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Access Revisited

A special issue in the Journal of Society and Natural Resources

Background

As political-economic forces at every scale and locus were transforming nature and society, struggles were mounting over access to natural resources. Wide-ranging and deepening inequality (e.g. Hickel 2017) suggested that questions of access were germane to critical social science, possibly even more than in previous decades. Resource access struggles were part and parcel of unequal exchanges and outcomes, failure to recognise claims, lack of participation in decision making, and market processes. Access theory, not least Ribot and Peluso’s (2009) A Theory of Access, presented concepts of power, control, benefits and burdens for analysing access, which continued to gain pertinence. Access theory and analysis continually proved to be a versatile way to understand some of the most elusive obstacles to effective natural resources governance such as elite control over resources, exploitative market relations, and policies that eschewed rights.

Approach

This special issue was triggered by the 15 year anniversary of the publication of A Theory of Access and encompassed a literature review of A Theory of Access followed by eight articles with conceptual and empirical advances in access theory. It concluded with a postscript by Jesse Ribot and Nancy Peluso, reflecting on this special issue and A Theory of Access 15 years after its publication. In this introduction, we introduced access theory and the contributions of each article to new ways of theorising and applying the concept of access.

Results

Society & Natural Resources, Volume 33, Issue 2 (2020)
 
Access Revisited

Editorial
Access Revisited: An Introduction to the Special Issue
Christian Pilegaard Hansen, Rodd Myers & Vasudha Chhotray
Pages: 139-145
Published online: 31 Jan 2020
 
Article
Revisiting A Theory of Access: A Review
Rodd Myers & Christian Pilegaard Hansen
Pages: 146-166
Published online: 18 Feb 2019
 
Article
Towards a Theory of Claim Making: Bridging Access and Property Theory
Angela Kronenburg García & Han van Dijk
Pages: 167-183
Published online: 08 Feb 2019
 
Article
Children of Another Land: Social Disarticulation, Access to Natural Resources and the Reconfiguration of Authority in Post Resettlement
Jessica Milgroom & Jesse Ribot
Pages: 184-204
Published online: 03 Apr 2019

Article
Access as the Means for Understanding Social-Ecological Resilience: Bridging Analytical Frameworks
Rafael Calderón-Contreras & Carole Sandrine White
Pages: 205-223
Published online: 29 Apr 2019

Article
Access along Ghana’s Charcoal Commodity Chain
Frank Kwaku Agyei, Christian Pilegaard Hansen & Emmanuel Acheampong
Pages: 224-243
Published online: 10 Jun 2019


Article
Access to Ecosystem Benefits: More than Proximity
Lucy Szaboova, Katrina Brown & Janet A. Fisher
Pages: 244-260
Published online: 18 Feb 2019

Article
The Interplay of Global Governance with Domestic and Local Access: Insights from the FLEGT VPAs in Ghana and Indonesia
Constance L. McDermott, Mark Hirons & Abidah Setyowati
Pages: 261-279
Published online: 04 Feb 2019
 
Article
Living on Other People’s Land; Impacts of Farm Conversions to Game Farming on Farm Dwellers’ Abilities to Access Land in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
Marja Spierenburg
Pages: 280-299
Published online: 20 Mar 2019
 
Editorial
Postscript: A Theory of Access Revisited
Nancy Lee Peluso & Jesse Ribot
Pages: 300-306
Published online: 31 Jan 2020

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