John Pilgrim Current Research

John Pilgrim: Current Research John’s RUPP research on migration, rural poverty and community natural resource management in Cambodia is based around the controlling role which is played by the peasant household at all stages of job migration. Control is the operative word, the ideas in this research being based around two theoretical, symmetrical and practically contemporaneous and ancestral lines of theory: Durkheim and the Annee Sociologique’s concept of a cyclical social time; and A.V. Chayanov’s concept of the cyclical structure and resources in the peasant family labour farm. Durkheim’s theory and reliance on empirical research are seen, but barely acknowledged, in the Cambridge studies of Fortes and Goody in Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups, which is seminal in John’s thinking. Preliminary findings of the RUPP/IDRC research relate to studies on job migration, which is seen in much of the Cambodian research literature as a component in household management of livelihoods diversification and directed to overcoming crises and poverty and to maintaining the viability of the rural household. The research is concerned with differences which occur in the institutional and social basis of participation in the community management of natural resources, and the linkage of diminishing natural resources to migration. Recent research indicates that endogenous household and community management of human and natural resources function to maximise livelihoods diversification and cyclical labour resource availability and uses, including use of the commons, off-farm employment and migration. Externally supported CBNRM, has the same objectives but is additionally directed towards development, e.g. in creating innovative knowledge and management, and in strengthening modern community systems and institutions. Research suggests that the effectiveness of CBNRM is reduced by unequal participation related to differential access to resources and power. Both endogenous resource management systems and externally supported CBNRM take place in a context of massive demographic and agrarian change taking place in Cambodia, including migration. John suggest that it is necessary to distinguish between manifest and latent function in resource management by the household and by the community. Household decision making on natural resources management and on livelihoods diversification needs to be understood in terms of endogenous cyclical processes and structures. The latent functions of household and community operate through cyclical processes in the make-up of the household, and in the allocation of labour in agriculture and the use of the commons, and in modern conditions, in diversifying livelihoods, including offfarm employment and job migration. These cyclical processes are supported through prestations: cultural and religious institutions which sanction roles, statuses, rights and obligations in human and natural resource management and which support governance in endogenous management of tilled land and the commons.