Commoning Social Life From our atmosphere to the open ocean, from our languages to the rule of law, use without ownership underpins human experience. It is critical to our continued survival beyond the Anthropocene. These resources and properties are ineluctably shared because they are not wholly appropriable; they are used as part of a commons because they cannot be entirely exchanged. They are held in common because they cannot be completely enclosed. This essay is concerned with the use of and care for the commons as an object of inquiry, a practice of all social life, and as the operative condition of intellectual production.The essay continues the ‘Foundational Essays’ series developed by the Institute for Culture and Society on basic concepts and approaches in social enquiry and practice. In the Institute, we treat ‘commoning’ as a key concept of our collective project.
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Post-industrial Pathways for a 'Single Industry Resource Town': a Community Economies Approach Although communities are constantly undergoing processes of becoming the Powell River community on Canada’s Pacific coast is in a unique transitional moment when it comes to possibilities for post-industrial economic pathways. With the downsizing of its main industry and employer over the past 3 decades, community members are currently exploring a diverse range of economic possibilities that extend beyond strictly capitalist options. Reading for economic diversity can help us to identify and pursue existing and potential economic pathways that enhance wellbeing for human and nonhuman community members. Knowing that outcomes of such an emergent process cannot be taken for granted, tracking ideas and practices as we have done here is critical for this kind of collaborative research, as it helps to enhance reflexivity and inform decisions. |
Value in Postcapitalist Futures and More-than-capitalist Pasts A contribution to a Book Symposium on George Henderson’s Value in Marx: The Persistence of Value in a More-Than-Capitalist World. |
Thinking Around What a Radical Geography 'Must Be' Simon Springer’s essay on ‘Why a radical geography must be anarchist’ offers both a useful overview of anarchism’s continued relevance to geography today and a lively provocation to relocate the political center of radical geography. In this response I think along with Springer about strategies for everyday revolution and point to many contributions that already dislodged 'traditional Marxian analysis" from the moral, methodological and political high ground within radical geography. I explore some of the ways that insurrectionary geographies are being practised and are informed by an eclectic mix of political and theoretical traditions, including anarchism as well as some versions of marxism, but, more importantly are researching beyond the limits of both these political theories born of 19th century conditions and concerns. |
Cultivating Hybrid Collectives: Research Methods for Enacting Community Food Economies in Australia and the Philippines In this paper authors Cameron, Gibson and Hill discuss two research projects in Australia and the Philippines in which we have cultivated hybrid collectives of academic researchers, lay researchers and various nonhuman others with the intention of enacting community food economies. We feature three critical interactions in the 'hybrid collective research method': gathering, reassembling and translating. We argue that in a climate changing world, the hybrid collective method fosters opportunities for a range of human and nonhuman participants to act in concert to build community food economies. |
Thinking with Marx For a Feminist Postcapitalist Politics The article discusses the theoretical openings accorded by the recognition of economic difference and contingency within the Marxist tradition, exploring their potential contributions towards imagining and enacting a postcapitalist politics of economic transformation and experimentation. |
Different Merry-Go-Rounds: Families, Communities and the 7-Day Roster A booklet outlining some of the major impacts of the 7-day work roster on families and communities from the perspective of women in four coal-mining communities in Central Queensland, Australia. |
The Nitty Gritty of Creating Alternative Economies Amidst widespread concern about the economy, this paper explores how academic researchers can contribute to the work underway to create environmentally orientated and socially just economies. We offer the diverse economies framework as a technique with which to cultivate ethical economies. |
Rethinking the dynamics of rural transformation: performing different development pathways in a Philippine municipality This paper draws on ecological ideas to rethink the dynamics of rural economic transformation in the Philippines. |
Building Community-Based Social Enterprises in the Philippines Community-based social enterprises offer a new strategy for people-centred local economic development in the majority 'developing' world. In this chapter we recount the stories of four social enterprise experiments that have arisen over the last five years from partnerships between communities, NGOs and municipal governments in the Philippines, and university based researchers from Australia. |
ABCD Meets DEF: Using Asset-Based Community Development to Build Economic Diversity This paper reframes existing economic diversity as a community asset that can be built on for community and economic development. The paper outlines strategies for doing this, and draws on examples from the Philippines and Australia. |
Openings in the Body of ‘Capitalism’: Trust Funds, ‘Marginal’ Places, and Diverse Economic Possibilities Diverse economic possibilities in Kiribati. |
Representing Marginalisation:Finding New Avenues for Economic and Social Intervention This paper describes the limiting ways in which people in marginalised areas are portrayed in policy and research, and introduces a different way of representing marginalised groups and the more enabling economic and social policies that result. |
Alternative Pathways to Community and Economic Development: The Latrobe Valley Community Partnering Project Based on the Latrobe Valley Community Partnering Project, this paper introduces new ways of understanding disadvantaged areas, the economy, community and the research process in order to open up new ways of addressing social and economic issues. |
Participatory Action Research in a Poststructuralist Vein This paper introduces a poststructuralist influenced participatory action research project seeking to develop new pathways for economic and community development in the context of a declining region. |
Building Community Economies in Marginalised Areas This chapter elaborates an economic and social policy responses to build on the skills and ideas of marginalised groups. |
Women and Economic Activism in the Asia Pacific Region How women's activism in the Philippines, China and Papua New Guinea is helping build and strengthen community economies. |
Transforming Communities: Towards a Research Agenda A review of Australian research and policy interventions aimed at communities and regions from the perspective of the Community Economies Project. |
Community Economies: Economic Politics Outside the Binary Frame Script of a presentation about the contradictory politics of "community" and how this website might help to redefine mainstream understandings of both community and economy. |
Negotiating Restructuring: A Study of Regional Communities Experiencing Rapid Social and Economic Change How two communities in regional Victoria, Australia are beginning to rethink their relationship to processes of economic restructuring. |
The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy In the mid-1990s, at the height of discussion about the inevitability of capitalist globalization, J. K. Gibson-Graham presented a groundbreaking argument for envisioning alternative economies. This new edition includes an introduction in which the authors address critical responses to The End of Capitalism and outline the economic research and activism they have been engaged in since the book was first published.
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