RGP Cycle Four Grantees and Projects

Fouzia Borj: Social Dynamics in Oasal Spaces: Environmental Changes, Adaptation Dynamics, and Life Practices: A Cultural Ecology Approach (The Case of the Jorf Oasis in Tafilalt)

This research project explores the relationship between social stratification and competition over resources in a semi-arid region in Morocco and the effect of the nature of this relationship on land acquisition, the use of water and life practices. Research on oases has shown that changing land usage practices is linked to the nature of the community’s roles in organizing the work, managing resources, and settling water disputes based on social stratification.
Moroccan oases are facing challenges and climate change concerns stemming from social, environmental, and economic constraints that have taken their toll on the agricultural economy. Inhabitants of oases have been trying to secure their scarce water resources and to focus on land governance (K. Rignall 2012).
This projects adopts historical and cultural ecology approaches as well as interdisciplinary approaches to analyze social dynamics that develop in tandem with the historical and cultural specificity of the Jorf Oasis in Tafilalt. A largely precarious area with historical features, Tafilalt’s culture reflects a relationship between nature, culture, and adaptation for survival. The environmental changes explored in the research contribute to ecological, cultural transitions in the framework of complex socioeconomic structures based on social stratification. This has helped create social dynamics and legitimize access to resources. Globalization has offered new horizons for agriculture, life practices and the use and management of resources, and it has underlined the level of local, regional, national and international interaction. The research questions focus on how social dynamics related to the changing life practices of social classes and land acquisition work. They also explore the change in the means to access resources and the implementation of natural resource governance within oasal spaces, given their geography and different institutions. We assume that several factors contributed to a shift in life practices. To understand them, we will explore the history of a number of social groups to determine how they use the land and make their living.
The research aims at introducing readers to the forms of resource competition and identifying the changes in life practices and their impact on the environmental management in oases over the past 30 years. It also seeks to determine socioeconomic change dynamics in the lives of different social groups and illustrate their relations to investors in the agricultural field through resource management and use of land. There are two types of dynamics: the strategic key player dynamics among small peasants and groups who were sidelined for ethnic reasons (Haratine); and the interactive dynamics represented by collective strategies, such as the role of the group, investors and key players in providing resources.
This project analyzes change as a function of life practices, resource competition, and access rights, and highlights the shift from shared ownership to private ownership and, ultimately, to individualism. Resources breed competition, establish clear social relations, and reveal underlying contradictions in social dynamics and related processes during different periods of time.