Abstract
The theme of the commons has long been discussed, with a variety of meanings. The chapter addresses basic questions and approaches from an environmental sociology perspective. It first looks at the origins of the debate, marked by Hardin’s seminal article and Ostrom’s path-breaking research. Second, it deals with discussions associated with the global order and its crisis, where the notion of ‘commoning’ gains relevance. Third, it considers the new commons, as directly or indirectly related with knowledge. Fourth, it reviews the question of old and new enclosures and deals with legal scholars’ debate over the commons. The last section suggests that the human-nonhuman connection is crucial to the commons, yet it has to be considered in the context of current processes of value extraction.
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- 1.
The commons, on the other hand, have never taken real momentum in environmental sociology, as testified by their usual scant treatment in handbooks and textbooks. Why? Elsewhere (Pellizzoni 2016) I have argued that, even if environmental sociology was born to remedy the disregard of mainstream sociological thinking for the interaction of human societies with the material world, the discipline has for long been embroiled with the realism /constructionism diatribe, either relying too uncritically on scientific objectivism, or focusing too much on environmental discourses and claims. As a result, the constitutive nexus between human communities and biophysical materiality has been neglected.
- 2.
The expression ‘comedy of the commons’ has possibly been first used by Carol Rose (1986), with reference to situations in which the usefulness of a resource increases with the increase in the number of its users. Typical examples are roads and waterways. Another classic example is information (see below).
- 3.
In the literature, situations in which common and private rights interact are called ‘semicommons’. For example, in the medieval open-field system typical of north-western Europe, land, divided in scattered portions, was privately owned and cultivated, while used collectively for grazing (Smith 2000).
- 4.
For Ostrom this is a viable solution for global commons such as the oceans , the atmosphere or biodiversity (Dietz et al. 2003).
- 5.
‘Secundum ius naturale omnia sunt communia’ (Summa Theologiae, II-II. 66, 2).
- 6.
Land grab has intensified after the food prices crisis of 2007–2008, that gave salience to the question of food security, overlapping with issues of energy supply and financial instability (Borras et al. 2011).
- 7.
These include provisioning (e.g. food, water, energy , genetic and medicinal resources); regulating (e.g. carbon sequestration and climate regulation, waste decomposition, pest and disease control); supporting (e.g. nutrient cycles, soil formation, crop pollination); and cultural services (e.g. spiritual and recreational benefits). See Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). On ecosystem services see also Van Koppen and Bush, this book.
- 8.
Examples range from the FlavrSavr tomato (the first commercialized transgenic plant, in 1994), modified in order to make it more resistant to rotting, to the AquAdvantage salmon, genetically modified to grow quicker.
- 9.
The blurring of the social and the natural is implied also in the burgeoning notion of Anthropocene . See Lidskog and Waterton, this book.
- 10.
According to Marx , capitalism uses money not as an intermediary to the circulation of commodities (C-M-C), but the other way round: commodities circulate to enable the increase in the amount of money (M-C-M’). The goal is not the enjoyment of goods but the expansion of profit. This, however, shows that capital cannot expand itself directly (M-M’). The explosion of speculative ‘bubbles’ indicates the fictitiousness of any such expansion. Yet, if materiality is the source of wealth, the assumption that value production is kick-started by the ‘gratuitousness’ of nature’s goods – an assumption shared by liberal and Marxist economics and reproduced in the idea of ecosystem services – is brought into question by resource depletion and environmental threats.
- 11.
The bill can be found at: https://www.senato.it/service/PDF/PDFServer/DF/217244.pdf [accessed 19 January 2017].
- 12.
An example of such fantasies is the Ecomodernist Manifesto published by a neoliberal think tank, the Breakthrough Institute. See http://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto [accessed 30 March 2016].
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Pellizzoni, L. (2018). Joining People with Things. The Commons and Environmental Sociology. In: Boström, M., Davidson, D. (eds) Environment and Society. Palgrave Studies in Environmental Sociology and Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76415-3_13
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