One of the great achievements of the late Professor Elinor Ostrom was the identification of key design principles for successful commons. She set forth eight of them in her landmark 1990 book, Governing the Commons. The wording of those principles is aimed at social scientists who study the management of common-pool resources from a neutral, non-participatory, scientific perspective. As a result, the principles are not as accessible to the general public, nor do they reflect the direct experiences and first-person voice of commoners.
The first German Sommerschool on the Commons, which took place in Bechstedt/Thuringia in June 2012, decided to remedy this problem. Participants took part in intense debates over what a new set of principles for commoning – based on the Ostrom principles – might look like if they reflected the personal perspective of commoners themselves. The result is a statement, "Eight Points of Reference for Commoning,” which can be seen as a re-interpretation – remix? – of Ostrom's design principles.
As Silke Helfrich notes on her Commonsblog, the Eight Points of Reference for Commoning “are based on the belief, that commons can flourish in very different contexts.” The German version can be found here. An English translation is below. The German commoners consider the current wording of both the German and English versions as relatively stable, but they invite comments and suggestions for further changes.
Eight Points of Reference for Commoning
Elinor Ostrom and others have formulated eight design principles for the shared use of resources. They distill the lessons of a huge number of case studies from around the world. They are written from a scientific perspective and continue to be of great significance for the commons movement.
We approach the commons from the perspective of active commoners, meaning the people who create and maintain working commons. We are more concerned with creating spaces for community and cooperation than with institutions. As for the resources themselves, we are more interested in how to preserve and use them, than in making distinctions between material and non-material, traditional or new commons. We therefore refer to all types of commons here.
For us Ostrom’s design principles provide a template for the following points of reference. We hope that commoners may find them useful in reflecting on their own practice.
Commons do not exist in a perfect world, but rather in one that is hostile to commons. Therefore it is important that commoners be aware of the treasure they hold in their hands, to preserve it and help it flourish.
1. As a commoner I clearly understand for which resources I need to care for and with whom I share this responsibility. Commons resources are those that we create together, that we maintain as gifts of nature or whose use has been guaranteed to everyone.
2. We use the commons resources that we create, care for and maintain. We use the means (time, space, technology, and the quantity of a resource) that are available in a given context. As commoner I am satisfied that there is a fair relationship between my contributions and the benefits I receive.
3. We enter into or modify our own rules and commitments, and every commoner can participate in this process. Our commitments serve to create, maintain, and preserve the commons to satisfy our needs.
4. We monitor the respect of these commitments ourselves and sometimes we mandate others whom we trust to help reach this goal. We continually reassess whether our commitments still serve their purpose.
5. We work out appropriate rules for dealing with violations of our commitments. We determine whether and what kinds of sanctions shall be used, depending on the context and severity of a violation.
6. Every commoner can make use of a space and means for conflict resolution. We seek to resolve conflicts among us in an easily accessible and straightforward way.
7. We regulate our own affairs, and external authorities respect that.
8. We realize that every commons is part of a larger whole. Therefore, different institutions working at different scales are needed to coordinate stewardship and to cooperate with each other.
Update, November 3, 2012: A French translation of this blog post and the Eight Points of Reference for Commoning is now available here.
Comments
Common or extraordinary
Now I first heard about the commoning and Common and find the term a little bit misleading, as one seems to act extraordinary - as in going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary. Our Human Genes define us as a primate and much of our behaviour is sadly enough related to power and sex, main drivers in primate cultures. In your philosophy we make an effort to transcend our biological definition, and use Ratio and Insight as most important tools.
It cannot be common what you try to do, it needs to be extrodinary - given our current situation on planet earth!
I must disagree.
I must disagree. While commoning is indeed different from "the usual" or "regular" practices of modern capitalist societies, the long history of the human species is replete with ordinary cooperation and collaboration. Numerous evolutionary scientists have come to this conclusion, including David Sloan Wilson, Martin Nowak, E.O. Wilson, Andreas Weber, and economists like Samuel Bowles.
Of course power and sex matter, and competition is real. But biology as "survival of the fittest" ignores the cooperative (and competitive) symbiosis that lies at the heart of ecosystems and life itself. This is amply reflected in countless systems of commoning around the world that are quite natural and long-lived. If we are indeed creatures of the earth and biology, then it is global capitalism that is quite extraordinary and unprecedented -- enough that it continue to deny its relationship to the living systems of planet earth!
Sociological timeline
Is it not that both points are valid on a social evolution time scale? Early on, hunter-gather's (and earlier proto-humans) behavior was determined predominantly by self-propagation/self-survival evolutionary 'forces'. Meanwhile today, in what we might call a burgeoning post-anthropic age, we are less determined by evolutionary forces merely centered on self-replication. We have evolved an 'option to say no' to those behavior tendencies, because we have also evolved the ability to predict the outcome of our and other's behaviors, such as cooperation, egalitarianism, etc. AKA commoning; wherein commoning represents an evolutionary advantage, an evolutionary path of 'becoming' - more human - and not merely replicants. Both points of view are valid. It is a matter of cultural learning, an intra-generational embeddedness of being, a cultural habitus of saying no to one form of being and yes to another. But the 'yes' is a becoming, and hence our difficulty of choice, while proto-human anthropic behavior seems 'so natural' (are genetically embedded) that we seldom say no to them. So commoning, IMHO, is not so simple as saying yes or no to our behavioral tendencies, because in the end both anthropic and post-anthropic behaviors are determined, but instead, commoning is a becoming, and becoming is the ultimate nature of being human. Our evolution hangs in the balance of yes and no - our choice. Only the outcomes of our choice are determined. The choice is ours. We have the freedom of 'no' enabling what we do not yet understand.