Exploring Understandings of Institutions and Uncertainty PDF Download

Author: Lyla Mehta
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Conservation of natural resources
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Author: Daniel H. Cole
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739191098
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
Elinor (Lin) Ostrom was awarded the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her pathbreaking research on "economic governance, especially the commons"; but she also made important contributions to several other fields of political economy and public policy. The range of topics she covered and the multiple methods she used might convey the mistaken impression that her body of work is disjointed and incoherent. This four-volume compendium of papers written by Lin, alone or with various coauthors (most notably including her husband and partner, Vincent), supplemented by others expanding on their work, brings together the common strands of research that serve to tie her impressive oeuvre together. That oeuvre, together with Vincent's own impressive body of work, has come to define a distinctive school of political-economic thought, the "Bloomington School." Each of the four volumes is organized around a central theme of Lin’s work. Volume 2 examines the most well-known part of Lin’s legacy: her empirical, analytical, and theoretical work demonstrating that, in many cases, local resource users can solve collective-action problems through common-property management regimes. The volume comprises various papers relating to and building on the findings of her masterpiece, Governing the Commons (1990), including some lesser-known papers. Part I focuses on the all-important distinction between biophysical resources and the humanly devised institutions designed to govern them. Part II moves to the policy level, addressing how various sets of humanly devised institutions work better or worse, in various social and ecological circumstances, for the long-run sustainability of biophysical resources. Part III takes us full circle back to Ostrom’s first work (as part of her PhD) on water resources in Southern California, which was a topic she returned to, along with her students, throughout her career (and totaling more than 50 years’ worth of studies), with the specific intention of gathering data for dynamic (or, at least, comparative static) longitudinal analyses of combined social (including institutional) and ecological change. In sum, this volume presents what is, at least at present, thought to be Lin’s greatest legacy to social science: how resources can be sustainably managed over very long periods of time by the collective action of ordinary people, in addition to or without markets and states.

Author: Sam Wong
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9053560343
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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This volume argues that using social capital to eradicate poverty is unlikely to succeed because its mainstream approach mistakenly assumes that social capital necessarily benefits poor people. The inadequacy of that assumption, Sam Wong argues, calls for a reassessment of human motivations, institutional dynamics, and the complexity of structures in social capital building. Proposing a “pro-poor” perspective, in which poverty-specific outcomes are highlighted, he suggests an exploration of “unseen” social capital is in order—not only to challenge the mainstream understanding of “seen” social capital, but to demonstrate the need for everyday cooperation, which is shaped by social norms, influenced by conscious and unconscious motivations, and subject to changes in priority based on livelihood. A useful volume for both policy makers and practitioners, Exploring ‘Unseen’ Social Capital in Community Participation offers a fresh perspective in thinking about civic and social agency.

Author: Per Ronnås
Publisher: NIAS Press
ISBN: 9788787062985
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Despite the recent economic crisis, mainland Southeast Asia continues to experience increasing economic integration of previously isolated rural hinterlands, especially in the upland areas of Lao PDR, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Yunnan in China, where demographic pressures together with the development of infrastructure and increased market-orientation of production combine to bring about significant economic and social change in rural areas. These changes have also led to significant environmental degradation such as deforestation, disturbance of water flows, and depletion of biodiversity resources. These and other related issues are addressed in this volume.

Author: Lyla Mehta
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 177922320X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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For the past two decades, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) has been the dominant paradigm in water resources. This book explores how ideas of IWRM are being translated and adapted in Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Grounded in social science theory and research, it highlights the importance of politics, history and culture in shaping water management practices and reform, and demonstrates how Africa has clearly been a laboratory for IWRM. While a new cadre of professionals made IWRM their mission, we show that poor women and men may not have always benefitted. In some cases IWRM has also offered a distraction from more critical issues such as water and land grabs, privatisation, the negative impacts of water permits, and a range of institutional ambiguities that prevent water allocations to small and poor water users. By critically examining the interpretations and challenges of IWRM, the book contributes to improving water policies and practices and making them more locally appropriate in Africa and beyond.

Author: Melissa Leach
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1136541667
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for the poor, have become central practical, political and moral challenges of our times. These must be met in a world of rapid, interconnected change in environments, societies and economies, and globalised, fragmented governance arrangements. Yet despite growing international attention and investment, policy attempts often fail. Why is this, and what can be done about it? How might we understand and address emergent threats from epidemic disease, or the challenges of water scarcity in dryland India? In the context of climate change, how might seed systems help African farmers meet their needs, and how might appropriate energy strategies be developed? This book lays out a new 'pathways approach' to address sustainability challenges such as these in today's dynamic world. Through an appreciation of dynamics, complexity, uncertainty, differing narratives and the values-based aims of sustainability, the pathways approach allows us to see how some approaches are dominant, even though they do not produce the desired results, and how to create successful alternative 'pathways' of responding to the challenges we face. As well as offering new ways of thinking about sustainability, the book also suggests a series of practical ways forward - in tools and methods, forms of political engagement, and styles of knowledge-making and communication. Throughout the book, the practicalities of the pathways approach are illustrated using four case studies: water in dryland India, agricultural seeds in Africa, responses to epidemic disease and energy systems/climate change. Published in association with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

Author: James G. Carrier
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845456191
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
"Many scholars who examine large-scale environmentalist organisations highlight the knowledge/power and governance that underlie organisations' policies and projects as virtualising efforts to bring the world into conformity with their environmentalist thought and vision. This important collection reveals how the concerns of those critics are justified on one level, but not on another. The contributors not only examine howenvironmental organisations seek this world of conformity, but also show how these organisations are constrained in their ability to achieve their goals. The collection argues that the critics' concern with knowledge/power, governance and virtualism seems justified when we look at those organisations' environmentalist visions, policies and programs. However, they are much less justified when we look at the practical operation of such organisations and their ability to generate and carry out projects intended to reshape the world." --Book Jacket.

Author: Diego Augusto Menestrey Schwieger
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 3643908385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Based on his long-term anthropological fieldwork in the semiarid north of the Kunene region in Namibia, the author describes and analyzes how the local Otjiherero-speaking pastoralists govern water usage after a decentralization reform of the rural water sector in the country. This book will be of interest to academics, policymakers, and practitioners who seek to better understand how water management institutions emerge, particularly at the intersection of state decentralization reforms and local practices in the Kunene Region, but also elsewhere in the world. Dissertation. (Series: Cologne Ethnological Studies / Koelner ethnologische Studien, Vol. 36) [Subject: African Studies, Drought Studies, Environmental Studies]

Author: Timothy Forsyth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134665806
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Critical Political Ecology brings political debate to the science of ecology. As political controversies multiply over the science underlying environmental debates, there is an increasing need to understand the relationship between environmental science and politics. In this timely and wide-ranging volume, Tim Forsyth uses an innovative approach to apply political analysis to ecology, and demonstrates how more politicised approaches to science can be used in environmental decision-making. Critical Political Ecology examines: *how social and political factors frame environmental science, and how science in turn shapes politics *how new thinking in philosophy and sociology of science can provide fresh insights into the biophysical causes and impacts of environmental problems *how policy and decision-makers can acknowledge the political influences on science and achieve more effective public participation and governance.

Author: Shashi Kant
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402035195
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This work proposes that new economic theory, rather than a new public policy based on old theory, is needed to guide humanity toward sustainability. The book includes the ideas from old as well as new institutional economics, discussed in detail by leading experts in the field. This book follows a companion work, 'Economics, Sustainability, and Natural Resources: Economics of Sustainable Forest Management', volume 1 of the series.