    4 Dec 2012 @ 15:54, by Heiner Benking
The Commons as a New/Old Paradigm of Governance, Policy and Political Action
see: “The Wealth of the Commons – A World Beyond Market and State” www.wealthofthecommons.org as published in German as: "Commons. Für eine neue Politik jenseits von Markt und Staat" [link]
Bosch Public Policy Lecture at the American Academy [link]
Presented was not ony the WEALTH OF THE COMMONS form the Commons Strategies Group as David Bollier and the moderator Sike Helfrich are founding members of the Commons Strategies Group. (see also my report beow on the initial meeting in the Boell Foundation in 2009 and the p2p link: [link]
You can also watch the lecture as a live stream: [link] - [link]
It is already some time ago when Lawrence Lessig was in town and I visted him at the Academy. For more about CC see: [link]
Now the new fellow David A. Bollier, co-founder of Commons Strategies Group and
co-editor of the English version of the Commons Anthology
“The Wealth of the Commons – A World Beyond Market and State” will give his lecture. I am eager to report as it not only nicely relates to our GLOBAL COMMONS session a the Global Soil Week last week and the various entries I have done below relating to Elinor Ostrom and her work: [link] and here the Eulogy: [link] maybe also see: [link]
In the Academy I asked my typical "commons" questions:
How to make the commeon concrete, real, embodied, tangible, ... quoting T.S. Eliot. The response was positive, considering the need to reach the people and not to create new "plastic words", but have common commons. Silke even came back to it in her summary, thanks and farewell.
I asked: Why not refer to the work of Elinor Ostrom more to the detail of her 30 years work. I cited the summary of her work we did a month before she receivced the Nobe Prize in Oslo in 2009. I read that her work is full of mult- perspective, positional, centric, level, mix meta, nested, common and diverse regimes, pools, tools, ... see slides form Nobel Peace laureats meting in Berlin (below). I quoted and asked for a concrete embodiment, to make it real, and refered that we have here spacial metaphors, so why not map them out?
The answer from the podium was positive. Yes we need a new narrative !
But the question is is a story, a metaphor or what? enough? Havent we got enough stories in many cultures already? Which one to take and translate to modern times and how to bring the different stories into a concerted "grand story".
As covered earlier, I can see ways to bring images, symbols, metaphors, stories,... into shared or common frames of references. You can think about a map or model which can be explained as a supersign and jointly explored and negotiated. See links some links: Cognitive Panorama - Meta-Paradigm - Supersigns and Superstructures Such an artificial extensional themescape - think about the sandbox when you were a child - is meant for rough general orientration, for creating shared frames, not all details with all aspects included !
Some food for thought - more for later:
I could have references to Show or Schau?http://www.benking.de/show-schau.html Spatial or Spacial?,[link] but for such "grappling and groping" to find new terms and understanding there is in the typical Q&As after lectures no time, deliberations and explorations are restricted to a few people over the typical Brezel and Wine. Typical in-groups meet and the law of requite variety is ignored. See more on "group-think" here: [link]
What a pitty as these people might be ready for next step. The step to explore shared intangibe commons, and meanings jointly expored and negotiated. I gave David Bollier Books from the 21stCenturyAgora.org https://sites.google.com/site/21stcenturyagora/ and I hope he finds time to read. I could have also shown him the Conceptual Superstructure piece requesting: establish common frames of reference to better gauge the human prospectus, develop a common understanding .... in a keynote prepared after Rio 92 as invited by Noel Brown: [link]
Here the official announcment/description by the organizers:
There is increasing international interest in the current discourse of "the Commons" as a paradigm of governance shared by an entire community. The appeal of the Commons stems both from an insightful critique of neoliberal economics and policy, as well as from its practical systems for managing value. Eschewing homo economicus, the standard economic model of human behavior, the Commons draws upon understandings of human action that also encompass our capacities for cooperation and collaboration. The result has been a recent explosion of innovative commons-based projects such as free and open source software, the re-localization of food, collaborative consumption, open-access publishing, and alternative currencies. This lecture concentrates on the global Commons movement as a federated, transnational movement of movements to overcome the limitations of centralized institutions and markets in favor of commons-based models. David A. Bollier aims to produce a strategy memorandum as a foundation for further discussion, planning, and action in the commons world.
I still did not find time to get/check the summary of our Global Commons workshop a the Global Soil Week from last week **** DO LATER - meanwhile check this PDF: [link] ... In our Global Commons work section at the Soil Week (see last week) Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend spoke up about the IUCN Protected Areas Matrix. A matrix of management categories and governance types: (Dudley 2008, Guidelines for applying protected area management.) I was suddenly very alert as I had not heard of this IUCN/CEEPS working group and ICCA Consortium (also with GEF, SGP, GTZ on deck). So check it out !! CENESTA and ICCAforum and this in D. Governance by indigenous people & local communities matches perfectly with work of AIO see also the conversation Christakis Harris (PDF page 4-5).
See below the slides: (no3) about Elinor Ostrom's 30 years work as outlined a month before she got the Nobel Prize in 2009: [link]
 
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