Structured Bibliography on P2P and the Commons

Ira Mollay and Michel Bauwens will work on this bibliography during the summer of 2019.

Module 1: The anthropology of peer to peer and the commons

P2P as a relational dynamic: new social relations, then and now

Commoning Against The Crisis. (Chapter 6)

By Angelos Varvarousis and Giorgos Kallis.

URL [1]

The commoning movement in Greece analysed along the lines of liminality as a catalyst following a rhizomatic pattern.

The Commons in History

Blockchain Machines, Earth Beings and the Labour of Trust.

By Larry Lohmann. Corner House

URL [2]

Blockchain, smart contracts etc. in the context of their ecological history and pictures of labour, commons, and capital accumulation seen through different lenses from Marx to Wittgenstein.

Cooperation and morality

Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies.

By Oliver Scott Curry, Daniel Austin Mullins, and Harvey Whitehouse. Current Anthropology 60, no. 1 (February 2019): 47-69.

URL [3]

Morality-as-cooperation draws on the theory of non-zero-sum games to identify distinct problems of cooperation and their solutions, and it predicts that specific forms of cooperative behavior will be considered morally good in all cultures. The paper identifies seven cooperative behaviors as plausible candidates for universal moral rules.

Module 2: The Commons as a mode of production / the commons as economic system

Peer production / peer governance / peer property

Italian Community Co-operatives Responding to Economic Crisis and State Withdrawal. A New Model for Socio-Economic Development.

By Michele Bianchi and Marcelo Vieta. United Nations Task Force for Social and Solidarity Economy, 2019

URL [4]

This paper presents findings from an ongoing qualitative research project aiming to better understand the territorial and economic development impacts of Italian community co-operatives and their role in concretising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The commons and the market

The Wolf and the Caribou: Coexistence of Decentralized Economies and Competitive Markets.

By Andreas Freund and Danielle Stanko. J. Risk Financial Manag. 2018, 11(2), 26

URL [5]

Exponentially growing cryptocurrency returns may push competitive markets at risk of collapsing due to extraction of value. This paper explores novel ways for decentralized economies to protect themselves from, and coexist with, competitive markets at a global scale utilizing decentralized technologies such as Blockchain.

Going back to go forwards? From multi-stakeholder cooperatives to Open Cooperatives in food and farming

By Ajates Gonzalez, R., Journal of Rural Studies (2017)

URL [6]

This paper analyses the potential of multi-stakeholder cooperatives to recreate more sustainable food flows between rural and urban areas and to overcome the limitations of conventional farmer cooperatives that focus more on economic than social and environmental benefits.

The commons and capitalism

Market and Labour Control in Digital Capitalism.

By Philipp Staab and Oliver Nachtwey. TripleC, Vol. 14, Issue 2, 2016

URL [7]

Based on basic assumptions of monopoly capital theory, the article argues that the expansion of digital control and the organizational structures applied by key corporate players of the digital economy are evidence for the expansion of capitalist labour, not its reduction.

Food as commons. Towards a new relationship between the public, the civic and the private.

By Olivier De Schutter, Ugo Mattei, Jose Luis Vivero Pol et al., December 2018. In Handbook of Food as a Commons, Publisher: Routledge, pp.373-395

URL [8]

The chapter unfolds how a tricentric governing model (an enabling public sector, a private sector not focused on profit maximization and self-regulated civic collective actions) could steer a fairer and more sustainable transition towards food systems that can nourish the entire human population, thrive within planetary boundaries and be regenerative enough to feed the generations to come.

Food as a new old commons. A paradigm shift for human flourishing.

By Jose Luis Vivero-Pol. World Nutrition, Vol 10 No 1 (2019)

URL [9]

Considering food as a commons anchored to the adequate valuation of its multiple dimensions of food to humans, can provide a discourse that embraces urban innovations as well as indigenous practices) food activities and challenges the obsolete industrial food system.

Epistemic Regards on Food as a Commons: Plurality of Schools, Genealogy of Meanings, Confusing Vocabularies.

By J. Vivero-Pol. Preprints 2017, 2017040038

URL [10]

This text discusses the different schools of thought that have addressed the private/public, commodity/commons nature of goods in general, and then explores how those schools have considered food in particular. The author uses diverse epistemic tools to re-construct food as a commons, based on the praxis to produce, consume and govern food collectively through non-market mechanisms.

The commons in the context of other alternatives

In search of an adequate European policy response to the platform economy.

By Brian Fabo, Jovana Karanovic, Katerina Dukova. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research / ETUI, April 6, 2017

URL [11]

Presenting empirical data, the paper argues that the current labour market and working conditions created by online platforms resemble 19th century laissez-faire and calls for the urgent creation of a regulatory framework along the suggestions presented.

The commons in the context of the ecological crisis

Planning in and for a post-growth and post-carbon economy.

By John Barry. Chapter of the book: Routledge Companion to Environmental Planning and Sustainability, 2019

URL [12]

New ways of planning for a post-growth, post-carbon economy that include social justice ‘floors’ and ecological ‘ceilings’ and a more proactive state.

Module 3: The Institutional, technical and societal logic of the commons

The commons as a technical infrastructure

Introducing the four quadrants

Michiel de Lange , (2019), The Right to the Datafied City: Interfacing the Urban Data Commons

In Paolo Cardullo, Cesare Di Feliciantonio, Rob Kitchin (ed.) The Right to the Smart City, pp.71 - 83

URL [13]

The paper contrasts the cybernetic view versus a humanist view towards the role of data in the smart city. It suggests the commons-as-interface that productively connects urban data to the human-level political agency and allows for more detailed investigations of mediation processes between data, human actors, and urban issues."

Alternative Forms of Energy Production and Political Reconfigurations: Exploring Alternative Energies as Potentialities of Collective Reorganization.

By Yannick Rumpala. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, April 3, 2018

URL [14]

The article studies how energy choices (that always tend to be political choices) can be redirected by technological developments associated with renewable energy, thus contributing to a redistribution of opportunities and correspondingly to social reorganizations.

Governing the commons

The Path of the Blockchain Lexicon (and the Law). 36 Review of Banking & Financial Law 713 (2017)

By Angela Walch, 2017

URL [15]

The article lays out the forces at play in shaping the language of Bitcoin and the problems the language raises for regulators, including challenges in identifying the facts about the technology, as well as increasing the chances of regulatory capture. Special emphasis is given to the term “immutable” and its potentially misleading nature.

Cooperative Enterprise as an Antimonopoly Strategy

By Sandeep Vaheesan and Nathan Schneider (November 6, 2018).

URL [16]

As part of an agenda to tame corporate monopoly, governments should revisit the idea of ownership design and exemptions from antitrust laws in order to protect and enable the cooperative model across the economy.

Res Publica ex Machina: On Neocybernetic Governance and the End of Politics.

By Felix Maschewski and Anna-Verena Nosthoff. Institute of Network Cultures, October, 2018

URL [17]

The article examines the extent to which neo-cybernetic concepts promote a rather reduced vision of politics and argues that current approaches to ‘smart’ states or cities and their corresponding models of governance mark no entire automation of politics but at least in certain respects, a pragmatic actualization of cybernetic visions of the state against the background of surveillance capitalism.

Urban Commons, with Case studies

Case studies

Technopolitics, ICT-based participation in municipalities and the makings of a network of open cities. Drafting the state of the art and the case of decidim.Barcelona.

By Peña-López, I. (2016). ICTlogy Working Paper Series #3. Barcelona: ICTlogy.

URL [18]

The paper is about decidim.Barcelona, an ambitious project by the City Council of Barcelona (Spain) to increase engagement in the design, monitoring and assessment of its strategic plan for 2016-2019. The paper focuses on the socio-political environment of this subproject, namely Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain.

Cosmo-Local Production Commons, with case studies

Protocol cooperativism

Thwarting an Uber Future for Complementary Currencies: Open Protocols for a Credit Commons.

By Jem Bendell and Matthew Slater. Paper prepared for the IV International Conference on Social and Complementary Currencies: Money, Consciousness and Values for Social Change, 10th to 14th May, 2017, Universita Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain, 2017

URL [19]

The paper explores the rationale and potential for practitoners in both complementary currencies and platform cooperatives, and their associated researchers, to consider the role of open protocols to grow the digital commons and avoid a digital dystopia of platform monopolies. The importance of developing open protocols in order to create conditions for new entrants to thrive, including “protocol cooperatives” is explained.

Case studies

(Smart) Citizens from Data Providers to Decision-Makers? The Case Study of Barcelona.

By Igor Calzada. Sustainability 2018, 10(9), 3252

URL [20]

This paper examines how the city of Barcelona is marking a transition from the conventional, hegemonic smart city approach to a new paradigm—the experimental city which increasingly considers (smart) citizens as decision-makers rather than data providers. Examining three different understandings of the commons and how they overlap with other movements.

Module 4: P2P as transformative emancipatory movement

The Commons as a political project

The Italian water movement and the politics of the commons. Water Alternatives 9(1): 99-119

By C. Carrozza and E. Fantini, 2016.

URL [21]

The article questions how question: how the notion of the commons has been understood, adopted and translated into practice in Italy around the example of countering the privatisation of water services.

Alternative Platforms and Societal Horizon: Characterisation and Strategies for Development.

By Guillaume Compain, Philippe Eynaud, Lionel Maurel, and Corinne Vercher-Chaptal, June 2019 Communication to the SASE 31st Annual Meeting; Fathomless Futures: Algorithmic and Imagined; 27- 28 June 2019 - The New School - New York City

URL [22]

A study that systematically looks at how platform coops combine elements of the open source movement (sharing knowledge), with those of the cooperative movement (protecting cooperative property. It highlights the emergent practices of Open Cooperativism

Commons transition as a political process

From choice to collective voice. Foundational economy, local commons and citizenship.

By Filippo Barbera, Nicola Negri, Angelo Salento

URL [23]

Defence and management of local commons in the framework of Foundational Economy (FE) as referring to the «civic infrastructure» serving everyday household needs help reconsider citizenship as «the capacity and desire to act collectively».

Transition towards a Food Commons Regime: Re-commoning Food to Crowd-feed the World.

By Jose Luis Vivero Pol. Chapter 9 in book: Perspectives on Commoning. Autonomist Principles and Practices. Ed. by Guido Ruivenkamp and Andy Hilton. Zed Books, 2017, pp.325 - 379.

URL [24]

In this paper, the commons approach is applied to food, deconstructing food as a pure private good and reconstructing it as a commons that can be better produced and distributed by a tricentric governance system compounded by market rules, public regulations and collective actions. Examples of the implications for the governance of the global food system if food was considered as a commons.

Prototyping and the new spirit of policy-making.

By Lucy Kimbell and Jocelyn Bailey. Journal CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, Volume 13, 2017 - Issue 3: Special issue: Co-Design and the Public Realm, Pages 214-226

URL [25]

The paper examines the emergence of a design practice, prototyping, in public policy-making that have led towards greater flexibility, provisionality and anticipation in responding to public issues while further encroaching market logics into government.

Module 6: P2P Theory as Theory

Socialism and the Blockchain.

By Steve Huckle and Martin White. Future Internet 2016, 8(4), 49

URL [26]

This paper argues that blockchain technologies are not just a Libertarian tool, they also enhance Socialist forms of governance.

Fifty shades of open.

By Jeffrey Pomerantz and Robin Peek. First Monday, Volume 21, Number 5 - 2 May 2016

URL [27]

The word “open” has been applied to a wide variety of words to create new terms, some of which make sense, and some not so much. This essay disambiguates the many meanings of the word “open” as it is used in a wide range of contexts.

Openness as social praxis.

By Matthew Longshore Smith and Ruhiya Seward. First Monday, Volume 22, Number 4 - 3 April 2017

URL [28]

This article builds on “Fifty shades of open” by Pomerantz and Peek by offering an alternative understanding to openness — that of social praxis. It provides a contextually sensitive understanding of openness by focusing on three social processes: open production, open distribution, and open consumption. Further, it points towards an approach to developing a practice-specific theory.

Spiritual theory

No Time to Think. Reflections on information technology and contemplative scholarship.

By David M. Levy. Ethics and Information Technology, December 2007, Volume 9, Issue 4, pp 237–249

URL [29]

The paper argues that the accelerating pace of life is reducing the time for contemplative scholarship at a time when scholars, educators, and students have gained access to digital tools of great value to scholarship. It explores what this says about the nature of scholarship, and what might be done to address this challenge.