The Meaning, Prospects, and Future of the Commons: Revisiting the Legacies of Elinor Ostrom and Henry George

Abstract

Elinor Ostrom's work on the commons has convinced mainstream economists that “collective” governance of the commons can overcome the “tragedy of the commons” and “free‐rider problems.” Yet, a more systematic appraisal of Ostrom's work shows that it contains no concept of justice. Her idea of rights is extremely limited, often tied to the notion of joint, rather than equal, rights. Indeed, for Ostrom, the notion of the commons is socially separatist and not ecological. Ostrom uses historical examples, but without analyzing how common possession historically evolved and was undermined by external forces. Hence her proposed “collective action” to save the commons actually accelerates the real threats to the commons. A strikingly different and more holistic approach to the commons is offered by Henry George, who posits the commons as the most important path to social, economic, and ecological sustainability. Unlike Ostrom, who studied the commons “scientifically” to show that some goods are neither private, public, nor club‐based, George studied the commons to understand and remove injustice at the roots. His approach is more critical and certainly more relevant today in showing that another world is possible. However, George's work too, requires significant changes to update its framing of the meanings, prospects, and future of the commons.

Semi-private Landownership and Capitalist Agriculture in Contemporary China

“…On the other hand, George proposed that the state should levy a sufficiently high land tax that should increase in tandem with the annual increase in land prices in order to counter unproductive and unjust rentierism. This sort of tax policy can effectively suppress the speculative tendencies and also enable the state to finance development and welfare programs (George [1879] 2006, 1891, [1883] 1981, Obeng-Odoom 2016. in contemporary Chinese agriculture, this paper advances three main arguments regarding the advantages of this system.…”

Towards sustainable property? Exploring the entanglement of ownership and sustainability

“…Thus, scarce but freely available resources will not be used efficiently and sustainably; they are instead at a constant risk of being depleted. That such a tragedy is, in fact, far from being inevitable, has been shown by a rich research program in the tradition of Ostrom and others (Ostrom and Hess, 2007;Obeng-Odoom, 2016;Lacroix and Richards, 2015). This holds at least for small and medium sized common-pool resources that can be governed by local communities.…”

Discussing Alternativeness to Incorporate Contradictions. Framing Research on Architects’ Collectives and Groups

“…The use of a good becomes central, referring to a post-Marxist critique of political economy which has cyclically emerged in urban and cultural studies (Rankin, 2012). Related to concepts of use value and exchange value, commoning represents a way to replace rivalry of consumption with subtractabilitiy of use (Obeng-Odoom, 2016;Ostrom, 2010). According to Menu (2018), architects' groups and collectives (Menu mentions Assemble, Ateliermob, Georges, Practice Architecture, REAL, Raumlabor, StudioBASAR, Studio Miessen, We Made That) focus on the experimental use of shared spaces and on collective necessities and declare the necessity to act for non-market spaces, for shared civic spaces.…”