The state of the commons: commoners, populists, and communards

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 170-184
Author(s):  
Nick Dyer-Witheford
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Commons

Commoning or being commoned? Institutions, politics, and the role of the state in collective housing policy in Bangkok, Thailand

2021 ◽  
pp. 147309522110373
Author(s):  
Hayden Shelby
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
The State ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Slum Upgrading ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Collective Housing ◽  
Urban Commons ◽  
Active Promoter

This article theorizes the potential roles of the state in the urban commons through an analysis of a slum upgrading program in Thailand that employs collective forms of land tenure. In examining the transformation of the program from a grassroots movement to a “best practice” policy, the article demonstrates how the state has expanded from mere enabler of the commons to active promoter. In the process, the role of many residents has evolved from actively creating the institutions of collective governance— commoning—to adopting institutions prescribed by the state— being commoned. However, by comparing the work to two different groups of communities who work within the context of the policy, the article illustrates how active commoning can still take place in such contexts.

scholarly journals The commons, property, and ownership

Focaal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (81) ◽  
pp. 121-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Bodirsky
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
State Capitalism ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Property Regimes

In response to the theme section on commoning in the December 2017 issue of Focaal, this article raises further questions for discussion and proposes an analytics of the commons that grasps it through the lens of property regimes. The key question concerns how we might best envision the relation of the commons/ commoning to the state, capitalism, and commonality in a way that does justice to both a broadly Leftist politics of the commons and an analysis of really existing commons that might deviate from this ideal. The conceptual lens of property regimes proposed here focuses empirical attention on relations of production and the organization of membership and ownership in the commons without including a particular politics into the definition as such.

The Submission of the Clergy

1965 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 97-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church ◽  
Uniform Treatment

The concessions presented by Archbishop Warham and representatives of Convocation to Henry VIII on 16 May 1532 have been the subject of endless controversy, while the background and circumstances of the enactment have received remarkably uniform treatment from later generations. Despite the proliferation of Reformation and Convocation histories since the eighteenth century, historians have, by and large, been content to repeat or elaborate an outline of the event first found in Wake's The State of the Church (1703). According to this interpretation, the King and Cromwell employed the Commons Supplication against the Ordinaries presented in March 1532 to compel the clergy's approval of the articles of 16 May.

The Biological Nature of the State

1983 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. Masters
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The State ◽  
Scientific Terminology ◽  
Inclusive Fitness Theory ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Rational Actor Models

The origin of the state, long at the center of political science, can be greatly illuminated by the contemporary approach in evolutionary biology known as “inclusive fitness theory.” Natural selection is now analyzed using cost-benefit models akin to rational actor models in economics, game theory, and collective choice theory. The utility of integrating these approaches is illustrated by using the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons to outline a general model for the evolution of political and legal institutions. This perspective also shows how traditional political philosophers explored “archetypical” problems that are easily translated into scientific terminology. It is thus possible to link biology to the study of human behavior in a nonreductionist manner, thereby generating new empirical hypotheses concerning the environmental correlates of social norms. Ultimately, such a unification of the natural and social sciences points to a return to the classical view that law and justice are not matters of pure convention, but rather are grounded on what is right “according to nature.”

Autonomy will not be given, it must be created!

TERRITORIO ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 87-90
Author(s):  
Pulska Grupa
Keyword(s):  
Political Context ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Management ◽  
New Model ◽  
Island Area ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Abandoned Spaces ◽  
The Military

This text, by the Pulska Grupa group of activists, describes the socio-political and community conditions in Pola on the Adriactic coast of Croatia. Its objective is to grasp specific local transformations in a very broad geo-political context. The temporary reuse methods and projects initiated by associations, artists, architects and activists in some of the abandoned spaces in the huge military naval arsenal, such as the Casoni Vecchi fort, the Karlo Rojc barracks, the former sheds, the military warehouses and the buildings on the Katarina-Monumenti Island area are exemplary of a new model for the self-management of space, the ‘komunal'. Those of the Pulska Grupa use this term from Istrian dialect to mean ‘common land', belonging to the commons, not governed by the state and given to the community as land for experimenting with local activities, dreams and desires.

When the State Imposes the “Commons”: Pastoralism After the Reintroduction of the Brown Bear in the Pyrenees

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Ferran Pons-Raga ◽  
Lluís Ferrer ◽  
Oriol Beltran ◽  
Ismael Vaccaro
Keyword(s):  
Brown Bear ◽  
The State ◽  
The Commons

The Importance of Collective Control

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Anna Coote
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The State ◽  
State Control ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Equal Footing ◽  
Human Survival ◽  
Collective Control ◽  
The Commons

Attempts at improving state-citizen cooperation will fail unless the protagonists ensure that citizens share control over the process with their counterparts in the state on a genuinely equal footing. This chapter focuses on collective control and the pivotal importance of confidence – the perception that it is possible to influence decisions and make things happen, or prevent things happening – for the benefit of the community. Drawing on published findings as well as the New Economics Foundation’s own field research, it considers how systems in state institutions can be geared to build the confidence and capacity of citizens to collaborate constructively with public sector policy makers. The second part of the chapter examines collective control and state-citizen co-operation in relation to ‘the commons’: resources that are essential for human survival and flourishing. It shows how the ‘commoning’ movement will help to test the limits of both citizen and state control, as well as the potential of state-citizen cooperation.

Incipient “commoning” in defense of the public?

Focaal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (79) ◽  
pp. 54-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Morgen ◽  
Jennifer Erickson
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Services ◽  
The State ◽  
Socially Responsible ◽  
Ballot Initiative ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sector Unions ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The Common

This article examines the development of competing forms of fiscal citizenship in Oregon tax-related ballot initiative campaigns between 1970 and 2010. Antitax advocates constructed a “taxpayer identity politics” that positioned a privatized “taxpayer” against representatives of the state, recipients of public services, and public sector unions. In response, a progressive coalition produced an alternative citizen—the “Oregonian,” a socially responsible taxpayer/citizen who supports and defends public services and values a “common good.” “Incipient commoning” emerges as support for “the common good” through discourse about community and belonging that is more and other than, though in relation to, the state. Attention to how “publics” conceive of themselves suggests that concepts like the “the commons” already circulate in the imaginaries and vocabularies of advocates resisting neoliberal policies.

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