Reflections from the European Deep Dive on the Commons
At a small workshop outside of Paris, France, twenty-two of us – mostly Europeans except for two of us – got together to discuss the economics of the commons from an on-the-ground perspective. We wanted to identify promising avenues for future research, writing and political action. This was the third of a series of “Deep Dive” workshops that the Commons Strategies Group, working in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, held in the fall of 2012. The two other ones were held in Bangkok for Asian commoners, and in Mexico City for Latin American commoners.
This gathering, in Pontoise, France, was exciting because the participants were some of the world’s most serious, creative and internationally minded commons activists. The dialogues took place at La Bergerie, a lovely retreat center run by the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation, which graciously hosted the event. Our talks probed the conflicts and contradictions in commons thinking, and tried to get each of us to look beyond our own issue-silos and subcultures. I recently completed a 23-page interpretive summary of the workshop, which can be downloaded here.
The report examines such issues as how shall we conceptualize the commons; whether commons have intrinsic purpose or not; the tensions between liberal constitutionalism and the commons; and future steps in building a commons paradigm. Below, I excerpt a few portions of the report that strike me as especially interesting.
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