Insurgent Power of the Commons
* Book: FREE, FAIR AND ALIVE. The Insurgent Power of the Commons. By Silke Helfrich and David Bollier.
URL = https://newsociety.com/Books/F/Free-Fair-and-Alive
Description
1. Oikos:
"Whether it are people establishing an energy cooperative, a cohousing project or taking care of a public park, our society is full of positive initiatives. In these commons, people work together to produce or manage what they find valuable and want to take care of, on the basis of their own decided rules. They take the future in their own hands and show that next to state and market, commons are a third essential way of organizing things in society.
How these new wave of commons can contribute to a sustainable society is an urgent question. It is at the heart of the new book of Silke Helfrich (D) and David Bollier (US), of which we are proud to present the English version in Brussels. The book, realized with the support of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, reads as a cultural critique, a table-pounding political treatise, and practical playbook for commoning!" (https://www.oikos.be/denktank/evenementen-denktank/164-boekpresentatie-free-fair-and-alive-the-insurgent-power-of-the-commons)
2.
"David Bollier and Silke Helfrich suggest that commons governance should be informed by an ontology that thinks fundamentally in terms of processes and relations, called process-relational ontology. Bollier and Helfrich use process-relational ontology to develop an alternative framework for exploring the commons across three inter-related dimensions— provisioning, peer governance, and social life. Across each of these dimensions, they coin new terms to describe patterns for enacting the commons which are vital, but which were largely missed or underexplored by mainstream governance frameworks, including the Ostrom framework. Making an OntoShift, or ontological shift, toward process-relational ontology helps provide a better apparatus for explaining the complexity and diversity of the commons and offers much greater potential to transform society via the logic of the commons." (https://cdn6.commonsstrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Zack-Walsh_Ontology-as-a-Hidden-Driver-of-Politics_def2.pdf?)
3. From the publisher:
"From co-housing and agroecology to fisheries and open-source everything, people are increasingly using "commoning" to emancipate themselves from a predatory market-state system.
Free, Fair, and Alive presents a foundational re-thinking of the commons — the self-organized social system that humans have used for millennia to meet their needs. It offers a compelling vision of a future beyond the dead-end binary of capitalism versus socialism that has almost brought the world to its knees.
Written by two leading commons activists of our time, this guide is a penetrating cultural critique, table-pounding political treatise, and practical playbook.
Highly readable and full of colorful stories, coverage includes:
- Internal dynamics of commoning
- How the commons worldview opens up new possibilities for change
- Role of language in reorienting our perceptions and political strategies
- Seeing the potential of commoning everywhere.
Free, Fair, and Alive provides a fresh, non-academic synthesis of contemporary commons written for a popular, activist-minded audience. It presents a compelling narrative: that we can be free and creative people, govern ourselves through fair and accountable institutions, and experience the aliveness of authentic human presence."