This paper compares lessons drawn from five case studies of large scale governance of common-pool resources: management of forests in Indonesia,

We develop an analytic framework for the analysis of robustness in social-ecological systems (SESs) over time. We argue that social robustness is affected by the disturbances that communities face and the way they respond to them. Using Ostrom's ontological framework for SESs, we classify the major factors influencing the disturbances and responses faced by five Indiana intentional communities over a 15-year time frame. Our empirical results indicate that operational and collective-choice rules, leadership and entrepreneurship, monitoring and sanctioning, economic values, number of users, and norms/social capital are key variables that need to be at the core of future theoretical work on robustness of self-organized systems.

No abstract

In this paper we propose an ‘undisciplinary’ meeting between Elinor Ostrom and Judith Butler, with the intent to broaden the theory of the commons by discussing it as a relational politics. We use Butler’s theory of power to problematize existing visions of commons, shifting from Ostrom’s ‘bounded rationality’ to Butler’s concepts of ‘bounded selves’ and mutual vulnerability. To be bounded – as opposed to autonomous being – implies being an (ambiguous) effect of socio-power relations and norms that are often beyond control. Thus, to be a collective of bounded selves implies being mutually vulnerable in power relations which are enabling, albeit injurious. A politics of commoning is not a mere technical management of resources (in space) but a struggle to perform common livable relations (in time). We argue that the multiple exposures which produce us are also the conditions of possibility for more just and equalitarian ‘re-commoning’ of democracies around the world.

The international research on the benefits of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) regimes for sustainable development has raised concerns about the vulnerability of said regimes to globalization, shortsighted government regulations, marginalization, and other global political economy threats. This paper addresses the question of whether and how social movements contribute to the organization and robustness of CBNRM in the advent of those threats. To accomplish this, we carry out a qualitative meta-analysis of 81 cases worldwide. Our evidence shows that one of the most important effects of movements on CBNRM is the promotion and defense of community use and management rights against certain government decisions or actions by global corporations. We also find that movements can generate positive effects beyond the reaction to specific threats. Those effects include the democratization of communities' collective choice processes, the reinvigoration of identity ties and local ecological knowledge, the promotion of economic development and autonomy, and the creation of nested user organizations. Exploring such potentially longer-term effects is a promising next step towards further connecting the social movement and CBNRM scholarships and better understanding the robustness of local management regimes in the context of global change.

No abstract

Hurricane Maria has had devastating impacts in Puerto Rico. Yet this catastrophe has not been felt equally by all. The vulnerability to impacts and ability to recover from hurricanes and other disasters are directly shaped by existing socioeconomic and racial inequalities. The situation post-Maria in Puerto Rico has been labeled a clear case of environmental injustice. This article documents the hurricane's nexus with environmental justice (EJ). It discusses EJ impacts related to toxic pollution, water, energy, and food, and connects these impacts intersect with multiple layers of pre-existing injustices. It then discusses how these impacts have been magnified by the national and federal government's inept and unjust responses, and by histories of unjust planning and colonial-neoliberal institutions. The article concludes with some positive outlooks of how the hurricane has also opened a window to ''rethink'' Puerto Rico and to self-organized initiatives for enacting a different, more just, and ecological country.

Political ecologists have developed scathing analyses of capitalism's tendency for enclosure and dispossession of the commons. In this context commons are analyzed as a force to resist neo-liberalism, a main site of conflict over dispossession, and a source of alternatives to capitalism. In this paper we elaborate a view of the commons as the material and symbolic terrain where performative re-articulation of common(s) senses can potentially enact counter-hegemonic socio-ecological configurations. Expressly drawing on the concepts of hegemon, "common-senses" (inspired by Antonio Gramsci) and "performativity" (developed by Judith Butler), we argue that counterhegemony is performed through everyday practices that rearticulate existing common senses about commons. Commoning is a set of processes/relations enacted to challenge capitalist hegemony and build more just/sustainable societies insofar as it transforms and rearranges common senses in/through praxis. The paper draws on the experience of an anti-mining movement of Casa Pueblo in Puerto Rico, which for the last 35+ years has been developing a project self-described as autogestion. The discussion pays special attention to Casa Pueblo's praxis and discourses to investigate how they rearticulate common senses with regard to nature, community and democracy, as well as their implications for counter-hegemonic politics.