"Commons Thinking: the ability to envisage and enable a viable futur
through connected action,"
Justin Kenrick, University of Glasgow, and PEDAL Portobello Transition Town
"What is Commons Thinking?
The Commons are life-sustaining or life-enhancing resources and services
that have not
been divided up and assigned a monetary value in the global economy but
instead are shared
freely among members of a community or group. They range from the air we
breath, pollination
provided by bees, land that provides food for gathering and sharing rather
than selling,
to words of comfort given freely and willingly rather than at an hourly
rate.
Pitted against the Commons, however, are the forces of Enclosure, which
attempt
to appropriate, own and sell resources that were once freely accessible,
often breaking
up communities and displacing people in the process. Commons regimes are
communities
which resist these forces and meet people's needs primarily or
significantly through the
Commons rather than through monetary exchange, existing both in the forests
of the Amazon
and in the last remaining tight-knit local communities in cities around the
world...
This chapter aims to describe one important skill for rebuilding political,
community and
personal resilience."