Mapping the New Commons

* Paper: Hess, Charlotte, Mapping the New Commons (July 1, 2008).

Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1356835

Abstract

"This paper is a guide to the rapidly growing area of research and activity I call 'new commons.' Simply put, new commons (NC) are various types of shared resources that have recently evolved or have been recognized as commons. They are commons without pre-existing rules or clear institutional arrangements. The paper introduces a map that outlines the NC resource sectors and identifies some of the salient questions that this new area of research raises. In addition, it examines the relationship between new commons and traditional common-pool resources and common property regimes.

This overview includes a survey of the physical resources, the user communities, the literature, and some of the major collective action activities. Tacking new commons over several years has demonstrated that this vast arena is inhabited by heterogeneous groups from divergent disciplines, political interests, and geographical regions that are increasingly finding the term 'commons' crucial in addressing issues of social dilemmas, degradation, and sustainability of a wide variety of shared resources. The resource sectors include scientific knowledge, voluntary associations, climate change, community gardens, wikipedias, cultural treasures, plant seeds, and the electromagnetic spectrum. All of these new resource sectors and communities require rigorous study and analysis in order to better grasp the institutional nature of these beasts. This map is designed to serve as an introductory reference guide for future scholarly work."

Charlotte Hess on the purpose of this paper:

"The purpose of this paper is threefold:

1) to identify the various new commons6 sectors and sub-sectors and representative collective-action communities involved in new commons;

2) to survey the ways commoners, practitioners, and scholars discover and then conceptualize the commons. I call the discovery patterns “entrypoints” that can be thought of as catalysts that change one’s conception of a resource as a private, government-owned, or open access resource into a commons. The entrypoints reveal how the notion that a particular resource or group was a commons might have arisen; and

3) to attempt a viable definition of the new commons. It briefly surveys various definitions given by some of the authors of recent literature and attempts to discern connecting threads.

This is not an easy assignment, since new commons are usually not analyzed in terms of property rights or economic goods as with much of the traditional commons literature. There is no general usage for the term “commons.” And, indeed, authors of the new commons take carte blanche in their use of the term. Besides the commons, what exactly is “new” in “new commons?”

The last part of the paper will discuss some of the challenges of new commons research."