Culture of the Commons | Transnational Institute

lterrat's bookmarks 2017-01-29

Summary:

"Mayo Fuster Morell, responsible for BarCola, a group working on collaborative economy policies within the Barcelona city council, shares her thoughts on how commons-based forms of collaboration can build a more just society.

[...]

Commons are very very diverse, that is something that defines them, as they adapt to local and specific circumstances, and are embedded within the specific community and commoning to which they belong.

I would say these are the great key principles, but not all of them are necessarily present in all the families of commons or specific commons:

  • Community organizing (openness to engagement)
  • Self-governance of the community by the creators of the commonly-held value
  • Open access to the resources created
  • Ethics of looking beyond profitability to serve social and environmental needs and inclusion

Inclusion is perhaps one of the weakest elements, particularly in the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement. Studies suggest that only 1.5% of contributors in FLOSS communities are women, while in proprietary closed software production, the proportion is closer 30%. How can FLOSS be a model with such poor gender participation rates? Similarly, communities that manage natural resources, like fishing commons institutions in Albufera, Valencia, restricted women’s participation until very recently. Additionally, commons theorising tends to be very dominated by male authors, who engage very little with feminist theory.

Commons approaches need to do more to embrace more these issues, develop methodologies and highlight and learn from the cases which perform well in terms of gender inclusion. Barcelona en comu, in its attempts to reclaim political institutions for the common good, is one example where feminist wisdom is properly engaged in the commons and seeking to bring about gender equality."

 

Link:

https://www.tni.org/en/article/culture-of-the-commons

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Tags:

oa.dei

Date tagged:

01/29/2017, 20:38

Date published:

01/29/2017, 15:38