Boundary negotiations in resource governance: An exploration of farmer collectives for irrigation in the Eastern Gangetic Plains

Abstract

The discourse on environment and development has often presented collective resource management as a way to manage water, land, and forests sustainably and fairly by building social capital. However, a deeper reflection on the negotiation and co-creation of “commoning” reveals that researchers, development organizations, and farmers involved in resource management play crucial roles in this process, beyond a utilitarian approach. Therefore, it is important to understand the active participation of these different actors for effective implementation of collective resource management.

The paper analyzes the contradictions in creating a commoning space for marginalized farmers through 16 collectives established by an action research project. The project aimed to improve economic status of tenant, marginalized, and women farmers’ in the Eastern Gangetic Plains through collective resource management.

Using science and technology studies (STS), we examine how collective farming serves as a “boundary object” for actors with different interests who collaborate. We reflect on how the project conceptualizes “life-in-common” under these collectives and discuss the four contested framings among project participants: efficiency/productivity, institutional, social justice/class relations, and emotional/affective.

As feminist academics conducting fieldwork on the formation and training of farmer collectives, we analyze our own positionality. We reveal how different perspectives on success and justice actively clashed with each other during the implementation of an action research project.

This paper examines the emotional and embodied practices that developed within and between diverse farmer groups and project partners, despite the project’s participatory and flexible approach and successful collective action. By critically analyzing the negotiation of life-in-common and the reproduction of power relations, we explore how gender, intersected with class, age, and caste, impacts collective action and access to land and water. A critical feminist perspective can aid in understanding diverse perspectives on “alternative sustainabilities” and promote a more reflective and relational approach to life-in-common.