Governance of the commons and social values: a dialogue between Elinor Ostrom’s work and the francophone theory of reciprocity

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the importance of reciprocity in the processes and procedures recorded in the management of common resources. First, it examines the role that Elinor Ostrom attributes to the norm of reciprocity in her approach to common property resources. Second, it interprets economic and social relationships in the management of common resources as seen by Francophone economic anthropology’s theory of reciprocity. The argument relies on the application of these two theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of common resources management systems in the Northeast of Brazil and in New Caledonia. The conclusion attempts to establish a dialogue between Ostrom’s proposals and the theory of reciprocity.

KEYWORDS:

• Common resources management
• reciprocity
• Elinor Ostrom
• Brazil
• New Caledonia

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the organisers of the Research School with E. Ostrom on ‘Collective Action: Epistemology, Theory, Methodology’ (June 2011) for their excellent work and the opportunity to dialogue with Elinor Ostrom. Many thanks to the reviewers of the Journal of Peasant Studies for their contribution to the improvement of the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Henceforth in this article, when we write ‘theory of reciprocity’ or ‘renewed theory of reciprocity’, we will refer to the Francophone theory of reciprocity in anthropology, without having to specify it at each use.

2 Different from the sense of negative reciprocity in Sahlins (1972). Sahlins calls ‘negative reciprocity’ the practice of profit-seeking and utilitarian approaches of the transaction.

3 For the theory of reciprocity, this type of cooperation corresponds to an elementary structure of binary reciprocity, namely sharing. It is a symmetrical structure among individuals within the group and between each individual and the group. The sharing relationship inevitably comes under tension or in contradiction with the logic that is regulated by the principle of exchange.

4 This agreement between the French government, the pro-independence parties and the loyalist party provides for territorial autonomy of the Kanak provinces managed by the pro-independence parties, and a sequence of referendums allowing access to independence between 1998 and 2021.

5 By Kanak lands we mean, on the one hand, the territories of the reserves called tribes in which the indigenous population was concentrated during the colonisation process and, on the other hand, the original lands of the Kanak clans which were returned or redistributed to them by the French State via a land reform (Dauphiné 1989).

6 Ostrom and Ostrom (1978) defined public goods as goods with free access for all and defined common goods as public goods that are subject to restrictions upon access or user rights.

7 This does not presuppose or prevent the construction of values that are common to humanity at large such as the aspiration for peace, the propensity for a form of justice, and concern for future generations.

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Notes on contributors

Eric Sabourin

Eric Sabourin is an Anthropologist and sociologist, a researcher at CIRAD, Department of Environment and Societies, Umr Art-Dev and associated scientist at the MADER programme of the University of Brasilia. Master in Sociology of Development at EHESS (1981), PhD in Anthropology and Ethnology at the University of Paris VII (1982), HDR in Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne. Coordinator of PP-AL Research Network ‘Public Policies and Rural Development in Latin America’, from 2010 to 2017.