The kuhls of Kangra

"Mark Baker offers a comprehensive explanation for the durability of the kuhls of Kangra in the face of recurring environmental shocks and socioeconomic change. Into his explanatory framework he incorporates the history of regional politics and economics as they affected kuhls during the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods; the role of state involvement in kuhl construction and management; the benefits of exchanges of labor and water among members of networked kuhls; and the ways in which kuhl systems are embedded in and reproduce core cultural beliefs and practices." "Baker adds new dimensions to theories of common property, by incorporating factors such as the importance of networks in buffering individual resource regimes from environmental stress and the ways in which regimes are sites for reproducing and occasionally contesting the relations that constitute place and region. Thus, he advances a new way of thinking about community-based systems of resource management."--Jacket.