@article{Padmanabhan:42508,
      recid = {42508},
      author = {Padmanabhan, Martina Aruna},
      title = {Collective Action in Plant Genetic Resources Management:  Gendered Rules of Reputation, Trust  and Reciprocity in  Kerala, India},
      address = {2006},
      number = {577-2016-39219},
      series = {CAPRi Working Paper},
      pages = {62},
      year = {2006},
      abstract = {Collective action aims at the joint management of common  pool resources.
Agrobiodiversity at the community level is  conceptualized as a collective resource
requiring the  management of varieties, species and their interrelations  within a farming-system.
In the rice dominated agriculture  in the uplands of Kerala, India, few community
groups  continue maintaining and thus conserving their high  diversity in landraces. Faced
with the challenges of  devastating prices for rice, their traditional system of  collective
action to exchange seed material and knowledge  is endangered. A new institutional
mechanism to manage  biodiversity is the People’s Biodiversity Register, a  mandatory
documentation procedure to enable cost and  benefit sharing under the Convention on
Biological  Diversity. The comparative analysis of these contrasting  cases of an
indigenous and an administered effort is  concerned with the importance of the analytical
category of  gender for the rules structuring the actions of the groups.  Gender is perceived
as an institution, constructing  regulations of access and conduct for its members,  shaping
the room to maneuver. Do the core elements  constituting collective action, namely
reputation, trust  and reciprocity imply different consequences for men and  women? Do
the rules structuring group mobilization imply  different consequences for men and
women in the same given  context and regarding the management of the same  resource?
Where do we observe differences and to which  effect? Since action resources are very
much determined by  the existing construction of gender, the question is how  does
collective action enlarge or inhibit the choices of  men and women. Based on 2005
empirical data, the paper  analyzes the tribal community of Kurichyas and the People’s  Biodiversity Register with special emphasis on the  analytical category of gender
concerning the core elements  trust, reciprocity and reputation of collective action.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/42508},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.42508},
}