This seminar is dedicated to the study of the "common(s)" through its socioeconomic, technical, political, and environmental dimensions.

Course details[edit | edit source]

  • Termː Spring 2024
  • Timeː Tuesdays 11:00-13:30pm (EST)
  • Location: Hesburgh Library, room 246
  • Office Hours: Thursdays 4:00-5:45pm (and by appointment) at Corbett Hall, 238

Instructor[edit | edit source]

  • LF Murillo, University of Notre Dame, Anthropology

Description[edit | edit source]

The concept of the "commons" has returned to the focus of socio-technical and environmental research, theorizing, and politics with recent debates on climate crisis and justice. From the late 1960s debates on environmental degradation and overpopulation to the present concerns with socio-technical change, economic degrowth, and global warming, the "commons" has returned as a key symbol for social analysis, political organizing, and collective resource management. Since then, various currents have claimed and reclaimed the concept under the guide of "communality," "conviviality," "common-pool resources," and the "common" as concrete alternatives to public and private modes of governance. In the past two decades, the concept has been central as well for the discussion of the "digital commons" with decentralized, community-based governance of online resources.

In this seminar, we will map out key approaches to the "commons" to examine socio-technical and socio-environmental alternatives to existing enclosures across a wide range of examples (including, but not limited to land, tools, forests, lakes, heirloom seeds, aquifers, fish stocks, software, hardware, data, and much more). Our weekly meetings are organized around class presentations, followed by the debate of key texts in the literature. We welcome advanced undergraduates and graduate students working on open technologies, environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability to join the seminar.

Course objectives[edit | edit source]

This seminar is driven by what we bring to the classroom. This means in practice and in theory (in praxis) that we will always make an effort to ground our discussion in our shared experiences. By the end of the course, you should be able to:

  1. Identify key approaches in the study of the common(s);
  2. Describe and apply key concepts and methodological approaches from the literature on the common(s);
  3. Examine socioeconomic, technical, political, and environmental aspects of the common(s) for your own research project.

Our seminar is organized in weekly modules with readings and extra materials (podcasts, documentaries, and web resources). For each week, we will have one or more presenters assigned to conduct the debate. Each presenter or group of presenters will prepare pros, cons, and questions about the assigned materials and facilitate the class debate. The main goal is to make the course work for you, not the other way around. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan once wrote (pace Buckminster Fuller), "there are no passengers on spaceship earth, we are all crew." The same applies to our seminar: everyone is expected to participate in the debate of our weekly topics.

You will find everything we need for this course in this wiki pageː there is no need to purchase books or supplementary materials.

Assignments[edit | edit source]

Final grades will be determined based on the following assignmentsː

  • Attendance and participation (20%): each seminar participant will bring questions about the readings for debate in class;
  • In-class presentations (20%): every week an assigned presenter will discuss pros, cons, and questions based on our weekly readings;
  • Midterm assignment (30%)ː you will identify and describe a controversy regarding a common(s) in your area of professional or research interest. You will use the references we discussed in class to prepare your midterm assignment. This description can be shortː about 8 pages double-spaced, serif font, 12pt. Make sure to describe the controversy and its importance to the study of the common(s);
  • Final assignment (30%): you will prepare a final essay that uses three or more concepts we examined in class to analyze the controversy you described in your midterm assignment. The goal is to help you start preparing a literature review or a piece of analysis that will serve your MA or PhD project.

The scale the instructor will use to assign the final grade is the followingː

minus unsigned plus
A 90 - 93 94 - 100 -
B 80 - 83 84 - 86 87 - 89
C 70 - 73 74 - 76 77 - 79
D - 65 - 69 -
F - 0 - 64 -

Academic Integrity[edit | edit source]

Before the rise of the intellectual property regime, ideas used to be thought of as candle flames: if we pass them on to each other, we do not extinguish but multiply them. That being said, what we call "Academic Integrity" encompasses not only our commitment to the exchange and debate of ideas but also the importance of acknowledging the work of those who came before us. Another way of thinking about "Academic Integrity" is to use the metaphor of the community well: as academics, we are constantly drawing from common sources of knowledge side-by-side with other people within and outside academia. We do not want the well to dry out or to be poisoned as we need it for our common nourishment. You should feel completely free to use the well, but never forget that it is a shared resource. If you take anything, you should consider return something in one form or the other, which means in practice that, if you were offered a position paper, dataset, software, or any other end product of human effort, you must, at least, recognize the work by citing the source. Here is a guide on how to format your citations. Here is the Honor Code of Notre Dame.

Accommodations & COVID-19 policy[edit | edit source]

Proper support and accommodation is not only a policy of the university, but a responsibility of the instructor and, to a great extent, of all of us in creating a positive and welcoming environment. Please communicate with the instructor if you have questions about disability services or if you would like to request accommodation for your needs. If you have or think you may have a disability do not hesitate to contact the Disability Services for a confidential discussion in the Sara Bea Center for Students with Disabilities; or, by phone at (574) 631-7157. Additional information about disability services and the process for requesting accommodations can be found here. The instruction will be available and ready to make all the necessary accommodations.

Regarding COVID-19ː we must take all the necessary precautions to prevent its spread. In our class, we will observe first the orientation of the provost office and, second, the guidelines of the Department of Anthropology. If you feel ill, please contact the university first and, then, the instructor. Please stop coming to class as soon as you start experiencing symptoms. Any justified absence will not impact your grade. You have to take care of yourself first, which is also, in this case, the best way to take care of others. Think of the common when making the judgementǃ

Modules[edit | edit source]

Week 0: Introduction[edit | edit source]

January 16

  • Presentation of the seminar program; introductions; brief presentation of ongoing research projects on the commons; discussion of class projects and potential collaborative work with guest presenters. For this class, you need to prepare a few paragraphs on your research and its relation to the "common(s)."

Week 1: Common(s) in question[edit | edit source]

January 23

Additional materials

Week 2: Commons as "tragedy"[edit | edit source]

Presenterː Matías

January 30

Additional materials

Week 3: Commons in precapitalist formations[edit | edit source]

Presenterː Insha

February 6

Additional materials

Week 4: Commons as a matter of collective governance[edit | edit source]

Presenterː Joshua

February 13

Additional references

Week 5: Global commons[edit | edit source]

Presenterː Lulu

February 20

  • World Conservation Strategy. 1980. "Global Commons." IUCN-UNEP-WWF.
  • Buck, Susan. 1998. The Global Commons. Washington DC: Island Press. (Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5)

Additional references

Week 6: Knowledge commons[edit | edit source]

Presenterː Insha

February 27

Additional references

Week 7: Commons in public domain[edit | edit source]

Presenterː Taylor

March 5

Additional references

MIDTERM PAPER DUE: March 9 by email to the instructor[edit | edit source]

SPRING BREAK: March 9 –  17[edit | edit source]

Enjoy! with the computer off... maybe? :0)[edit | edit source]

Week 8: Commons-based peer production[edit | edit source]

March 19

Additional references

Week 9: "Common" as a political principle[edit | edit source]

Presenterː Insha

March 26

Additional references

  • Negri, A. and Hardt, M. 2019. Assembly. Oxford, Oxford University Press. (Chapter 6).

Week 10: "Communality" as anticolonial alternative[edit | edit source]

April 2

Additional references

  • Documentaryː "Zapatista" (2013) by Big Noise Films

Week 11: "Commoning" as a political practice[edit | edit source]

Presenterː Taylor

April 9

Additional references

Week 12: Commons privatized and depleted[edit | edit source]

Presenter: Joshua

April 16

Additional references

  • Documentary "Thirsty," (2004) by PBS POV Deborah Kaufmann and Alan Snitov.

Week 13: Climate crisis as common challenge[edit | edit source]

April 23

Presenter: Lulu

Additional references

Week 14ː Common(s) as a project[edit | edit source]

April 30

In this meeting we will recap the literature on the common(s) and workshop the final papers.

Final paper to be sent by email to the instructor by May 10[edit | edit source]

Additional references[edit | edit source]

  • Aigrain, P., 2010. La réinvention des communs physiques et des biens publics sociaux à l'ère de l'information. Multitudes 41, 42–49.
  • Agrawal, A. 2007. “Forests, Governance, and Sustainability: Common Property Theory and Its Contributions.” International Journal of the Commons 1 (1).
  • Bauwens, M, V. Kostakis, and A. Pazaitis. 2019. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. University of Westminster Press.
  • Benkler, Y. (2004). Sharing Nicely: On Sharable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production. Yale Law Journal, 114, 273–358.
  • Bensaïd, D. 2007. Les dépossédés: Karl Marx, les voleurs de bois et le droit des pauvres. Paris: La Fabrique Éditions.
  • Berkes, F. 1996. "Social systems, ecological systems, and property rights." In: Rights to Nature, S. Hanna, C. Folke and K.-G. Maler, eds.
  • Boyle, J., 2010. The public domain: enclosing the commons of the mind. Yale University Press, New Haven.
  • De Angelis, M. 2017. Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism, London: Zed.
  • Euler, Johannes 2016. "Commons-Creating Society: On the Radical German Commons Discourse." Review of Radical Political Economics 48(1): 93-110.
  • Ghosh, R.A., 2005. CODE: collaborative ownership and digital economy. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
  • Hardt, M., Negri, A., 2011. Commonwealth. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass; London.
  • Hyde, L., 2012. Common as air: revolution, art, and ownership. Union Books, London.
  • Ilahiane, H., 1999. The Berber Agdal Institution: Indigenous Range Management in the Atlas Mountains. Ethnology 38, 21–45.
  • Latouche, S. 2009. Farewell to Growth. Cambridge: Polity press.
  • Latour, B. 2020. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. London: Polity.
  • Livingstone, J. 2019. Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Lovelock, J. 2000. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • McCay, B.J., and J. Acheson (eds) 1987. The Question of the Commons. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
  • Meadows, DH, Meadows, DL, Randers, J, et al. 1972. The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome. New York: Universe Books.
  • Midnight Notes Collective. 1990. The New Enclosures. Boston: Midnight Notes. Naturenet, Common land.
  • Netting, R. 1981. Balancing on an Alp: Ecological Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Village. Cambridge: Cambriddge University Press.
  • Ostrom, V. and Ostrom, E., [1977] 2019. "Public goods and public choices." In: Alternatives for delivering public services (pp. 7-49). London: Routledge.
  • Ostrom, E., R. Gardner, and J. Walker. 1994. Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  • Ostrom, E. 2010. "Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems". American Economic Review, 100(3).
  • Rose, Carol. 1994. Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership. Boulder: Westview Press.
  • Shiva, V., Bandyopadhyay, J., 1986. "The Evolution, Structure, and Impact of the Chipko Movement." Mountain Research and Development 6, 133–142.
  • Standing, G., 2019. Plunder of the Commons. London, Pelican books.
FA info icon.svg Angle down icon.svg Page data
Authors LF Murillo
License CC-BY-SA-4.0
Organizations University of Notre Dame
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 1 pages link here
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Created January 8, 2024 by LF Murillo
Modified April 19, 2024 by 68.235.44.20
Cite as LF Murillo (2024). "Commons seminar 2024". Appropedia. Retrieved April 26, 2024.
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