ISBN: 9780865719217

Categories:

View more details about this title on the publisher's website:

Go to publisher’s site

This title can be assigned for course purchase in eBook format through Campus eBookstore:

Go to Campus eBookstore

Free, Fair and Alive

Name: Free, Fair and Alive
SKU: 9780865719217
Availability: InStock

The Insurgent Power of the Commons

From co-housing and agroecology to fisheries and open-source everything, people around the world are increasingly turning to ‘commoning’ to emancipate themselves from a predatory market-state system.

Free, Fair, and Alive presents a foundational re-thinking of the commons - the self-organized social system that humans have used for millennia to meet their needs. It offers a compelling vision of a future beyond the dead-end binary of capitalism versus socialism that has almost brought the world to its knees.

Written by two leading commons activists of our time, this guide is a penetrating cultural critique, table-pounding political treatise, and practical playbook. Highly readable and full of colorful stories, coverage includes:

-Internal dynamics of commoning

-How the commons worldview opens up new possibilities for change

-Role of language in reorienting our perceptions and political strategies

-Seeing the potential of commoning everywhere

Free, Fair, and Alive provides a fresh, non-academic synthesis of contemporary commons written for a popular, activist-minded audience. It presents a compelling narrative: that we can be free and creative people, govern ourselves through fair and accountable institutions, and experience the aliveness of authentic human presence.

Contributors

David Bollier

David Bollier is the Director of Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, co-founder of the Commons Strategies Group, and author of Think Like a Commoner. He blogs at Bollier.org and lives in Amherst, MA.

Chapter	Contributors	Pages	Year	Price
Introduction In the introduction, the authors frame current modern challenges such as climate change and social inequity as issues that can be effectively addressed through a lens of the commons, which they … View	David Bollier	9	2019	$0.90
Commons and Commoning In the first chapter, the authors argue first that large-scale cooperation is possible for humans, and that commoning, our capacity to self-organize and help each other through creation of … View	David Bollier	16	2019	$1.60
The OntoShift to the Commons In the second chapter, the authors dig into the question of why commons have been so ignored in the modern era, despite their long history, and suggest that a new ontological perspective is … View	David Bollier	22	2019	$2.20
Language and the Creation of Commons In this chapter, the authors begin with illustrating how language shapes our views of the world, and then argue that we need new language to begin the ontological shift necessary to appreciate … View	David Bollier	40	2019	$4.00
Introduction of Part II The introduction to the second part of the book explains that in the coming section, the authors set out to articulate a comprehensive framework, called the Triad, for commons and commoning. The … View	David Bollier	8	2019	$0.80
The Social Life of Commoning This chapter unpacks the first part of the Triad commons framework, the Social Life of Commoning. They propose that the socials aspects of commoning are rooted in patterns of cooperation, sharing … View	David Bollier	17	2019	$1.70
Peer Governance Through Commoning This chapter considers the second aspect of the Triad framework, Peer Governance through Commoning. They name and describe ten dynamics of Peer Governance usually present in effective commons, … View	David Bollier	44	2019	$4.40
Provisioning Through Commons This chapter is about the ten key patterns of production or provisioning in the Triad framework of the commons. They also explain the underlying goals of provisioning in a commons-oriented world … View	David Bollier	35	2019	$3.50
Introduction to Part III This introduction to the third part takes stock of what the book has covered so far, and indicates that the third part will deal with the issue of how commons fit into the context of larger … View	David Bollier	6	2019	$0.60
Rethinking Property The seventh chapter examines the relationship between property law and ideas of ownership and commons, and finds them to be largely incompatible. The authors propose ways to rethink property and … View	David Bollier	29	2019	$2.90
Relationalize Property Chapter eight explores pathways to relationalize property, beginning with a case study of a food cooperative store. They then make the case for relationalizing property. There are case studies … View	David Bollier	45	2019	$4.50
State Power and Commoning Chapter nine considers how commoning would progress if it were supported by the state in the form of governance and provisioning, and anticipates the challenges of doing so. It clarifies the … View	David Bollier	34	2019	$3.40
Take Commoning to Scale The final chapter addresses how commons can be scaled up, and why it is important to believe that commons have a significant contribution to make toward global change. The authors introduce the … View	David Bollier	30	2019	$3.00
Acknowledgments Acknowledgments View	David Bollier	4	2019	$0.40
Appendix A This appendix details how the authors came to see the patterns in commons and more about the pattern language observation process generally. They share interview questions about behaviours in … View	David Bollier	14	2019	$1.40
Appendix B This appendix provides a guide to the visual grammar of the sphere diagrams used to represent concepts throughout the book. View	David Bollier	8	2019	$0.80
Appendix C This appendix is a list of all the commons and commons tools appearing in the book in alphabetical order with brief descriptions and page numbers. View	David Bollier	6	2019	$0.60
Appendix D Appendix D shares briefly Elinor Ostrum’s design principles for commons from her 1990 book Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. View	David Bollier	2	2019	$0.20
Notes Notes View	David Bollier	32	2019	$3.20
Index Index View	David Bollier	26	2019	$2.60
About the Authors Author biographies View	David Bollier	1	2019	$0.10
A Note about the Publisher Information about the publisher View	David Bollier	1	2019	$0.10

Free, Fair and Alive

The Insurgent Power of the Commons

Contributors

David Bollier

Welcome