The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script. B. L. Ullman

The tragedy of the commons and the comedy of community: The commons in history

“…Whether individual herders did or did not act solely in accord with economic selfinterest, either because their experience of communal solidarity lent equal or greater weight to collective interests or because self-interest and collective interest were experienced as identical, is moot. This is the essence of sense of community (Boulding, 1977;Levine, 1983). According to McMillan and Chavis (this issue), reinforcement of needs is central to sense of community.…”

“…People sharing commons come to merge personal and collective interests. This is central to the psychological sense of community (Boulding, 1977;Levine, 1983; McMillan & Chavis, this issue).…”

“…in laboratory-based research conducted to simulate commons shared among small groups of subjects, most of the experimental factors that have enhanced groups' ability to sustain the commons have been factors that also encourage the development of sense of community: smaller group sizes; communication; nonanonymity; the emergence of group norms, sanctions, and rituals; preexisting friendship; emotional appeals to group morality; shared lunch breaks; and pooling or equalization of group gains (see Levine, 1983, for a summary of this research in terms of sense of community).…”

“…The villager had little alternative, in such surroundings, but to subordinate himself and his desires to those of the village group. And given the nucleus of households with families in enforced close association, given also the 'Commons theory can be extended to perceptions of the environment (e.g., Illich, 1983;Roberts, 1979) and probably applies to interpersonal commons of good will, toleration, and so on (e.g., Levine, 1983;Trivers, 1971). system of communal apportionment of the shares in the arable, the communal decisions about times and places of cultivation, the existence of the all-important commons .…”