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 off-
farm 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.