Patterns of Commoning

What accounts for the persistence and spread of “commoning,” the irrepressible desire of people to collaborate and share to meet everyday needs? How are the more successful projects governed? And why are so many people embracing the commons as a powerful strategy for building a fair, humane and Earth-respecting social order?

David Bollier (www.bollier.org) is an American author, activist and independent scholar who has studied the commons for nearly twenty years. He has written or edited seven books on the commons, including Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons (www.thinklikeacommoner.org, 2014); Green Governance: Ecological Survival, Human Rights and the Commons (www.commonslawproject.org, 2013), co-authored with Burns Weston. He is the cofounder of the Commons Strategies group with Silke Helfrich and Michel Bauwens.

Silke Helfrich (commonsblog.wordpress.com) is a German author and independent activist of the commons who blogs at www.commonsblog.de, and cofounder of the Commons-Institut in Germany. A cofounder of the Commons Strategies Group, Helfrich is the editor and co-author of several books on the commons, including Who Owns the World? The Rediscovery of the Commons (2009); editor of Elinor Ostrom: Was mehr wird, wenn wir teilen (Munich 2011); and, with the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, Commons. Für eine neue Politik jenseits von Markt und Staat (Bielefeld 2012).