David Bollier: Thinking about households as commons is interesting because it helps showcase the zone in which market needs and social needs intersect, coexist and get resolved. A household has many bills to pay – yet it also wishes to govern itself as a happy, civil mini-community. Economic value is not the sole purpose of… Continue reading
Evolution’s Arrow also argues that evolution itself has evolved. Evolution has progressively improved the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to discover the best adaptations. And it has discovered new and better mechanisms. The book looks at the evolution of pre-genetic, genetic, cultural, and supra-individual evolutionary mechanisms. John Stewart, author of Evolution’s Arrow, a landmark book on… Continue reading
The current sustained hike in food prices and the hunger crises that it has and will provoke are not an accident, but the very result of neoliberal policies and intentions, argues George Caffentzis, in a recommended article for Mute magazine. 1. The reasons behind the hunger crises What can possibly be a reason for such… Continue reading
LittleSis is an endeavor to take all the great power structure research already being done, organize it, clarify it, and connect it so that grassroots efforts that challenge the powers that be will have a big and detailed map of the terrain they must navigate, and proper tools for adding to it as they move… Continue reading
“In both the South and the North there is a growing global movement for food as a common good which will have to embrace a series of commons, including respect for the ecosystem to the re-establishment of its life cycles, the appreciation of the specific features of various types of territory. Food that will be… Continue reading
Via Postrank, which calculates the engagement of blog postings (number of external links, tags, comments etc…), I found the following list of most popular blog articles for December 2008, and I’m quite amazed that such a high number reached the levels of at least a score of 8 out 10: (I’m excluding our daily delicious… Continue reading
Forwarded from Marcin Jakubowski. This is just the introduction, there is an extensive overview and discussion at the original posting. “Today’s Factor e Live Distillations focuses on Personal Fabrication. We discuss our goals of establishing a robust and replicable, high-performance flexible fabrication facility for producing just about anything – while relying largely on local resources… Continue reading
Book. David Bollier. Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own. New Press, 2009. I have not read this book yet, but I’m an avid follower of David’s On the Commons blog, which never fails to inform and delight. Familiarity with his other books and reports, and the congruence with our… Continue reading
As we already explained in our wiki article on Pirate governance, pirates are not who we were taught they were, but used advanced and egalitarian means to distribute resources. In the Huffington Post, Johann Hari refers to the historical record to help us understand the social role of Somali pirates: (thanks to Marc Fawzi for… Continue reading
Our occasional contributor Zbigniew Lukasiak announces a new project he will be working on using a new page on our wiki, available here. Here is an explanation of the problem he wants to address: “According to “The Wealth of Networks” Open Source as an example of Peer Production is governed by an economy of self-identification… Continue reading
“If re-localizing development is particularly significant with respect to the agricultural question this only fuels the re-localization of other aspects of development and life. Global is the movement, global are the rights, and global are the struggles, above all for the universal right to a healthy diet, a varied one and not a standardized and… Continue reading
The Washington Post asks how Obama can transform his net-based electoral strength, into a policy and advocacy tool that will strengthen his presidency? (here are also a number of videos on the topic) An interesting passage: “In past years, such lists were considered useful tools for political campaigns but not particularly helpful for governing. But… Continue reading
This is one of the very best political essays I have read in a long long while. Massimo De Angelis proposes a new strategy for a ‘beginning of history’ outside of capitalism, which tackles the key issue of ‘what to do with the middle class as a dominant form of subjectivity’. I have excerpted that… Continue reading
Via: Interesting essay from Anna Delgado. Here’s the abstract: “Seeds Heritage of the People at the Service of the Human kind”, under this slogan, in 2003 Via Campesina started international campaign of seeds. The MST (Movimento Sem Terra/Landless People Movement), has been the main partner of this campaign in Brazil. The campaign has pursuit a… Continue reading
All of us who are volunteering for peer production activities, and do not get a direct income from it, are forced to contemplate another activity, especially if our ‘commons’ does not generate an actionable ecology of associated businesses generating employment or an income. So how do we do it? I’m assuming that those of us… Continue reading
From the ICT4D blog: “[Partial] Review of The Throes of Democracy: Brazil since 1989 – Brian McCann Studies of internet use in the South rarely come from outside a small circle, so it is worth examining The Throes of Democracy. Written by Latin American historian Brian McCann, it analyses Brazil’s emerging digital culture as one… Continue reading