Peer2Politics

A New Zealand publication, Freerange, has published an artful collection of essays about the commons for a popular readership.  The publication focuses on a wide range of commons themes, including urban commons, global pharmaceuticals, Maori society, the commons possibilities in food activism, and early childhood education as a commons.  A free download can be had here, or a beautifully designed print version can be ordered here.

Five years ago I wrote about the concept of “sousveillance,” which was then a budding counterpoint to surveillance. Surveillance, of course, is the practice of the powerful monitoring people under their dominion, especially people who are suspects or prisoners – or today, simply citizens.  Sousveillance -- “to watch from below” – has now taken off, fueled by an explosion of miniaturized digital technologies and the far-reaching abuses of the surveillance market/state. 

"Our book recovers from history many fragments of what we call “commons-based law” from such sources as Roman law, the Magna Carta and Charter of the Forest, and public trust doctrine governing natural resources. We also point to many modern-day analogues such as international treaties to manage Antarctica and space as commons. We wish to show that commons-based law is in fact a long and serious legal tradition – but one that has also been quite vulnerable, particularly over the past two centuries as market-oriented priorities have eclipsed the commons.

Journalist and activist David Bollier talks about his most recent book, co-written with legal scholar Burns Weston,GREEN GOVERNANCE: Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Law of the Commons. Then we re-air our 2010 interview with him about the digital commons, VIRAL SPIRAL.

A fascinating new report just published by Co-operatives UK describes the huge potential of community land trusts and other forms of mutual housing and enterprise. Commons Sense:  Co-operative place making and the capturing of land value for 21st century Garden Cities brings together a wealth of insight into the practical solutions that community land trusts (CLTs) can provide. 

On the eve of Thanksgiving here in the US, Andro Linklater, the author of a new book,Owning the Earth:  The Transforming History of Land Ownership (Bloomsbury), describes how the Pilgrims imposed their notions of private property on the land commons in the New World.  The consequences – while perhaps inevitable, whether from them or other settlers – were nonetheless pivotal in the future development of America.  Lanklater published an excerpt of his book recently on the Bloomberg News website. (Tragically, Linklater died a week before his book’s publication on November 12.)

When I pump gas in my car these days, there is a video screen on the pump that abruptly turns on and starts shouting an annoying advertisement in my face.  It is so loud and obnoxious that it takes great restraint to not smash the damn screen with my car keys.  (For the record, the gas station is a Cumberland Farms convenience store.)

Farmers in the small town of Hoxie, Kansas, have been pumping water out of the Ogallala Aquifer six times faster than rain can naturally recharge it.  This is a big deal because most of the town depends upon the flow of water to grow corn, which is the mainstay of the local economy.  But here’s the remarkable thing:  In order to preserve the water at sustainable levels, the farmers have agreed among themselves to cut back on their use of the water by 20 percent for five years.