Common use of natural resources, appropriation of territory and desertification: A case study with post-nomadic groups in Mendoza, Argentina

LAURA TORRES; GABRIALE PASTOR; CARLA ACCORINTTI

Sede Boqer Campus of Ben-Gurion University of Negev, Israel

Conferencia; 4th International Conference on Drylands, Deserts and Desertification; 2012

Bluastein Institutes for Desert Research

This study is inserted in a wider analytical field, and is interested in examining the social reproduction processes of livestock producers, in the context of globalization processes. Within a system of social organization of space based on common use and ownership of land, the present study explores those social mechanisms that organize access to resources, among those who are part of the community. Qualitatively constructed data are set forth, based on a case study located in the northwest of Mendoza (Argentina). The area is a vast arid plain, with 100 mm of mean annual rainfall, embedded in the Argentinean drylands (Roig et al 1991) and affected by desertification processes. Inside this territory, a sedentary pastoral subsistence economy is currently developed, focused on goat production. The present system is the result of a transformation of past nomadic practices. As result of the policies for disciplining labour and for establishing the population into the territory, the people became sedentary during the 19th and 20th centuries (Katzer 2009), without a concurrent parallel process of citizenship building. Due to an alleged concern for combating desertification, these producers are currently experiencing intervention. Overall, the policies implemented by the provincial State, some scientific agencies and non-governmental organizations seek to modernize these producers, contemptuously labelled as traditional. Motivated by interests of nature conservation or aiming to achieve better levels of territorial competitiveness, ongoing interventions suggest parcelling out the land to allow for its proper management and thus prevent a worsening of desertification. In a parallel manner, however, the producers are reluctant to adopt this type of solution, a situation that results in enhancement of the rhetoric that marks them as irrational. In contrast to these views, this study holds that the territory is internally organized, that diverse social mechanisms converge on this task, and that interventions, in the sense of parcelling out the land, might increase the producers’ vulnerability and put their social reproduction at risk.