Learning from The Wealth of the Commons: a review essay

Citation: Mae Shaw (2014) Learning from The Wealth of the Commons: a review essay. Community Development Journal (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.1093/cdj/bsu012
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1093/cdj/bsu012
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1093/cdj/bsu012
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Learning from The Wealth of the Commons: a review essay
Download: http://cdj.oxfordjournals.org/content/49/suppl 1/i12.full
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Summary

"commons refers to what human beings share in nature and society that should be cherished for all now and for the future"

Review of Wealth of the Commons, itself a collection of 73 essays.

Critique:

• "the volume fails to address the relationship between organized labour and the commons"
• "The salience of class in general is an underdeveloped line of argument."
• "Without historical continuity – honouring the contribution of those ‘commoners’ who came before in various guises and places – there is a danger of falling into the contemporary trap of regarding ‘innovation’ as a way of separating us from our past."

Lessons for community development:

• All chapters "have at their heart the ‘duty’ not only to describe the problems of contemporary life, but to develop alternative ways of thinking about and living the relationship between individual and society, state and market, policy and politics. Since these relationships are, in broad terms, the primary focus of community development in theory and practice, commons perspectives have much to offer."
• "If the potential for more democratic and meaningful social relationships is to be realized, then at the very least there needs to be recognition of the anti-democratic potential of community development in facilitating a ‘localism’ agenda which may deprive the poorest of key state services"
• "Re-theorizing both ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ in community development would help to expose the shallowness of much of the current drive towards community governance worldwide and help to repoliticize participatory democracy. Any serious case for a commons-based approach must be at least partially measured by the extent to which it expands democratic political space for those most removed from power."
• "Whilst it is clearly iniquitous that individuals and corporations can accumulate the kind of wealth which could, in some instances, write-off world poverty several times over while whole societies are increasingly reliant on their philanthropy, it is the systematic restructuring of economic relations in order to produce those very excesses that is the greatest barrier to establishing (or re-establishing?) the kind of commons which would transform society. In a context of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ – from public asset stripping through to land grabs – the pursuit of an inclusive ‘we’ must first confront the reality of an exclusive ‘they’, for whom enclosure has always been the default position, and who routinely turn decentralized autonomy to their advantage."

Conclusion: "This book provides a kaleidoscopic introduction to ways of thinking and acting that can, at the very least, lift our eyes up from and beyond the myopic and soul-destroying managerial culture in which too many of us are mired. It reminds us of the necessity of the ‘education of desire’ in our work: to raise, rather than restrict or manage, expectations of a better, fairer, more life-affirming world – and then to work for it."