Feminist political ecologies of the commons and commoning (Editorial to the Special Feature)

Abstract

Our sincere thanks to Frank van Laerhoven for his support to get this special issue published and help throughout the editorial process. We are indebted to all the contributing authors for embarking on this exciting journey with us and to the reviewers who contributed on the way with critical and constructive comments.

Rethinking Scale in the Commons by Unsettling Old Assumptions and Asking New Scale Questions

“…These dynamics were excluded by models of the multi-level political economy that labeled these activities as 'non-economic' (Cameron & Gibson-Graham, 2003). Blind spots on gender relations and gendered spaces are also prevalent in commons scholarship (Clement et al, 2019), and we argue that this oversight is, in part, similarly rooted in assumptions about scale that influence perceptions of which levels of organization matter and what they contain (an assertion we explore further in the coming section).…”

“…Scale as local and multi-level Ostrom's research on the commons has "in no small measure" transformed the field of environmental governance studies (Clement, Harcourt, Joshi, & Sato, 2019). Although the originality and merit of her work in Governing the Commons would not receive full recognition until after winning the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009, almost 20 years after its publication, her work stood in stark contrast to conventions in economics and political science at the time both in terms of her unconventional theories of collective action and her identity as a woman (Clement et al, 2019). Amidst these accolades we argue that her unconventional approach to scale is often overlooked.…”

Political ecology 1: From margins to center

“…Production of socio-natural differences and subjectivities in FPE includes attention to post-humanism, new materialism, hybridity, and more-than-human ecologies. This involves renewed interest in commons and commoning to investigate collective action and transformational politics as well as the questioning of what constitutes 'wellbeing' or the 'good life' (Clement et al, 2019;Elmhirst, 2015). Human-animal relations and speciesism bring forth greater conversations around rethinking nature and more-thanhuman natures (Collard et al, 2015).…”

“A plantation can be a commons”: Re‐Earthing Sapelo Island through Abolition Ecology

“…A case in point would be a brief examination of Ostrom’s (1990) hugely influential work on the commons and to consider the eight fundamental principles she argued for managing a commons through game theory that has been central to much political ecological thinking (see Clement et al. 2019; Forsyth and Johnson 2014). She suggested it was necessary to: define clear group boundaries; match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions; ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules; make sure the rule‐making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities; develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behaviour; use graduated sanctions for rule violators; provide accessible, low‐cost means for dispute resolution; and build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.…”