Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to study the role of environmental conflicts as a driver of the transformation of agroecosystems in several rural communities in Galicia in a long-term analysis (17th-21st). We will approach the relationship between conflict and sustainability through different metabolic regimes.

Paper long abstract:

Environmental conflicts have been a constant in the functioning of rural communities in the most diverse metabolic regimes, playing a key role in the metabolic configuration and change over time. But what motivates these conflicts? How does the community take shape in its evolution, in different contexts? And what role do factors such as class play in the process?

The aim of this paper is to take a long-term approach (17th – 21st centuries) to the dynamics of social conflict in the parishes of Laíño and Dodro (Galicia, NW Spain), focusing on environmental conflicts, specifically with regard to common lands and the collective management of resources. We are interested in analysing the role of conflict as a driving force in the transformation of landscapes and agroecosystems, as well as its relationship with sustainability in a broad perspective (ecological, economic and social). Studies of Commons, Political Ecology and the Agrarian Metabolism provide us with a theoretical and conceptual framework upon which we can build our proposal. Systematic work with a variety of sources, from judicial or cadastral documentation to interviews, will allow us to cross-check information and draw more complex conclusions about the main trends in environmental conflict over the last four centuries.