Suchergebnisse

Abstract Through a qualitative case study of peasant‐organized forestry in Durango, Mexico, this paper examines how neoliberal policy reform is reshaping the community forestry sector. Post‐1992 agrarian and forestry laws facilitate the emergence of new forms of association in ejidos (collective property communities created by agrarian reform) and agrarian communities, and reorganize the delivery of forestry technical services. These developments indirectly undermine peasants' capacity to deal with the sector's long‐standing internal problems, putting at risk their ability to provide themselves with the services they need for sustainable community livelihoods and forest exploitation. Nevertheless, this study of a forest peasant federation shows that institutional change is a process peopled by groups of social agents who respond creatively to external structure from local organizational and community contexts. Ethnographic methods can be used fruitfully to study complex interactions between multiple levels of political‐economic structure and local action, which both constrain and provide opportunities for the organization of common‐pool resource management regimes.

Sociological theorists' recent critique of foundationalism, the notion that observers can accurately represent a single, objective reality, has led to calls for sociology to abandon its claim to epistemic privilege. A related debate has ensued among qualitative sociologists over ethnography's claim to produce objective, authoritative accounts of field realities. This debate over "the crisis of representation" has apparently reached an epistemological impasse, as both "modernist" and "postmodernist" participants draw on a conceptual dichotomy inherited from correspondence models of science. The impasse is ethical as well, as participants "talk past one another" as they debate the appropriate responsibilities of sociologists. A pragmatist solution to this dilemma has been offered, but gives insufficient attention to the politics that shape the criteria to be used in judging the validity of accounts in local contexts. Drawing upon "modernist" discussions of field methods and an empirical case of "studying up" in Mondragón, Spain, this paper argues that a more politically attentive pragmatism could contribute to research practice that is both epistemologically and empirically defensible.

The Myth of Mondragón: Cooperatives, Politics, and Working‐Class Life in. Basque Town. Sharryn Kasmir. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. 243 pp.