Social Economy and Indigenous Community Resilient Livelihood: a Case Study of Three Communities in Back Mountain of Jienshi District, Hsinchu County

This study aims to understand the resilient mechanism in Tayal communities’ livelihood. Facing the great impact from the market driven economy, how do they develop their social economical organizations by mobilizing their social-ecological resources from their environment? This is the main question of this study. Taking a case study perspective, we choose Tbahu and Smangus in the deep Jienshi district of Hsin-Chu county as our study sites. By employing the participatory action research methodology, we want to find out the social organization principles of their agricultural cooperatives、co-management operations、labour-exchange、volunteer work etc., particularly from the activities of their food production, eco-tourism and natural resources use. The whole study is divided into three years. The first year, we starts from Tbahu community. We will study from their tomato cooperatives and millet culture revitalization team in which women play an important role. We also like to know how these activities are related to their household economy. The second year, we will shift to Smangus community. We want to find out the social economy of their co-management model that have been practiced for nearly 20 years. What are the principles behind these practices? We also like to compare the common and differences between Tbahu and Smangus in terms of their engagement with different degree of social economy. The third year, we like to base on our understandings about the organizing principles of social economy from the Tbahu and Smangus and extend to the inquiry of the rest of deep Jienshi district and to find out their engagement with social economy. In addition to the questions we want to ask, we also apply our participatory action research to facilitate the networking and organizing of the communities’ social organizations.