| This dissertation explains the evolution of water property regimes in north-central Gran Canaria. Property regimes are sociocultural relationships governing the access, use, management and exchange of control over benefits accrued from resources, services, and ideas. Scholars usually identify state, common, and private property regimes. I identify property regimes by using a classification system developed by Edella Schlager and Elinor Ostrom to distinguish among private, common, and state organizations that may stand in relation to each other as owners, proprietors, claimants, and authorized users.; I argue that competing water property regimes evolved in response to changing international market opportunities and insular technoenvironmental conditions that affected the relative costs and benefits of exploiting the island's water resources. The investments required to take advantage of market opportunities given the island's climate and water resources determine the demand for labor, and thus, the rate of population growth and settlement patterns. These, in turn, cause competition over water resources. Property rights associated with various property regimes tend to be distributed among social organizations in relation to their relative capacities to make and defend their capital investments and benefit in the exterior markets. When the external market and political forces change, new opportunities arise for adjustments to property regimes.; I demonstrate that the water property regimes on Gran Canaria evolved in response to external market forces and technological changes which transformed the island's mode of production from hydro-agriculture to industrial agriculture and, most recently, to urban based services that support tourism.; The model and the finding of this study suggest that similar evolutionary trajectories concerning property regimes should be found on other volcanic islands that are ecologically complex and almost completely dependent on intemational agricultural markets, tourism, and politically powerful trading powers. |
