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In the Kangra Valley of India's western Himalaya, farmers have for
centuries relied on community-managed kuhl systems - intricate
networks of collectively built and maintained irrigation channels -
for their rice and wheat farming. Over the years, earthquakes and
floods have repeatedly destroyed villagers' kuhls. More recently,
increasing nonfarm employment has drawn labor away from kuhl
maintenance and from farming itself. Prevailing theories of common
property resource management suggest that such conditions should
cause the kuhls to die out; instead, most have beentransformed and
remain alive and well. In this book, Mark Baker offers a
comprehensive explanation for the durability of the kuhls of Kangra
in the face of recurring environmental shocks and socioeconomic
change. In addition to describing how farmers use and organize the
kuhls, he employs varied lines of theory and empirical data to
account for the persistence of most kuhls (and the demise of a few)
in the late twentieth century. Into his explanatory framework he
incorporates the history of regional politics and economics as they
affected kuhls during the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial
periods; the role of state involvement in kuhl construction and
management; the benefits of exchanges of labor and water among
members of networked kuhls; and the ways in which kuhl systems are
embedded in and reproduce core cultural beliefs and practices.
Scholars interested in common property resource regimes have long
focused on self-organizing, community-based irrigation systems. Yet
their theories cannot entirely account for the durability of common
property regimes under the extreme conditions of ecological stress,
economic change, and social differentiation that exist in Kangra.
Baker adds new dimensions to such theories by reaching beyond them
to incorporate "exogenous" factors such as the roles statemaking
practices play in common property resource regimes, the importance
of networks in buffering individual resource regimes from
environmental stress, and the ways in which regimes are sites for
reproducing and occasionally contesting the relations that
constitute place and region. In doing so, he advances a new way of
thinking about community-based systems of resource management--a
timely subject given recent trends in many countries toward the
devolution of authority over natural resource management from
government to rural communities.
In the Kangra Valley of India's western Himalaya, farmers have for
centuries relied on community-managed kuhl systems - intricate
networks of collectively built and maintained irrigation channels -
for their rice and wheat farming. Over the years, earthquakes and
floods have repeatedly destroyed villagers' kuhls. More recently,
increasing nonfarm employment has drawn labor away from kuhl
maintenance and from farming itself. Prevailing theories of common
property resource management suggest that such conditions should
cause the kuhls to die out; instead, most have beentransformed and
remain alive and well. In this book, Mark Baker offers a
comprehensive explanation for the durability of the kuhls of Kangra
in the face of recurring environmental shocks and socioeconomic
change. In addition to describing how farmers use and organize the
kuhls, he employs varied lines of theory and empirical data to
account for the persistence of most kuhls (and the demise of a few)
in the late twentieth century. Into his explanatory framework he
incorporates the history of regional politics and economics as they
affected kuhls during the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial
periods; the role of state involvement in kuhl construction and
management; the benefits of exchanges of labor and water among
members of networked kuhls; and the ways in which kuhl systems are
embedded in and reproduce core cultural beliefs and practices.
Scholars interested in common property resource regimes have long
focused on self-organizing, community-based irrigation systems. Yet
their theories cannot entirely account for the durability of common
property regimes under the extreme conditions of ecological stress,
economic change, and social differentiation that exist in Kangra.
Baker adds new dimensions to such theories by reaching beyond them
to incorporate "exogenous" factors such as the roles statemaking
practices play in common property resource regimes, the importance
of networks in buffering individual resource regimes from
environmental stress, and the ways in which regimes are sites for
reproducing and occasionally contesting the relations that
constitute place and region. In doing so, he advances a new way of
thinking about community-based systems of resource management--a
timely subject given recent trends in many countries toward the
devolution of authority over natural resource management from
government to rural communities.
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