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The Organizational Scheme of High-Altitude Summer Pastures: The Dialectics of Conflict and Cooperation

  • Ludomir R. LoznyEmail author
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Part of the Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation book series (STHE, volume 11)

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).

Keywords

Transhumance Commons Cooperation Collective action Conflict Social sustainability Pyrenees 
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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Hunter College, CUNYNew YorkUSA

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