Search results for ""author david bollier""

The biggest "tragedy of the commons" is the misconception that commons are failures-relics from another era rendered unnecessary by the market and state. Think Like a Commoner dispels such prejudices by explaining the rich history and promising future of the commons-an ageless paradigm of cooperation and fairness that is re-making our world. With graceful prose and dozens of fascinating stories, David Bollier describes the quiet revolution that is pioneering practical forms of self-governance and production controlled by people themselves. Think Like a Commoner explains how the commons: * Is an exploding field of DIY innovation ranging from Wikipedia and seed-sharing to community forests, collaborative consumption, and beyond * Challenges the standard narrative of market economics by explaining how cooperation generates significant value and human fulfillment * Provides a framework of law and social action that can help us move beyond the pathologies of neoliberal capitalism We have a choice: ignore the commons and suffer the ongoing private plunder of our common wealth, or Think Like a Commoner and learn how to rebuild our society and reclaim our shared inheritance. This accessible, comprehensive introduction to the commons will surprise and enlighten you, and provoke you to action. David Bollier is an author, activist, blogger, and independent scholar. He is the author of six books on different aspects of the commons, including Green Governance, The Wealth of the Commons, and Viral Spiral, and is a frequent speaker at conferences, colleges and universities, and policy workshops.

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A stunning narrative history of the emergence of electronic free culture'and a radically different organisation of society.'

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The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking was born of a simple realization: The world we have inherited is no longer working. The future of the planet and civilization as we know it are threatened, and the cries heard during the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests—“I can’t breathe”—continue to echo. By giving us tools for navigating the transitions ahead, this catalog helps us breathe more deeply. The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking explains the transformational power of social collaboration by showcasing dozens of pathbreaking projects, books, websites, and activist initiatives. Commoners seek to prioritize people’s needs over market extraction, steward the Earth, relocalize the economy, and build new institutions of empowerment. The emerging Commonsverse can be seen in relocalized food systems and community land trusts…in racial empowerment through collective action and mutual aid…and in free and open source software, peer production, and platform cooperatives. Commoning is helping communities to managing scarce water supplies, farmers to develop regenerative agriculture, and artists to reclaim control of their creative lives. Ordinary people are becoming more self-reliant through timebanking and collaborative finance, care collectives and gift economies, and alternative local currencies. The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking is an indispensable guide for understanding many profound social transformations now underway. In 25 thematic sections, The Commoner’s Catalog offers a rare collection of tools for navigating the transitions ahead and building a new world. It offers a portrait of the system-change activism that is creating an economics of sufficiency, a politics of fairness, and a culture of belonging.

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The power of the commons as a free, fair system of provisioning and governance beyond capitalism, socialism, and other -isms.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.

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Describes the development of one of the first cohousing communities in the U.S. offering a social understanding of its commons. Cohousing, a form of communal living that clusters around shared common space, began about a half century ago in Denmark. We Built a Village describes the process of planning and building of an early cohousing community in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the way the people involved simultaneously built their homes and their social structure. As both a memoir and a sociological analysis that probes the differences between commons and markets, it is unique among books about cohousing. When this group of people began in the late 1990s to construct their cohousing community, they set in motion a counterpoint between the physical spaces and the social configurations that would guide their lives together, even up to creative responses to the recent pandemic.

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Describes the development of one of the first cohousing communities in the U.S. offering a social understanding of its commons. Cohousing, a form of communal living that clusters around shared common space, began about a half century ago in Denmark. We Built a Village describes the process of planning and building of an early cohousing community in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the way the people involved simultaneously built their homes and their social structure. As both a memoir and a sociological analysis that probes the differences between commons and markets, it is unique among books about cohousing. When this group of people began in the late 1990s to construct their cohousing community, they set in motion a counterpoint between the physical spaces and the social configurations that would guide their lives together, even up to creative responses to the recent pandemic.

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In the age of climate change and the ongoing battles around how we use land to grow food and rear livestock, can an emerging group of visionary farmers utilise new technology to help create a truly communal vision of regenerative agriculture that is networked, engaged, and transformative – and ultimately a force for good in the natural world? In The Great Regeneration, farmer-technologist Dorn Cox and author-activist Courtney White explore this unique, groundbreaking research which is aimed at reclaiming the ground where science and agriculture meet as a shared human endeavour. The Great Regeneration explores the critical function that open-source technology can have in promoting agroecological systems, through data-sharing and networking. If these systems are brought together, there is potential to revolutionise how we manage food production and natural systems around the world, decentralising and deindustrialising the structures of production and governance that have long dominated the agricultural landscape. In this important book, Dorn Cox and Courtney White present a simple choice: we can allow ourselves to be dominated by this new technology, or we can harness its potential and use it to understand and improve our shared environment. The choices made today will affect the generations to come, and The Great Regeneration shows how, together, we can create positive and lasting change.

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