The spatialization of social capital in the collective management of natural resources, a theoretical and methodological model

The importance of studying the commons lies in the fact that the best-preserved ecosystems are found in areas managed and owned by the community. However, the capitalist mode of production, which depends on the excessive exploitation of natural resources, has undermined the fundamental elements of the communal system. Despite this, some territories have been able to maintain and strengthen common strategies related to the characteristics of their social capital, transforming it into a localized resource. With these objectives in mind, the study was conducted to, (1) Perform a literature review of theoretical, methodological, and empirical works related to social capital and territorialization to examine collective strategies for the conservation and management of natural resources. (2) Develop a theoretical and methodological framework that incorporates the territorialization of social capital as an explanatory factor in the collective appropriation of commons, using general concepts. The methodological approach was based on a literature review of articles, complemented by the co-occurrence method. The results show that the conceptual model consists of five theoretical categories and eleven categories of analysis, which interact to identify six thematic areas.