Abstract
I discuss the organizational scheme of summer high-altitude pastures associated with transhumance in the Hautes-Pyrenees, France. My objective is to identify and analyze cultural codes used to regulate access to scarce resources and to manage them as commons. I employ the linguistic, ethnographic, and historic data on the communal-level collective action and rules regulating access to vital, but limited, resources and hypothesize that high cost of defendability forces users to engage in cooperative interactions. I theorize on socioeconomic rationale of such arrangements and conclude that access to sparse resources must be regulated and communal rational cooperation becomes a viable strategy to mitigate conflict and to ensure sustainable group wellbeing (but not political autonomy).
I dedicate this paper to the memory of Stéphane Lévêque, a Parisian who loved the Pyrenees, the feeling I share.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Indigenous knowledge (IK) has been recognized as a source of ideas that should be included in all programs dealing with resource management (see the contributions in Sillitoe 2017) and environmental stewardship. It contributes, among other things, to promoting sustainable practices in resource use and to outline an agenda for future work.
- 2.
- 3.
Institutionalization of commons means that resources are managed in organized manner and controlled by a collective body such as village board, etc.
- 4.
Presently it also means dry-stone hut.
- 5.
See Tilly (1990) for examples.
References
Binmore, K. (2006). Why do people cooperate? Politics, Philosophy, & Economics, 5(1), 89–96.
Bollier, D. (2017). What will replace outdated left and right economic thinking? The commons paradigm. http://evonomics.com/will-replace-outdated-left-right-economic-thinking-commons-paradigm/
Brosnan, S. F., Salwiczek, L., & Bshary, R. (2010). The interplay of cognition and cooperation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 365(1553), 2699–2710.
Carbonell, X. (2010). Social and environmental conflicts in the planning and management of natural resources in the Aragon’s Pyrenees: The case of los Valles Occidentales. In I. Vaccaro & O. Beltran (Eds.), Social and Ecological History of the Pyrenees. State, Market, and Landscape (pp. 75–90). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Edelmayer, F. (2012) The Pyrenees Region. European History Online. http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/crossroads/border-regions/friedrich-edelmayer-the-pyrenees-region
Eggertsson, T. (1992). Analyzing institutional successes and failures: A millennium of common mountain pastures in Iceland. International Review of Law and Economics, 12, 423–437.
Eychenne, C., & Lazaro, L. (2014). Summer pastures: Between “commons” and “public goods” representations of pastoral areas and forms of government intervention. Journal of Alpine Research |Revue de géographie alpine [Online], 102–2. https://doi.org/10.4000/rga.2303. Online since 23 May 2014, connection on 06 October 2016. URL: http://rga.revues.org/2303
Gärdenfors, P. (2012). The Cognitive and Communicative Demands of Cooperation. In J. van Eijck & R. Verbrugge (Eds.), Games, actions and social software. Lecture notes in computer science (Vol. 7010). Berlin: Springer.
Gürerk, O., Irlenbusch, B., & Rockenbach, B. (2006). The competitive advantage of sanctioning institutions. Science, 312(5770), 108–111.
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., et al. (2005). “Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 795–855.
Jaeggi, A. V., Burkart, J. M., & Van Schaik, C. P. (2010). On the psychology of cooperation in humans and other primates: Combining the natural history and experimental evidence of prosociality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 365(1553), 2723–2735.
Lévêque, S. (2013). Mountain summer shelters in the haut Ador region of the central French Pyrenees. Examples from the Campan and Lesponne valleys (Hautes-Pyrenees). In L. Lozny (Ed.), Continuity and change in cultural adaptation to mountain environments: From prehistory to contemporary threats (pp. 97–122). New York: Springer.
McGinnis, M. D. (Ed.). (1999). Polycentricity and local public economies. Readings from the workshop in political theory and policy analysis (paperback). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Murray, S. (2010). The presence of the past. In I. Vaccaro & O. Beltran (Eds.), Social and ecological history of the Pyrenees. State, market, and landscape (pp. 25–41). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Ostrom, E. (1999). Coping with tragedies of the commons. Annual Review of Political Science, 2, 493–535.
Sahlins, P. (1991). The making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Sillitoe, P. (Ed.). (2017). Indigenous knowledge. Enhancing its contribution to natural resources management. Boston, MA: Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International.
Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990–1990. Oxford: Blackwell.
Welch-Devine, M. (2010). Local places, global influences: Pastoralism in Xiberoa and EU regulation. In I. Vaccaro & O. Beltran (Eds.), Social and ecological history of the Pyrenees. State, market, and landscape (pp. 43–57). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lozny, L.R. (2019). The Organizational Scheme of High-Altitude Summer Pastures: The Dialectics of Conflict and Cooperation. In: Lozny, L.R., McGovern, T.H. (eds) Global Perspectives on Long Term Community Resource Management. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15800-2_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15800-2_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15799-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15800-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)