Carrots and other vegetables for sale at Ballard Sunday Farmers' Market, Ballard Avenue (historic district), Ballard, Seattle, Washington. July 2007. Attribution: Joe Mabel
  • News Billions have been raised to restore forests, with little success. Here’s the missing ingredient, theconversation.com (Dec 07, 2023)

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Commons are often associated with natural resources like the oceans and forests — areas that belong to everyone. But commons are not just resources. They are not simply Wikipedia pages or the city grounds used for urban gardening. They comprise of a resource, a community, and a set of social protocols. The three are an integrated, interdependent whole.

Networks[edit | edit source]

Community action projects[edit | edit source]

Events[edit | edit source]

Resources[edit | edit source]

Video[edit | edit source]

A Possible Philadelphia on Vimeo

Visions[edit | edit source]

  • State of the Commons 2041, A look back at a political, cultural & economic revolution that saved the world, Jay Walljasper onthecommons.org, Feb 15, 2019

Quotes[edit | edit source]

"The economy needn't be a war, it can be a commons. … The commons is a conscious implementation of reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruists, whether human or ape, reward those who cooperate with others and punish those who defect. A commons works the same way. A resource such as a lake or a field, or a monetary system, is understood as a shared asset. The pastures of medieval England were treated as a commons. It wasn't a free-for-all, but a carefully negotiated and enforced system. People brought their flocks to graze in mutually agreed-upon schedules. Violation of the rules was punished, either with penalties or exclusion."

Douglas Rushkoff's book "Team Human" Shareable

What are the commons?[edit | edit source]

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What are commons?
Authors: Utrecht University, Oct 9, 2018

Commons should be understood as a dynamic, living social system — any resource that can be used by many could inspire people to organize as a commons. The key questions are whether a particular community is motivated to manage a resource as a commons, and if it can come up with the rules, norms, and sanctions to make the system work.

Is there a clear example of a commons-based business?[edit | edit source]

The internet provider Guifi.net in Catalonia shows how commons can create a new paradigm of organizing and producing. This bottom-up, citizen-driven project has created a free, open, and neutral telecommunications network based on a commons model. This is how it works: People put Wi-Fi nodes on their rooftops, which is extended and strengthened each time a new user adds a node to the network. Currently, Guifi.net's broadband network has more than 30,000 active nodes and provides internet access to more than 50,000 people. The project started in 2004 when residents of a rural area weren't able to get broadband internet access due to a lack of private operators. The network grew quickly over the whole region, while the Guifi.net Foundation developed governance rules that define the terms and conditions for all users of the network.

Guifi.net supernode installation 2.jpg
Installation of a "supernode" of Guifi.net's network in the neighbourhood of Sant Pere i Sant Pau in Tarragona. Photo by Lluis tgn via Wikimedia Commons

The example shows that in creating any commons, it is critical that the community decides that it wants to engage in the social practices of managing a resource for everyone's benefit. In this sense "there is no commons without commoning." This underscores that commons is not only about shared resources — it is mostly about the social practices and values that we devise to manage them.

In what areas are commons active?[edit | edit source]

Examples of commons can be found today in different areas:

  1. Local food sovereignty - see also: Food activism
  2. City commons - see also: Sharing cities
  3. Alternative currencies - see also: Community currencies activism
  4. Web-hosting infrastructure for commons
  5. Creative Commons license
  6. Open-source software
  7. Open-source design/cosmo-local production
  8. Academic research/open education resources

It is interesting to consider the improbable types of common-pool resources that can be governed as commons. Surfers in Hawaii, catching the big waves at Pipeline Beach have organized themselves in a collective to manage how people use a scarce resource: the massive waves. In this sense, they can be considered a commons: they have developed a shared understanding about the allocation of scarce use of rights.

Is commons a new idea or are there examples from the past?[edit | edit source]

From a historical perspective, commons were an essential part of the economical and social system of rural societies before modernization took place. People in rural areas depended upon open access to the commons (forests, fields, meadows), using economic principles of reciprocity and redistribution. When common grounds were enclosed and privatized, many migrated to cities, becoming employees in factories and individual consumers, and lost the common identity and ability of self-governance. The modern liberal state separated production (companies) from governance (politics), while in the commons system these were an inseparable entity. In industrial capitalist societies, the market with its price mechanism became the new central organizing principle of society.

How do privatization and enclosure affect the commons?[edit | edit source]

Nowadays massive land grabs are going on in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Investors and national governments are snapping up land that people have used for generations. All over the world, all aspects of life are being monetized with the expansion of private property rights: water, seeds, biodiversity, the human genome, public infrastructures, public spaces in cities, culture, and knowledge.

What is the importance of digital commons?[edit | edit source]

The internet has been an arena for experimentation and innovation, precisely because there is no legacy of conventional institutions to displace. Entire new modes of creative production have arisen on the internet that are neither market-based nor state-controlled. Open-source software, Wikipedia, and Creative Commons licenses have emerged as a new way of production that is nonproprietary and based on the collaboration of widely distributed, loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other.

Prior to the rise of the web, commons were usually regarded as little more than a curiosity of medieval history or a backwater of social science research. Now that so many people have tasted freedom, innovation, and accountability of open networks and digital commons, there is no going back to the command-and-control business model of the 20th century. The full disruptive potential of this profound global cultural revolution is still ahead.

What role can commons play in the actual economic and institutional crises?[edit | edit source]

The commons offers a powerful way to re-conceptualize governments, economics, and global policies at a time when the existing order is incapable of reforming itself. The most urgent task is to expand the conversation about the commons and to ground it in actual practice. The more that people have personal, lived experiences with commoning of any sort, the greater the public understanding will be. In a quiet and evident way, the commons can disclose more and more spaces in our everyday life in which we can create, shape, and negotiate our lives.

What are the differences between commons and markets?[edit | edit source]

Commons: Rely on people's altruism and cooperation
Markets: Believe humans are selfish individuals whose wants are unlimited

Commons: stewardship of resources
Markets: ownership of resources

Commons: individuals and collectives mutually reinforce each other
Markets: separation of individual and collectives

Commons: shared, long-term, non-market interests
Markets: individual consumers, short-term market relationships.

How can I take part in the Commons Transition?[edit | edit source]

How can I take part in the Commons Transition? in primer.commonstransition.org

See also[edit | edit source]

local information can be found, or shared, via our many location pages

External links[edit | edit source]

  • Wikipedia:Commons
  • Commons Transition Wiki, database for policy papers and proposals related to Commons Transition
  • Credit Commons, "a proposed accounting system to allow users of any local currency to exchange with any other." added 15:25, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
  • Commoning Flourishes Around the Globe, A list of commons-based efforts from Zaragoza to Berlin and everywhere in between, June 24, 2013 - added 17:42, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
  • Commons Transition
  • On the Commons – dedicated to exploring ideas and action about the commons—which encompasses natural assets such as oceans and clean air as well as cultural endowments like the Internet, scientific research and the arts.
  • The Peer to Peer Foundation

Bibliography[edit | edit source]

  • Benkler, Yochai, The Penguin and the Leviathan: The Triumph of Cooperation Over Self-Interest (Crown Business, 2010).
  • Bollier, David, Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons. (New Society Publishers, 2014)
  • Bollier, David, and Silke Helfrich, editors, The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State (Levellers Press, 2012).
  • Capra, Fritjof and Mattei, Ugo, The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015).
  • Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio, Commonwealth (Harvard University Press, 2011).
  • Sennett, Richard, Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (Yale University Press, 2012).

References[edit | edit source]

  • A Shareable Explainer: What are the Commons? Apr 12, 2017, Shareable
This piece was written by Bart Grugeon Plana, a journalist and contributor of the New Economy and Social Innovation Forum (NESI Forum). It is based on the book "Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons," by David Bollier.

Header photo of Ballard Sunday Farmers' Market in Seattle, Washington, by Joe Mabel via Wikimedia Commons.


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Created April 17, 2017 by Phil Green
Modified March 22, 2024 by Phil Green
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