Local, Vernacular, and Alive
Local landscapes were once powerful forces in their own right, shaping how people lived, farmed, traded, and made sense of the world. The land created people, and as people worked,…
David Bollier
The Future Is A Pluriverse
Some believe that the commons are incompatible with commodity markets. Others claim that markets and commons may form mutually beneficial relations with each other. What are your own views on…
Re-imagining Value: Insights From The Care Economy, Commons, Cyberspace And Nature
What is “value” and how shall we protect it? It’s a simple question for which we don’t have a satisfactory answer. For conventional economists and politicians, the answer is simple: …
What Permaculture Can Teach Us About Commons
As a developed set of social practices, techniques and ethical norms, permaculture has a lot to say to the world of the commons. This is immediately clear from reading the…
Barcelona’s Brave Struggle To Advance The Commons
On a visit to Barcelona last week, I learned a great deal about the City’s pioneering role in developing "the city as a commons." I also learned that crystallizing a…
A Moment That Illuminates Our Structural Challenges
At least we have some clarity. The mystifications and rationalizations are evaporating. If nothing else, the election of Donald Trump illuminates many of the deep structural problems that we need…
Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights And The Commons
If the human species is going to overcome the many interconnected ecological catastrophes now confronting us, this moment in history requires that we entertain some bold modifications of our legal…
Re-Imagining The Polity For A Networked Humanity
The commons is no magic talisman, nor a panacea. Nor are network platforms. But they do enable us to rediscover that sovereignty does not ultimately reside in the state or…
Transnational Republics of Commoning 2: New Forms Of Network-Based Governance
The text below is a second installment from my essay, “Transnational Republics of Commoning: Reinventing Governance through Emergent Networking,” published by Friends of the Earth UK. The third and final…
Transnational Republics Of Commoning
I am often asked what the commons has to contribute to solving our climate change problems. Since most commons are rather small scale and local, there is a presumption that…
Global Enclosures In The Service Of Empire
In September 2010, a group of NATO brass, security analysts and other policy elites held a conference called “Protecting the Global Commons.” Attendees were described as “senior representatives from the…
The Potato Park Of Peru
Drive an hour northeast from Cusco, Peru, and you will encounter some beautiful high mountain lakes, historic Inca ruins, and the richest diversity of potatoes on the planet. Approximately 2,300…
Seeing Wetiko
One of the most important languages for expressing the values of the commons, I have come to realize, is art. It can often express visceral knowledge more effectively than words…
State Power And Commoning: Transcending A Problematic Relationship
What changes in state power must occur for commoning to flourish as a legal form of self-provisioning and governance? What does the success of the commons imply for the future…
Beyond Development: The Commons As A New/Old Paradigm Of Human Flourishing
A proverb of the indigenous people of southwestern Colombia warns: “The word without action is empty, action without the word is blind, and action and the word outside the spirit…
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