligarchy: Wealth, Power, and Contemporary Indonesian Politics (pp. 157–176). Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501719158-011
Caffentzis, G. (2012). A tale of two conferences: globalization, the crisis of neoliberalism and the question of the commons. Borderlands, 11(2).
Cleaver, F. (2001). Institutional bricolage, conflict and cooperation in usangu, Tanzania. IDS Bulletin, 32(4), 26–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1759-5436.2001.mp3200 4004.x
Cleaver, F., & de Koning, J. (2015). Furthering critical institutionalism. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.605
Cox, M., Arnold, G., & Tomás, S. V. (2010). A Review of Design Principles for Community-based Natural Resource Management. Ecology and Society, 15(4), 38. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03704-150438
De Angelis, M. (2017). Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism. Zed Books. https://doi.org/10.5040/97813502 21611
DeVore, J. (2017). Trees and springs as social property: a perspective on degrowth and redistributive democracy from a Brazilian squatter community. Journal of Political Ecology, 24(1), 644–666. https://doi.org/10.2458/v24i1.20904
Dressler, W., & Roth, R. (2011). The Good, the Bad, and the Contradictory: Neoliberal Conservation Governance in Rural Southeast Asia. World Development, 39(5), 851–862. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2010.08.016
Edelman, M., Oya, C., Borras, S. (2015). Global Land Grabs: History, Theory, and Method. Routledge.
Eizenberg, E. (2012). Actually existing commons: Three moments of space of community gardens in New York city. Antipode, 44(3), 764–782. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00892.x
Epstein, G. (2017). Local rulemaking, enforcement and compliance in state-owned forest commons. Ecological Economics: The Journal of the International Society for Ecological Economics, 131, 312–321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon. 2016.09.012
Euler, J. (2018). Conceptualizing the Commons: Moving Beyond the Goods-based Definition by Introducing the Social Practices of Commoning as Vital Determinant. Ecological Economics: The Journal of the International Society for Ecological Economics, 143, 10–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017. 06.020
Fisher, M. R., & van der Muur, W. (2020). Misleading icons of communal lands in Indonesia: Implications of adat forest recognition from a model site in Kajang, Sulawesi. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 21(1), 55-76. https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2019.1670244
Fisher, M. R., Dhiaulhaq, A., & Sahide, M. A. K. (2019). The politics, economies, and ecologies of Indonesia’s third generation of social forestry: An introduction to the special section. Forest and Society, 3(1), 152–170. https://doi.org/10.24259/ fs.v3i1.6348
Fournier, V. (2013). Commoning: on the social organisation of the commons. M@n@gement, 16(4), 433–453. https://doi.org/10.3917/mana.164.0433
Gaventa, J. (2006). Finding the spaces for change: A power analysis. IDS Bulletin, 37(6), 23–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1759-5436.2006.tb00320.x
Gibson-Graham, J. K., Cameron, J., & Healy, S. (2016). Commoning as a postcapitalist politics 1. In A. Amin & P. Howell (Eds.), Releasing the Commons (pp. 192–212). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315673172-12
Hall, D., Hirsch, P., & Li, T. M. (2011). Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia. NUS Press.
Hall, K., Cleaver, F., Franks, T., & Maganga, F. (2014). Capturing Critical Institutionalism: A Synthesis of Key Themes and Debates. The European Journal of Development Research, 26(1), 71–86. https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2013.48
Harvey, D. (2003). The New Imperialism. Oxford University Press.
Harvey, D. (2011). The Future of the Commons. Radical History Review, 109, 101–107. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2010-017
Haryanto, T., van Zeben, J., & Purnhagen, K. (2022). Ostrom’s Design Principles as Steering Principles for Contractual Governance in “Hotbeds.” Forest and Society, 6(1), 175–201. https://doi.org/10.24259/fs.v6i1.17993
Helmke, G., & Levitsky, S. (2006). Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. JHU Press.
Herrawan, H., Sirimorok, N., Nursaputra, M., Mas’ud, E. I., Faturachmat, F., Sadapotto, A., … & Sahide, M. A. K. (2022). Commoning the State Forest: Crafting Commons through an Indonesian Social Forestry Program. Forest and Society, 6(1), 20–39. https://doi.org/10.24259/fs.v6i1.10680
Jones, S. D. (2015). Bridging political economy analysis and critical institutionalism: an approach to help analyse institutional change for rural water services. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1), 65–86. https://doi.org/10.18 352/ijc.520
Kamath, L., & Dubey, G. (2020). Commoning the Established Order of Property: Reclaiming Fishing Commons in Mumbai. Urbanisation, 5(2), 85–101. https://doi.org/10.1177/2455747120972983
Larson, A. M., & Soto, F. (2008). Decentralization of Natural Resource Governance Regimes. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 33(1), 213–239. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.environ.33.020607.095522
Li, T. M. (1999). Compromising power: Development,culture, and rule in Indonesia. Cultural Anthropology: Journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, 14(3), 295–322. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1999.14.3.295
Li, T. M. (2002). Engaging Simplifications: Community-Based Resource Management, Market Processes and State Agendas in Upland Southeast Asia. World Development, 30(2), 265–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(01)00103-6
McCarthy, J. F., Vel, J. A. C., & Afiff, S. (2012). Trajectories of land acquisition and enclosure: development schemes, virtual land grabs, and green acquisitions in Indonesia’s Outer Islands. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2), 521–549. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2012.671768
Meilasari-Sugiana, A. (2012). Collective action and ecological sensibility for sustainable mangrove governance in Indonesia: challenges and opportunities. Journal of Political Ecology, 19(1), 184–201. https://doi.org/10.2458/v19i1. 21726
Meinzen-Dick, R., Chaturvedi, R., Kandikuppa, S., Rao, K., Rao, J. P., Bruns, B., & ElDidi, H. (2021). Securing the commons in India: Mapping polycentric governance. International Journal of the Commons, 15(1), 218. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc. 1082
Moeliono, M., Thuy, P. T., Bong, I. W., Wong, G. Y., & Brockhaus, M. (2017). Social Forestry - why and for whom? A comparison of policies in Vietnam and Indonesia. Forest and Society, 1(2), 78–97. https://doi.org/10.24259/fs.v1i2.2484
Mosse, D. (2004). Is good policy unimplementable? Reflections on the ethnography of aid policy and practice. Development and Change, 35(4), 639–671. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0012-155X.2004.00374.x
Mosse, D. (2006). Collective Action, Common Property, and Social Capital in South India: An Anthropological Commentary. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 54(3), 695–724. https://doi.org/10.1086/500034
Mudliar, P., & Koontz, T. M. (2021). Locating power in Ostrom’s design principles: Watershed management in India and the United States. Society & Natural Resources, 34(5), 639–658. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2020.1864535
Noterman, E. (2016). Beyond tragedy: Differential commoning in a manufactured housing cooperative. Antipode, 48(2), 433–452. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti. 12182
Ocampo-Diaz, N., Lopez, M. C., Axelrod, M., & Norris, P. (2022). Decentralizing the Governance of Inland Fisheries in the Pacific Region of Colombia. International Journal of the Commons, 16(1), 78–93. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1131
Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, With a New Preface and Appendix. Harvard University Press.
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton University Press.
Ostrom, E. (2010). Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems. The American Economic Review, 100(3), 641–672. https:// doi.org/10.1257/aer.100.3.641
Paulson, S., Gezon, L. L., & Watts, M. (2003). Locating the political in political ecology: An introduction. Human Organization, 62(3), 205–217. https://doi.org/10. 17730/humo.62.3.e5xcjnd6y8v09n6b
Peluso, N. L., Afiff, S., & Rachman, N. F. (2008). Claiming the grounds for reform: Agrarian and environmental movements in Indonesia. Journal of Agrarian Change, 8(2-3), 377–407. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0366.2008.00174.x
Riggs, R. A., Langston, J. D., Margules, C., Boedhihartono, A. K., Lim, H. S., Sari, D. A., Sururi, Y., & Sayer, J. (2018). Governance Challenges in an Eastern Indonesian Forest Landscape. Sustainability: Science Practice and Policy, 10(1), 169. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10010169
Ryan, A. B. (2013). The Transformative Capacity of the Commons and Commoning. Irish Journal of Sociology, 21(2), 90–102. https://doi.org/10.7227/IJS.21.2.7
Sahide, M. A. K., Supratman, S., Maryudi, A., Kim, Y. S., & Giessen, L. (2016). Decentralisation policy as recentralisation strategy: forest management units and community forestry in Indonesia. International Forestry Review, 18(1), 78-95. https://doi.org/10.1505/146554816818206168
Sarmiento Barletti, JP and Larson AM. (2019). The role of multi-stakeholder forums in subnational jurisdiction. Occasional Paper 194. CIFOR.
Saunders, F. P. (2014). The promise of common pool resource theory and the reality of commons projects. International Journal of the Commons, 8(2), 636–656. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.477
Schulte-Nordholt, H., & van Klinken, G. (Eds.). (2007). Renegotiating Boundaries: Local Politics in Post-Soeharto Indonesia (Vol. 238, pp. 373–384). KITLV Press. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004260436_017
Seixas, C. S., & Davy, B. (2007). Self-organization in integrated conservation and development initiatives. International Journal of the Commons, 2(1), 99–125. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.24
Shaw, M. (2014). Learning From the Wealth of the Commons: A Review Essay. Community Development Journal, 49(suppl_1), i12–i20. https://doi.org/ 10.1093/cdj/bsu012
Sirimorok, N., & Asfriyanto, A. (2020). The return of the muro: Institutional bricolage, customary institutions, and protection of the commons in Lembata Island, Nusa Tenggara. Forest and Society, 4(1), 61–80. https://doi.org/10.24259/fs.v4i1.7676
Sirimorok, N., & Rusdianto, E. (2020). The Importance of Being Political: Emergence of a Multi-stakeholder Forum at the Lake Malili Complex, South Sulawesi. Forest and Society, 4(1), 98–114. https://doi.org/10.24259/fs.v4i1.7442
Thorburn, C. (2013). Seeing the Forest for the Carbon: Interrogating Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). In D. Kingsbury (Ed.), Critical Reflections on Development (pp. 139–161). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/ 10.1057/9780230389052_9
Thorburn, C., Dewees, P., Leach, M., Mearns, R., Scoones, I., Beltrán, F., … & Others. (2011). The REDD Rush in Indonesia. Sustaining Commons: Sustaining Our Future, the Thirteenth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons, Hyderabad, India. https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/handle/10535/7202
Turner, M. D. (2017). Political ecology III: The commons and commoning. Progress in Human Geography, 41(6), 795–802. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325166 64433
Turner, M. D., Carney, T., Lawler, L., Reynolds, J., Kelly, L., Teague, M. S., & Brottem, L. (2021). Environmental rehabilitation and the vulnerability of the poor: The case of the Great Green Wall. Land Use Policy, 111, 105750. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.landusepol.2021.105750
Vaccaro, I., & Beltran, O. (2019). What Do We Mean by “the Commons?” An Examination of Conceptual Blurring Over Time. Human Ecology, 47(3), 331–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-019-00081-z
van der Muur, W., Vel, J., Fisher, M. R., & Robinson, K. (2019). Changing Indigeneity Politics in Indonesia: From Revival to Projects. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 20(5), 379–396. https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2019.16 69520
van Schendel, W., & Abraham, I. (Eds.). (2005). Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization. Indiana University Press.
Vel, J., Zakaria, Y., & Bedner, A. (2017). Law-Making as a Strategy for Change: Indonesia’s New Village Law. Asian Journal of Law and Society, 4(2), 447–471. https://doi.org/10.1017/als.2017.21
Wright, E. O. (2008). Commentary 2: Sociologists and economists on the commons. In P. Bardhan & I. Ray (Eds.), The Contested Commons: Conversations between Economists and Anthropologists (pp. 234–238). Blackwell Publishers.
Additional Files
Published
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Forest and Society
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This is an open access journal which means that all contents is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher. An article based on a section from a completed graduate dissertation may be published in Forest and Society, but only if this is allowed by author's(s') university rules. The Editors reserve the right to edit or otherwise alter all contributions, but authors will receive proofs for approval before publication.
Forest and Society operates a CC-BY 4.0 © license for journal papers. Copyright remains with the author, but Forest and Society is licensed to publish the paper, and the author agrees to make the article available with the CC-BY 4.0 license. Reproduction as another journal article in whole or in part would be plagiarism. Forest and Society reserves all rights except those granted in this copyright notice
