Commons and commoning

Recently, I have focused on the relationship of multi-stranded commoning – creating economic and political self-governance through open engagement among users of a shared resource(s) as well as with external actors and institutions—to sustainability outcomes and transformations.

This research examines how specific actors, groups of actors, and their commoning and social mobilization actions relate to different outcomes for the sustainability and endurance of commons, including (1) how commons institutions work to benefit different stakeholders, (2) the allocation of benefits from shared resources, and (3) the longevity of the commons. Work relating processes of commoning to the nature of resulting commons is needed to historize commons institutions and their outcomes, and to develop a better understanding of external influences in commoning. Such influences often include not only decentralization and co-management policies but also social movement leaders and activists, reformist bureaucrats, and investors in local capital enterprise.

I have developed this work in collaboration with Arun Agrawal thorugh several projects including 1) writing an invited perspective for PNAS on the promise of integrating commons and commoning scholarships for sustainability transformations; 2) guest editing a special issue in the International Journal of the Commons; 3) guest editing a special issue in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation on commoning, subject formation and transformative change and 4) two empirical manuscripts that analyze historical commoning processes and institutions in post-revolutionary Mexican and colonial Indian forests and fisheries (recently published in Journal of Rural Studies and under review at Ecological Economics, respectively).

More recent empirical work in the Yucatan Peninsula in collaboration with Indigenous activist and scholar Bia’ni Madsa’ Juarez Lopez examines local institution-building for Mayan territorial defense in the context of fast-moving enclosures by state and private actors. This project uses Juarez’s organization, Communities for Autonomy, as a proof of concept to unpack the characteristics, approaches and actions that enable intermediate actors to steward successful local (re)commoning  of Indigenous territory for sustainability and environmental defense.

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