There are considerable efforts by governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and academia to integrate marine conservation initiatives and customary practices, such as taboos that limit resource use. However, these efforts are often pursued without a fundamental understanding of...

Most powerful analytical tools used in the social sciences are well suited for studying static situations. Static and mechanistic analysis, however, is not adequate to understand the changing world in which we live. In order to adequately address the most pressing social and environmental...

"In this paper we utilize Ostrom's (2007) diagnostic framework for socio-ecological systems to examine the factors that contribute to social responses to disturbances in a set of five Indiana, USA intentional communities over a fifteen year time frame. We argue that the concept of robustness is...

<em>Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons</em> - To move beyond Hardin’s tragedy of the commons, it is fundamental to avoid falling into either of two analytical and policy traps: deriving and recommending "panaceas" or asserting "my case is unique". We can move beyond both traps by self-consciously...

The goal of this paper is to improve our understanding of the role of institutional arrangements and ecological factors that facilitate the emergence and sustainability of successful collective action in small-scale fishing social-ecological systems. Using a modified logistic growth function, we...

We develop an analytic framework for the analysis of robustness in social-ecological systems (SESs) over time. We argue that social robustness is affected by the disturbances that communities face and the way they respond to them. Using Ostrom's ontological framework for SESs, we classify the...