What role do the irrigation and fishery studies play?
In an influential account, a shared pasture is ruined because each herder gains the full benefit of adding one more animal while the cost of overgrazing is spread across everyone. The story is often told as proof that shared resources must be privatised or governed from above. Yet field studies of irrigation systems and fisheries have recorded communities that manage shared resources successfully for centuries, using agreed boundaries, graded penalties for rule-breaking and low-cost ways of settling disputes. These cases do not show that the original account is false. They show that its conclusion depends on an assumption: that the herders cannot talk to one another or enforce rules among themselves.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. They give cases where the assumption does not hold and the commons survives
- Step 1: The studies describe communities using rules and dispute settlement. Step 2. They show the conclusion depends on conditions. Answer: counter-cases. Why not the others: none of the other claims appear.
Practise more Reading and Reasoning in Humanities and Social Sciences.
Free questions with an explanation for every one, and full timed GAMSAT (Graduate Medical School Admissions Test) mock tests.
More Reading and Reasoning in Humanities and Social Sciences questions
- What is the main point of the passage?
- Which phrase best describes the author's attitude to loan and visit statistics?
- Why does the author describe the man in the reading room?
- Which finding, if true, would most weaken the author's suggestion for a 'second ledger'?
- The word 'flatter' in the second sentence is used to suggest that the figures:
- What is the speaker doing in the poem?