THE SYMBOLIC MAKING OF A COMMON PROPERTY RESOURCE - HISTORY, ECOLOGY AND LOCALITY IN A TANK-IRRIGATED LANDSCAPE IN SOUTH-INDIA

Today there is a pervasive policy consensus in favour of 'community ma nagement' approaches to common property resources such as forests and water. This is endorsed and legitimized by theories of collective acti on which, this article argues, produce distinctively ahistorical and a political constructions of 'locality', and impose a narrow definition of resources and economic interest. Through an historical and ethnogra phic exploration of indigenous tank irrigation systems in Tamil Nadu, the article challenges the economic-institutional modelling of common property systems in terms of sets of rules and co-operative equilibriu m outcomes internally sustained by a structure of incentives. The arti cle argues for a more historically and politically grounded understand ing of resources, rights and entitlements and, using Bourdieu's notion of 'symbolic capital', argues for a reconception of common property w hich recognizes symbolic as well as material interests and resources. Tamil tank systems are viewed not only as sources of irrigation water, but as forming part of a village 'public domain' through which social relations are articulated, reproduced and challenged. But the symboli c 'production of locality' to which water systems contribute is also s haped by local ecology. The paper examines the historical and cultural production of two distinctive 'cultural ecologies'. This serves to il lustrate the fusion of ecology and social identity, place and person, in local conceptions, and to challenge a currently influential thesis on the ecological-economic determinants of collective action. In short , development discourse and local actors are seen to have very differe nt methods and purposes in the 'production of locality'. Finally, the article points to some practical implications of this for strategies o f 'local institutional development' in irrigation.