Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight
An alternate ending to the tragedy of the commons
I recently read Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons and have been evangelizing it so enthusiastically that I figured I’d do a quick…
New to the Commons? | David Bollier
If you’re coming to the commons for the first time, it can be difficult to grok the idea because there are so many different ways to understand the commons. That’s because the commons is not so much a fixed, universal thing as a general concept describing durable, dynamic sets of social relationships for managing resources -- all sorts of resources: digital, urban, natural, indigenous, rural, cultural, scientific, to use some crude categories.
Think Like a Commoner | A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons
In our age of predatory markets and make-believe democracy, our troubled political institutions have lost sight of real people and practical realities. But if you look to the edges, ordinary people are reinventing governance and provisioning on their own terms. The commons is arising as a serious, practical alternative to the corrupt Market/State.
Deep Roots, Real Power: Candid Stories from the Field
The Commons is an online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, organising, advocacy and justice.
The Commons Explained in 15 Minutes | David Bollier
The Commons, Short and Sweet | David Bollier
I am always trying to figure out how to explain the idea of the commons to newcomers who find it hard to grasp. In preparation for a talk that I gave at the Caux Forum for Human Security, near Montreux, Switzerland, I came up with a fairly short overview, which I have copied below. I think it gets to the nub of things.
Commons
The commons are the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values employed for a governance mechanism. Commons can also be defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.
Uncommon victories: Lessons from Warringah and Indi
The Commons is an online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, organising, advocacy and justice.
Elinor Ostrom’s 8 rules for managing the commons
The commons are those things that we all own together, that are neither privately owned, nor managed by the government on our behalf. Some are large scale and somewhat abstract, such as the English…
How Commons can flourish
The following eight reference points are the result of intensive debates at the first German Sommerschool on the Commons, which took place in Bechstedt/Thuringia in June 2012. They aim to interpret…
Reclaiming the Computing Commons
Hunter writes: The commodification and exploitation of nature; the enclosure of the intellectual and informational commons in medicine, agriculture, and other areas of technical knowledge; the expropriation of public space to secure profit-all define an economic system supposedly premised on freedom.
A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons
A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons” The traditional economic definition of “the commons” are those resources...
Messaging Guide to Counter Far Right Narratives
The Commons is an online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, organising, advocacy and justice.
Winning The Next Climate Fight
The Commons is an online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, organising, advocacy and justice.
10 Tips from GetUp's Decade of Campaigning
The Commons is an online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, organising, advocacy and justice.
Local Power: Shifting Power at the Local Level - Candidate School
The Commons is an online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, organising, advocacy and justice.
