• Belonging—A more expansive view of belonging fosters broader understandings of what ownership means and new structures for how it works.
• Co-Producing—A spirit of common purpose lets us realize that abundance, not
scarcity, prevails when we invite wider participation in our endeavors (On the
Commons 2012).
The outer ring expresses the general notion that all wealth is the result of our
heritage and collaboration and therefore a common outcome. The emphasis is on
acknowledging the abundance of many resources instead of declaring their scarcity
as the norm. The premise that there can be ‘enough’ of something is also introduced. The introduction to the commoning book of essays gives plenty of numbers
that show how much ‘overwealth’ or ‘Überfluss’ there is in the world and that the
unsustainable outcomes of today are not created by scarcity but by unsound patterns
of production, distribution, and consumption. Change, once again, is less a question
of better physical technologies than one of improved processes and systems with
their psychological, sociocultural and institutional path dependencies.
In this context, commoning approaches take a very critical stance toward the
organizational logic of markets. To them the profit motive and the individualistic
competition processes discussed in Chap. 3 are core drivers of unsustainable
solutions. At the center of this critique is the ongoing enclosure of natural resources,
and therefore the ballooning creation of private goods out of the plenty of the
Earth’s resources. This creates and perpetuates the notion of scarcity that undergirds
economic thinking as a foundational law. Instead, the idea is to align human systems of production and consumption with nature’s reproductive laws so that there
can be enough for all now and in the future. The aim is to reduce dependence on
non-renewables to the minimum and ensure that the use of renewable resources is
attuned to their natural circuits of replenishment. As a consequence, rivalry over
resource access is significantly reduced.
This view is perfectly in line with what I had dubbed the radically different
purpose of ‘recoupling.’ Relational qualities like sharing and the notion of sufficient
or ‘enough’ output are frequently discussed in this community. Both are, of course,
absent from the mainstream economic paradigm but very much the backbone of the
imaginary of a safe and just development corridor that is captured in the sustainable
development doughnut (Fig. 3.6). Also, the prime question (calculus) behind
decision-making and thus the imaginary of the system is not set up around
exchange value (what can be sold and bought) but use value (what do I/we need to
live well) (Helfrich 2012: 36).
When researching criticism of this approach, I mostly found complaints that it
would not be sufficiently critical of structures of domination and would not work
strongly enough toward redistribution of wealth, instead inspiring self-defense
strategies that remain eternally at niche level. The design principles do seem to
suggest a cap on size in order to ensure their proper functioning. Ostrom and
colleagues found that the mainstream assumptions of non-cooperation and egoistic
strategies tend to emerge in settings where individuals do not know each other, do
not communicate effectively, and thus cannot develop agreements, norms, and
4.4 Pioneering Governance Systems: Commoning as a New Stark Utopia
143
• Co-Producing—A spirit of common purpose lets us realize that abundance, not
scarcity, prevails when we invite wider participation in our endeavors (On the
Commons 2012).
The outer ring expresses the general notion that all wealth is the result of our
heritage and collaboration and therefore a common outcome. The emphasis is on
acknowledging the abundance of many resources instead of declaring their scarcity
as the norm. The premise that there can be ‘enough’ of something is also introduced. The introduction to the commoning book of essays gives plenty of numbers
that show how much ‘overwealth’ or ‘Überfluss’ there is in the world and that the
unsustainable outcomes of today are not created by scarcity but by unsound patterns
of production, distribution, and consumption. Change, once again, is less a question
of better physical technologies than one of improved processes and systems with
their psychological, sociocultural and institutional path dependencies.
In this context, commoning approaches take a very critical stance toward the
organizational logic of markets. To them the profit motive and the individualistic
competition processes discussed in Chap. 3 are core drivers of unsustainable
solutions. At the center of this critique is the ongoing enclosure of natural resources,
and therefore the ballooning creation of private goods out of the plenty of the
Earth’s resources. This creates and perpetuates the notion of scarcity that undergirds
economic thinking as a foundational law. Instead, the idea is to align human systems of production and consumption with nature’s reproductive laws so that there
can be enough for all now and in the future. The aim is to reduce dependence on
non-renewables to the minimum and ensure that the use of renewable resources is
attuned to their natural circuits of replenishment. As a consequence, rivalry over
resource access is significantly reduced.
This view is perfectly in line with what I had dubbed the radically different
purpose of ‘recoupling.’ Relational qualities like sharing and the notion of sufficient
or ‘enough’ output are frequently discussed in this community. Both are, of course,
absent from the mainstream economic paradigm but very much the backbone of the
imaginary of a safe and just development corridor that is captured in the sustainable
development doughnut (Fig. 3.6). Also, the prime question (calculus) behind
decision-making and thus the imaginary of the system is not set up around
exchange value (what can be sold and bought) but use value (what do I/we need to
live well) (Helfrich 2012: 36).
When researching criticism of this approach, I mostly found complaints that it
would not be sufficiently critical of structures of domination and would not work
strongly enough toward redistribution of wealth, instead inspiring self-defense
strategies that remain eternally at niche level. The design principles do seem to
suggest a cap on size in order to ensure their proper functioning. Ostrom and
colleagues found that the mainstream assumptions of non-cooperation and egoistic
strategies tend to emerge in settings where individuals do not know each other, do
not communicate effectively, and thus cannot develop agreements, norms, and
4.4 Pioneering Governance Systems: Commoning as a New Stark Utopia
143