Download or read book Governing the Commons written by Elinor Ostrom and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-23 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tackles one of the most enduring and contentious issues of positive political economy: common pool resource management.
Download or read book Balancing the Commons in Switzerland written by Tobias Haller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-28 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Balancing the Commons in Switzerland outlines continuity and change in the management of common-pool resources such as pastures and forests in Switzerland. The book focuses on the differences and similarities between local institutions (rules and regulations) and forms of commoners’ organisations (corporations of citizens and corporations) which have managed common property for several centuries and have shaped the cultural landscapes of Switzerland. At the core of the book are five case studies from the German, French and Italian speaking regions of Switzerland. Beginning in the Late Middle Ages and focusing on the transformative periods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it traces the internal and external political, economic and societal changes and examines what impact these changes had on commoners. It goes beyond the work of Robert Netting and Elinor Ostrom, who discussed Swiss commons as a unique case of robustness, by analysing how local commoners reacted to, but also shaped, changes by adapting and transforming common property institutions. Thus, the volume highlights how institutional changes in the management of the commons at the local level are embedded in the public policies of the respective cantons, and the state, which generates a high heterogeneity and an actual laboratory situation. It shows the power relations and very different routes that local collective organisations and their members have followed in order to cope with the loss of value of the commons and the increased workload for maintaining common property management. Providing insightful case studies of commons management, this volume delivers theoretical contributions and lessons to be learned for the commons worldwide. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the commons, natural resource management and agricultural development.
Download or read book Working Together written by Amy R. Poteete and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-12 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advances in the social sciences have emerged through a variety of research methods: field-based research, laboratory and field experiments, and agent-based models. However, which research method or approach is best suited to a particular inquiry is frequently debated and discussed. Working Together examines how different methods have promoted various theoretical developments related to collective action and the commons, and demonstrates the importance of cross-fertilization involving multimethod research across traditional boundaries. The authors look at why cross-fertilization is difficult to achieve, and they show ways to overcome these challenges through collaboration. The authors provide numerous examples of collaborative, multimethod research related to collective action and the commons. They examine the pros and cons of case studies, meta-analyses, large-N field research, experiments and modeling, and empirically grounded agent-based models, and they consider how these methods contribute to research on collective action for the management of natural resources. Using their findings, the authors outline a revised theory of collective action that includes three elements: individual decision making, microsituational conditions, and features of the broader social-ecological context. Acknowledging the academic incentives that influence and constrain how research is conducted, Working Together reworks the theory of collective action and offers practical solutions for researchers and students across a spectrum of disciplines.
Download or read book Protecting future generations through commons written by Saki Bailey and published by Council of Europe. This book was released on 2014-01-09 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent austerity measures currently adopted in numerous European countries assume that a rise in public debt should automatically result in cuts to social programmes and the privatisation of “inefficiently” managed resources. This type of reasoning is being used to justify the destruction of social rights of citizens for the profit of the private sector, resulting in more limited access to the most fundamental resources such as water, nature, housing, culture, knowledge and information, mainly for the most vulnerable members of society. Such a view, informed solely by short-term growth and profit cycles, is endangering access to those resources not only for current generations but for future ones as well. This book is an attempt to go beyond liberal approaches to intergenerational and distributive justice. It emphasises the role of commons and communities of the commons, driven by the desire to defend and perpetuate those fundamental resources under the threat of expropriation by the state and the market. This book also offers policy makers and citizens, who wish to accept their political responsibility by being active and refusing corporate ideology, some best practices as well as methods and solutions for renewing the configurations of societal relationships through commons, thereby integrating the interests of future generations in the European Community’s decision-making processes and institutions. This is a contribution by the Council of Europe and the International University College of Turin to the protection of the dignity of every person, especially of those who, even though unable to enjoy existing social rights, have the right to benefit from choices and policies that ensure that human life remains unspoiled
Download or read book Human Rights written by Laura Westra and published by University of British Columbia Press. This book was released on 2012-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International law has evolved over the course of the twentieth century to protect human rights. But what are human rights? Does the term have the same meaning in a world being transformed by global warming and the effects of globalized trade? Are existing laws sufficient to ensure humanity's survival? Drawing on case law and practice and examples from philosophy, law, and ecology, Laura Westra argues that the current system is not adequate: international law privileges individual over collective rights, permitting multinational corporations to overlook the collectivity and the environment in their quest for wealth and power. Unless policy makers redefine human rights and reformulate environmental law and policies to protect the preconditions for life itself -- water, food, clean air, and biodiversity -- humankind, particularly indigenous peoples and local communities in the developing world, will face the complete loss of the ecological commons, the preservation of which is one of our most basic human rights. Westra not only assesses the limitations of law, she also proposes possible paths to an ecologically safer future, including a new kind of cosmopolitanism, one that has the United Nations as a focal point for a new international legal order. Laura Westra holds doctorates in both philosophy and jurisprudence, and has taught in the fields of philosophy, ethics, and environmental law at several US, Canadian, and Italian universities.
Download or read book Free Fair and Alive written by David Bollier and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of the commons as a free, fair system of provisioning and governance beyond capitalism, socialism, and other -isms. From co-housing and agroecology to fisheries and open-source everything, people around the world are increasingly turning to 'commoning' to emancipate themselves from a predatory market-state system. Free, Fair, and Alive presents a foundational re-thinking of the commons — the self-organized social system that humans have used for millennia to meet their needs. It offers a compelling vision of a future beyond the dead-end binary of capitalism versus socialism that has almost brought the world to its knees. Written by two leading commons activists of our time, this guide is a penetrating cultural critique, table-pounding political treatise, and practical playbook. Highly readable and full of colorful stories, coverage includes: Internal dynamics of commoning How the commons worldview opens up new possibilities for change Role of language in reorienting our perceptions and political strategies Seeing the potential of commoning everywhere. Free, Fair, and Alive provides a fresh, non-academic synthesis of contemporary commons written for a popular, activist-minded audience. It presents a compelling narrative: that we can be free and creative people, govern ourselves through fair and accountable institutions, and experience the aliveness of authentic human presence.
Download or read book Commoning the City written by Derya Özkan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection seeks to expand the limits of current debates about urban commoning practices that imply a radical will to establish collaborative and solidarity networks based on anti-capitalist principles of economics, ecology and ethics. The chapters in this volume draw on case studies in a diversity of urban contexts, ranging from Detroit, USA to Kyrenia, Cyprus – on urban gardening and land stewardship, collaborative housing experiments, alternative food networks, claims to urban leisure space, migrants’ appropriation of urban space and workers’ cooperatives/collectives. The analysis pursued by the eleven chapters opens new fields of research in front of us: the entanglements of racial capitalism with enclosures and of black geographies with the commons, the critical history of settler colonialism and indigenous commons, law as a force of enclosure and as a strategy of commoning, housing commons from the urban scale perspective, solidarity economies as labour commons, territoriality in the urban commons, the non-territoriality of mobile commons, the new materialist and post-humanist critique of the commons debate and feminist ethics of care.
Download or read book Art Commons written by Massimiliano Mollona and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art/Commons is the first book to theorise the commons from the perspectives of contemporary art history and anthropology, focusing on the ongoing tensions between art and capitalism. This study is grounded in an analysis of contemporary artistic and curatorial practices, which the author describes as practices of commoning, based on co-production, participation, mutualism and the valorization of reproductive labour. Mollona proposes a novel theoretical approach to current debates on the commons, and shows that art can provide both a language of anti-capitalist and post-colonial critique as well as a distinctive set of skills and practices of commoning.
Download or read book Commons and Collectives written by Robin Mearns and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current debate about land and agrarian reform in the post-Soviet Central Asian republics tends to be couched in terms of stark choices between state, collective and private ownership. There is little discussion of the full range of potential tenure arrangements in the 'middle ground' between private and state ownership. This paper outlines an approach to distinguishing modes of operation of groups in society. Case studies from Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan shed light on the institutional challenges faced in the contemporary process of land and agrarian reform and illustrate how the lack of social capital currently presents a major obstacle to successful economic transition.
Download or read book Sensing Collectives written by Jan-Peter Voß and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are aesthetics and politics really two different things? The book takes a new look at how they intertwine, by turning from theory to practice. Case studies trace how sensory experiences are created and how collective interests are shaped. They investigate how aesthetics and politics are entangled, both in building and disrupting collective orders, in governance and innovation. This ranges from populist rallies and artistic activism over alternative lifestyles and consumer culture to corporate PR and governmental policies. Authors are academics and artists. The result is a new mapping of the intermingling and co-constitution of aesthetics and politics in engagements with collective orders.
Download or read book Governing Knowledge Commons written by Brett M. Frischmann and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Knowledge commons" describes the institutionalized community governance of the sharing and, in some cases, creation, of information, science, knowledge, data, and other types of intellectual and cultural resources. It is the subject of enormous recent interest and enthusiasm with respect to policymaking about innovation, creative production, and intellectual property. Taking that enthusiasm as its starting point, Governing Knowledge Commons argues that policymaking should be based on evidence and a deeper understanding of what makes commons institutions work. It offers a systematic way to study knowledge commons, borrowing and building on Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning research on natural resource commons. It proposes a framework for studying knowledge commons that is adapted to the unique attributes of knowledge and information, describing the framework in detail and explaining how to put it into context both with respect to commons research and with respect to innovation and information policy. Eleven detailed case studies apply and discuss the framework exploring knowledge commons across a wide variety of scientific and cultural domains.
Download or read book The Wealth of the Commons written by David Bollier and published by Levellers Press. This book was released on 2014-05-23 with total page 752 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are poised between an old world that no longer works and a new one struggling to be born. Surrounded by centralized hierarchies on the one hand and predatory markets on the other, people around the world are searching for alternatives. The Wealth of the Commons explains how millions of commoners have organized to defend their forests and fisheries, reinvent local food systems, organize productive online communities, reclaim public spaces, improve environmental stewardship and re-imagine the very meaning of "progress" and governance. In short, how they've built their commons. In 73 timely essays by a remarkable international roster of activists, academics and project leaders, this book chronicles ongoing struggles against the private commoditization of shared resources - often known as market enclosures - while documenting the immense generative power of the commons. The Wealth of the Commons is about history, political change, public policy and cultural transformation on a global scale - but most of all, it's about individual commoners taking charge of their lives and their endangered resources. "This fine collection makes clear that the idea of the Commons is fully international, and increasingly fully worked-out. If you find yourself wondering what Occupy wants, or if some other world is possible, this pragmatic, down-to-earth, and unsentimental book will provide many of the answers." - Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future
Download or read book Omnia Sunt Communia written by Doctor Massimo De Angelis and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2017-04-15 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this weaving of radical political economy, Omnia Sunt Communia sets out the steps to postcapitalism. By conceptualising the commons not just as common goods but as a set of social systems, Massimo De Angelis shows their pervasive presence in everyday life, mapping out a strategy for total social transformation. From the micro to the macro, De Angelis unveils the commons as fields of power relations – shared space, objects, subjects – that explode the limits of daily life under capitalism. He exposes attempts to co-opt the commons, through the use of code words such as 'participation' and 'governance', and reveals the potential for radical transformation rooted in the reproduction of our communities, of life, of work and of society as a whole.
Download or read book Liminal Commons written by Angelos Varvarousis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first attempt to rethink and appraise the role of temporary commoning experiences that develop in contexts of crisis. Activist and urban planner, Angelos Varvarousis, argues that there is a certain type of commons – the liminal commons – which despite their often short lives play a crucial function in contemporary societies; they demarcate and facilitate transitions at the individual, collective and ultimately the societal level. Through an intense exploration of grassroots projects such as occupied squares, self-organised refugee camps, solidarity food structures and social clinics in crisis-ridden Greece, the author observes that humans still invent such collectively performed rituals in order to prepare, symbolize and practically explore the possibility of transformation and transition. In a period in which traditional rites of passage have faded away but many changes are urgently needed, liminal commons can be a key element in the process of claiming awareness and control over the mechanisms of individual, collective and societal emancipation.
Download or read book Urban Commons written by Christian Borch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book rethinks the city by examining its various forms of collectivity – their atmospheres, modes of exclusion and self-organization, as well as how they are governed – on the basis of a critical discussion of the notion of urban commons. The idea of the commons has received surprisingly little attention in urban theory, although the city may well be conceived as a shared resource. Urban Commons: Rethinking the City offers an attempt to reconsider what a city might be by studying how the notion of the commons opens up new understandings of urban collectivities, addressing a range of questions about urban diversity, urban governance, urban belonging, urban sexuality, urban subcultures, and urban poverty; but also by discussing in more methodological terms how one might study the urban commons. In these respects, the rethinking of the city undertaken in this book has a critical dimension, as the notion of the commons delivers new insights about how collective urban life is formed and governed.
Download or read book The Urban Commons Cookbook written by Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Which ingredients of a cooperative community project most help it succeed? What are urban commons and how do they fit into current activist and civil society debates? And what tools and methods do commoners need to strengthen their work? These are the three questions at the heart of The Urban Commons Cookbook, a handbook for those interested in starting, growing and supporting community-led projects. This book represents a first attempt to bridge the gaps between individual urban commons projects across resource types and geographical distances in order to show their commonalities and help them and new projects learn from each other's experiences. Through a reader-friendly overview of urban commons theory, interviews with eight commons projects outlining the growth of their projects, the challenges they faced, and the methods they employed to surmount them, and a wealth of practical tools and policy suggestions, we hope to support commons projects and the cities that they enrich.
Download or read book Protest Property and the Commons written by Lucy Finchett-Maddock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Protest, Property and the Commons focuses on the alternative property narratives of ‘social centres’, or political squats, and how the spaces and their communities create their own – resistant – form of law. Drawing on critical legal theory, legal pluralism, legal geography, poststructuralism and new materialism, the book considers how protest movements both use state law and create new, more informal, legalities in order to forge a practice of resistance. Invaluable for anyone working within the area of informal property in land, commons, protest and adverse possession, this book offers a ground-breaking account of the integral role of time, space and performance in the instituting processes of law and resistance.
