Books on Commons Economics

We recommend checking the very comprehensive bibliography compiled by David Bollier: http://www.bollier.org/commons-resources/commons-bibliography

General Books on Commons Economics

• Barnes, Peter, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons Berrett-Koehler, 2006).

• Grazzini, Enrico. The Good of Everyone. The Sharing Economy as a Way Out of the Crisis (Editori Internazionali Riuniti, 2011)

• Helfrich, Silke. The Commons— Prosperity by Sharing (2010, with Christian Siefkes, Rainer Kuhlen, Wolfgang Sachs,

• Hoeschele, Wolfgang. The Economics of Abundance: A Political Economy of Freedom, Equity, and Sustainability. Gower Publishing, 2010

• Rowe, Jonathan, Our Common Wealth: The Hidden Economy That Makes Everything Else Work (Berrett-Koehler, 2013).

• Schor, Juliet. Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. Penguin, 2010

• Siefkes, Christian. "From Exchange to Contributions" (Berlin 2007)

General books on the commons:

Walljasper, Jay. All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons.

Related Heterodox Alternative Economics

• Arnsperger, Christian. Full-Spectrum Economics. Christian Arnsperger. Routledge, 2010: "Once the external and internal sides of the "We" and the "I" are all taken into account, economics needs to be re-thought almost completely and made into a highly pluralistic discipline."

• Brown, Marvin T. Civilizing the Economy. A new economics of provision. Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1]

• Cobb, John. Sustaining the Common Good: A Christian Perspective on Global Economy. (1995).

• Daly, H., and Cobb, J.B., 1990. For the Common Good: redirecting the economy towards community, the environment and a sustainable future. London: Green Print.

• Gibson-Graham, J.-K. (2006), A Postcapitalist Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

Commons Governance

• Bromley, D., and Feeny, D. (eds) (1992), Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice and Policy (San Francisco: ICS press).

• Burns, Weston and Bollier, David. Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Law of the Commons was published by Cambridge University Press in January 2013 [2]

• Ostrom, E. (1990), Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Commons Property

• Baslar, Kemal. The Concept of the Common Heritage of Mankind in International Law (Developments in International Law, Vol 30). Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1997

• Heller, Michael,The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation and Costs Lives (Basic Books, 2008).

• Simms, A., Drury, J., Trathen, K., and Boyle, D. (2003), Limits to Property: The Failure of Restrictive Property Regimes in the Modern World (London: New Economics Foundation). Available online at http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/limits-property.

• Common Cause. Information Between Commons and Property. Philippe Aigrain. [3] Unpubished, select version of: Cause Commune.

Special Topics

On Abundance and Scarcity

• Economic Abundance: An Introduction. By William M. Dugger and James T. Peach.

• Ivan Illich. Toward a History of Needs. (1978) : focuses on "the sociogenesis of needs"; brings a historical perspective to the demand side of the scarcity equation.

• Michael Perelman: Marx, Malthus, and the Concept of Natural Resource Scarcity (1979).

• Nicholas Xenos's Scarcity and Modernity (1989).

• The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, edited by Lyla Mehta

On Enclosures

• Alperovitz, Gar and Lew Daly, Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance (New Press, 2008).

• Bollier, D. (2003), Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (New York: Routledge).

• Nature for sale. Commons versus Commodities. by giovanna ricoveri. Pluto, 2012: "Nature for Sale uncovers the rich heritage of common ownership which existed before the dominance of capitalist property relations. Giovanna Ricoveri argues that the subsistence commons of the past can be reinvented today to provide an alternative to the current destructive economic orde

Politics and Movements

• Bollier, David. "Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own" New Press, 2009, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license at www.viralspiral.cc

• Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Harvard University Press, 2009).

• Nomini, Donald, editor, The Global Idea of ‘the Commons’ (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2007).

Value

• The Ethical Economy. Rebuilding Value After the Crisis. By Adam Arvidsson and Nicolai Peitersen. Columbia University Press, 2013

Special Resource-Specific Topics

Atmosphere

• Barnes, P. (2001), Who Owns the Sky? Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism (Washington, DC: Island Press).

Genome and Life

• The Common Thread. By John Sulston: a nuanced defense of treating knowledge of the genome as a commons.

• Genes, Bytes and Emissions: To Whom Does the World Belong? Ed. by Silke Helfrich. Heinrich Boll Foundation, 2009 Intro ; Online version

Knowledge

• Lessig, L. (2001), The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (New York: Random House).

Money, Banking and Finance

• Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free (Revised and Updated) By Ellen Hodgson Brown. [4]

Labor

• Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line, Tom Walker,

Public Infrastructures

• Global Auction of Public Assets: Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market & Public Private Partnerships. by Dexter Whitfield. Spokesman Books, 2010. [5]: "demonstrates why new public investment priorities are needed with radical changes in global financial markets and the abandonment of the Public Private Partnership model."

Water

• Bakker, K. (2003), An Uncooperative Commodity: Privatizing Water in England and Wales (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

• Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. By Maude Barlow.the Water Commons