Political Ecology of Shifting Cosmologies and Epistemologies Among Berber Agro-Sylvo-Pastoralists in a Globalizing World

In this article, I examine how local religious traditions and environmental management interact with each other, as well as how both relate to new globalizing inmuences such as emerging State structures and ideologies, mass media, migrations, market integration, tourism, NGOs, modernist conceptions of nature, and present Islamic movements. Through an ethnographic study of the Berber Mesioua tribe of the Moroccan High Atlas, I focus on the agdal, a locally produced agro-sylvo-pastoral governance system prohibiting access to particular natural resources for a given period in order to optimize its yield and assure its sustained and equitable use. The integration of agdals into local religiosity and their associated ethics entail a local conservationist and egalitarian set of principles. I conclude that, strained in great part by the socio-economic and cultural-political forces implicated in the globalization of cosmologies and epistemologies, the replacement of local worldviews and the decline of the agdal governance system are interlinked. The consequences include increasing environmental degradation and social inequality

Biology · Corporate governance · Economics · Environmental degradation · Environmental ethics · Environmental governance · Geography · Globalization · Ideology · Islam · Natural resource · Pastoralism · Political ecology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Tourism · Tribe · African history and culture analysis · Anthropology · Law · Oil Palm Production and Sustainability · Ecology

• Engaging Indigenous Peoples and local communities in global policy development for the conservation and sustainable use of wild food plants

  Open Access•Fiona Moola, Faisal Moola et al.•Current Opinion in Environmental…•2026

  Incluir item

• Holistic ethnographies of East African customary pastoral commons needed

  Open Access•Juan Gabriel Renom, Daniel Maghanjo Mwamidi et al.•Current Opinion in Environmental…•2020

  Incluir item

• Which plants matter? A comparison of academic and community assessments of plant value and conservation status in the Moroccan High Atlas

  Open Access•Irene Teixidor-Toneu, Soufiane M’Sou et al.•AMBIO•2022

  Incluir item

• Revisiting the Commons

  Open Access•Elinor Ostrom, Элинор Остром et al.•Science•1999

  Incluir item

• Pigs for the Ancestors

  Roy A Rappaport•Pigs for the Ancestors•2000

  Incluir item

• Governing the Commons

  Open Access•Elinor Ostrom, Элинор Остром•Governing the Commons•2015

  Incluir item

• Coping with Shrinking Spaces

  Barbara Casciarri•Nomadic Societies in the Middle…•2006

  Incluir item

• The Ambiguous Impact of Inequality on Local Resource Management

  Open Access•Jean-Marie Baland, Jean‐marie Baland et al.•World Development•1999

  Incluir item

• Access to land and Berber ethnicity in the Middle Atlas, Morocco

  Bernhard Venema, Ali Mguild•Middle Eastern Studies•2003

  Incluir item

• Tourism, Ethnicity, and the State in Asian and Pacific Societies

  Kathleen M Adams, R E Wood et al.•Tourism, Ethnicity, and the State…•2017

  Incluir item

• Changing Understandings of African Pastoralism and the Nature of Environmental Paradigms

  Andrew Warren, Andrew David Warren•Transactions of the Institute of…•1995

  Incluir item

• Potential Forests

  Diana K Davis, Diana Davis•Environmental History•2005

  Incluir item

• Theory of culture change

  Julian Haynes Steward•Theory of culture change•1973

  Incluir item

• Balinese "Water Temples" and the Management of Irrigation

  Open Access•J S Lansing•American Anthropologist•1987

  Incluir item