Porcentaje de la parte comestible del fruto en el sistema

The analytical framework designed for this research includes three main categories of analysis (See Figure 2.1). The first category deals with „access to land-based resources‟ as the main empirical interest of this research. The second category is „access mechanisms regarding land-based resources‟. This category provides a classification of access mechanisms that are closely related with the way in which households benefit from land-based resources. The third analytical category distinguishes control over other productive resources beyond land from the set of access mechanisms. This distinction responds to the need of analysing how different access mechanisms and control over other productive resources shape access to land-based resources.

Figure 2.1. Analytical Framework

Source: Self-Elaboration

An extended analytical framework based on access is useful to understand the relationships and conflicts between resource use and the different actors and institutions of society. According to Ribot and Peluso (2003:173), “… the access framework can be used to analyse specific resource conflicts to understand how those conflicts can become the very means by which different actors gain or lose the benefits from tangible and intangible resources”. Furthermore, “access analysis also helps to understand why some people or institutions benefit from

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resources; either having or not rights to them” (Ibid: 154). Adopting access as the main empirical interest of this research, responds to the need to provide a clear and accurate understanding of the dynamic processes and relationships involved in land-based resource management.

The use of land as a conceptual tool in this research, however, is more closely related to the notions of land used by some political ecologists and geographers that have adopted households as their research focus. Land has been seen as the basis for the constitution of a natural capital that sustains entire communities and other social systems (Scoones 1998; Ellis 2000; Ellis and Bahiigwa 2003). Land constitutes the main productive resource for rural actors, in general, and agrarian communities, in particular.

Furthermore, land provides environmental goods and services that in turn are transformed into wellbeing by different social actors (Berry 1989; Leach et al.

1999; de Janvry et al. 2001; Osés-Eraso and Viladrich-Grau 2007). Land is, therefore, the productive resource from which a wide range of social actors obtains both material and non-material benefits, and is the object of political, social and economic conflicts and disputes. Throughout the course of this thesis, there are references to landed or land-based resources; the analytical framework provided by this research aims to achieve a better understanding of who benefits from land-based resources taking into account that land is seen differently according to the social actor in question.

The first category of analysis (access to land-based resources) adopts the idea of access as the ability land-based resource users exert to obtain material and non-material benefits from the resources available (Madsen and Adriansen 2004). This notion implies that members of an agrarian community can benefit from tangible and intangible objects to gain, maintain and control access to land-based resources.

Access analysis is, therefore, the process of identifying and mapping the mechanisms by which access is gained, maintained and controlled not only by the community members, but other actors that also have access to local land-based resources.

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Following this precept, this framework proposes the second analytical category as

„access mechanisms regarding land-based resources‟. This classification aims to identify the mechanisms that shape the distribution of benefits from land-based resources across various social actors. There are two types of access mechanisms that constitute this category: rights-based and structural and relational mechanisms. Rights-based mechanisms entail legal and illegal forms of access that social actors put in place. The focus of attention of rights-based mechanisms is property, since it encompasses the relations of authority between politico-legal institutions and the community itself. Property also frames the different ways of sanctioning any activity related to land-based resources as legal or illegal by consuetudinary or official institutions³. Hence, property plays a central role in rights-based mechanisms since law, custom or convention sanction the way in which different social actors obtain benefits from resources.

The second classification of access mechanisms regarding land-based resources is structural and relational. Identity, interpersonal relations, markets and knowledge are mechanisms that shape the distribution of benefits from land-based resources across households of an agrarian community. Furthermore, structural and relational mechanisms are shared across the different households and often bounded in the structure of the whole community⁴.

There are two reasons for this analytical framework to distinguish „control over other productive resources‟ from „access mechanisms regarding land-based resources‟. First, given that the empirical interest of this research is land-based resources, it was necessary to identify a series of means beyond land that also shape the distribution of benefits. Control over financial capital, labour and technology also influences the distribution of the multiple benefits provided by land-based resources. This study considers these other productive resources as separate from the social structure and relations of the members of the agrarian community in question. Hence, considering control over other productive resources as exogenous to the analysis of land-based resources also allows the

3 For a further explanation refer to section 2.3.

4 The following sections of this chapter discuss in more detail each category of access mechanisms.

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analysis of the effects of land reform-related policies and programmes into the discussion of land-based resources access. Second, the empirical analysis is based on a particular time period (agricultural cycle 2008-09). The analysis of other productive resources as fixed during the period of study allows the research to find out how controlling capital, labour and technology influence the distribution of material and material benefits and the implementation and negotiation of access mechanisms by social actors to obtain these benefits.

Acknowledging the role of controlling „other productive resources‟ implies that households are not dependent exclusively on the goods and services provided by land-based resources. Control over other productive resources provides complementary inputs to the wide array of livelihood strategies that households have (Byron and Arnold 1999; Ellis 2000; Sikor and Nguyen 2007).

2.2.3. The role of wealth in understanding access to land-based