This is an award under the Grants for Improving Doctoral Dissertation Research Program. This study will undertake a critical examination of co-management processes as they are unfolding in three indigenous forest communities in the Philippines. It seeks to understand the conditions under which co-management arrangements lead to outcomes characterized by biological sustainability, social equity, and self-determination for communities. Theoretical issues include how stratification and power affect resource management practices. The principal research methods are resource appraisal, censuses, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and secondary data analysis. %%% This research will contribute to sociological understanding of community differentiation, resource partitioning, common property management, state-locality interactions and the conditions for cooperation or conflict. It will also improve the knowledge base for policy decisions concerning resource management and the environment. In addition to the scientific gains to be achieved by the research, this award will materially assist a highly promising student in completing research for the Ph.D. dissertation. Thus it contributes to the future scientific manpower of the nation and the thorough training of the next generation of social scientists.
