Commons

Topics

the common, public domain, management of commons, governance of commons, private property, intellectual property, biopiracy, copyright, knowledge commons, gift economy.

Pages

• Commons Creation Collective
• Economies of the Commons
• Economy of Crisis Capitalism and Ecology of the Commons
• Free Bitflows
• Free Culture Research Conference
• Open Cultures
• Elinor Ostrom
• P2P Foundation

Research networks

• Reimagining Society Project, participants are generating a vast outpouring of content bearing upon vision for a new society and strategy to attain the aims. Hosted by Z Communications
• Edu-Factory
• The Commoner
• On The Commons (formerly Tomales Bay Institute), a network of citizens and organizations that champions the cause of the commons. Maintained by David Bollier and many others.
• Factory of the Common, a network of research events that explore the dimension of the ‘common’ and its institutions in times of financial crisis and cognitive capitalism. This network aims to syndicate a new generation of autonomous studies across Europe in order to provide the basis for a constituent research centre. Maintained by Matteo Pasquinelli and Paolo Do as an international syndication platform in collaboration with Edufactory, Uninomade, institutional partners such as Queen Mary University of London and other initiatives of autonomous research.
• P2P Foundation
• Esse, Nosse, Posse: Common Wealth for Common People platform presents: artists’ projects commenting on the new forms of networked economy; initiatives and open platforms by independent artists based on free and open software, exchange and collaboration; statements and texts by researchers, critics, theorists discussing art, networks and economy. Curated by Daphne Dragona

Reader

political theory

• Michael Hardt (2009) – Politics of the Common (essay)
  Hardt gives very good summary of current debates about the commons. he explains the immaterial property and the common got into centre of contemporary production shifting away from industrial capitalist mobile/immobile commodity properties. he says that today the capital and economic development paradoxically relies on the common, and that the central task for contemporary society is to develop an alternative management of the common. By the common he means the ecological (earth, ecosystems, and all forms of life interacting with them) and social/cultural (shared products of human labor–ideas, images, affects, social relationships) domains. that is not much news, but what is interesting – these two domains are often treated separately, and here hardt mentions two major instances of contradictions which link them: contradiction between private property and the common; and the fact that the value of common is immeasurable with the traditional capitalist system of measures (and is rather based on value of life, which we have not yet invented). / O ‘the common’ hovori ako o ekologickych (lesy, plaze, vzduch, jazera) a nematerialnych socialnych/kulturnych statkoch (videa, texty, fotky, idey, pocity, socialne vztahy, zabava, nove formy zivota), ku ktorym maju (mat) vsetci volny pristup. hovori o dvoch hlavnych rozporoch s ohladom na klasicky system – konkretne nemoznost urcit ich (ekonomicku) hodnotu, a problem vlastnickeho vztahu k nim.

• Slavoj Zizek (2007) – Ecology: A New Opium of the Masses (essay and video)
  tu zizek vychadza z idei commons ako ju chapu hardt a negri, a jemne ju rozsiruje: commons ako kultura, externa priroda (ekologia), a interna priroda (biogenetika). tvrdi, ze je do commons zasadne zapojit aj mensiny, populaciu vylucenu z politickych procesov.

• Massimo De Angelis (2007) - The Production of Commons and the “Explosion” of the Middle Class (essay)
  about the Commons as a political movement inaugurating a new era of history; summary of his book The Beginning of History. Value Struggles and Global Capital

ecology

• Garrett Hardin (1968) - The Tragedy of the Commons (essay)
  To make the case for "no technical solutions", Hardin notes the limits placed on the availability of energy (and material resources) on Earth, and also the consequences of these limits for "quality of life". To maximize population, one needs to minimize resources spent on anything other than simple survival, and vice versa. | hypothetical example of a pasture shared by local herders. individual herder will continue to add additional animals to his or her herd. However, since all herders reach the same rational conclusion, overgrazing and degradation of pasture is its long-term fate. | examples of latter day "commons", such as the atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, national parks, advertising, and even parking meters. | potential management solutions: commons problems including privatization, polluter pays, and regulation. | The metaphor illustrates the argument that free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately dooms the resource through over-exploitation.

• Elinor Ostrom, Joanna Burger, Christopher B. Field, Richard B. Norgaard, David Policansky (1999) - Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges (essay)

philosophy

• Bernard Stiegler (2009) – transindividuation (video)
  Stiegler kritizuje web 2.0 sluzby a hovori o procese “transindividuacie”, kedy svoj esteticky vkus menia uzivatelia medzi sebou tym, ze zdielaju online material. nadvazuje na zabudnuteho filozofa Simondona, ktory s tym terminom prisiel snad este v 50-tych rokoch.

art and activism

• Ines Doujak (2007) – Victory Gardens (website), [1]
  instalacia viedenskej umelkyne kritizujucej politiku USA a EU, ktora prehliada privatizovanie verejnych statkov (vody, potravin, pody) korporaciami prostrednictvom patentov [biopiratstvo], najma v krajinach “mega diverzity” (mexiku, indii, brazili, indonezii). / Hardt: I object to calling this piracy, by the way, because pirates at least have the dignity to steal property. These corporations steal the common and transform it into private property.

• Yes Men (2004) – Dow Does the Right Thing (video), [2] (website)
  Impersonating a Dow Chemical spokesman on BBC, "Jude Finisterra" promises a huge compensation for the thousands of victims of the Bhopal disaster in which Dow Chemical's subsidiary Union Carbide India was responsible for in 1984.

Further reading

• Marysia Lewandowska, Laurel Ptak (eds.), Undoing Property?, Sternberg Press, 2013, 256 pp. Incl. a list of various then active initiatives on pp 243-246.
• Publications on commons at Monoskop/log

See also

Copyright activism, FLOSS

1. REDIRECT Template:Art and culture