EEI SEMINAR: “Drawing conceptual boundaries around “commons movements”

Speaker: Sergio Villamayor-Tomas and Sara Mingorría

Moderator: Giacomo D’Alisa (TBC)

Day: Wednesday, 18^th of April
Time: 12.30h
Room: Z/023 ICTA-UAB

The recent wave of ‘commons movements’ studies adds to a longer-standing body of political ecology studies (e.g., agrarian environmental justice or Institutional approaches) illustrating connections between ‘mobilization’ and the management of ‘the commons’. But, are the studies all talking about the same phenomena? Do they refer to ‘mobilization’ and ‘commons’ in similar ways? Clarifying this is important if one is to learn across seemingly connected bodies of literature. In this presentation we first illustrate the challenge by comparing two case studies from the resistance actions featured by the Yaqui community (Mexico) against the construction of an aqueduct to brings water for irrigation and other services and the Maya-Q’eqchi’ people (Guatemala) against land dispossession by the accelerated expansion of oil palm and sugarcane plantations. Then we share some initial thoughts on a framework for the study of commons movements. 

Bio
Sergio Villamayor-Tomas is currently Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is also affiliated with the Ostrom´s Workshop (Indiana University) and the Berlin Workshop in Institutional Analysis of Socio-Ecological Systems (WINS). In his current position, Sergio is studying interactions between environmental justice movements and community-based natural resource management.
Sara Mingorria is a Post-Doc researcher in the Environmental Science and Technology Institute of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Her PhD was focused on oil palm and sugarcane conflicts in Guatemala. She was part of the team making documentaries about environmental-conflicts in Central America and a human rights research group in Latin America and Europe. She is currently interested in studying environmental conflicts and mobilizations in Asia and compare oil palm conflicts around the world. She is co-founder of La Noguera de Medinaceli agro-ecological project in Soria (Spain), the environmental activism organization, Mar de Tierras, in Madrid and the Feminist Research Collective FRACTAL.