The false Tragedy of the Commons. Again.

An environmental implication of new perspectives on prehistory.

Our understanding of the past needs updating.

We did not go from simple anarchy to civilized hierarchy, where simple hunter-gatherers were either brutish (Hobbes) or egalitarian (Rousseau). Instead there was a shift from diverse seasonal social structures to the innovation of coercive authority. (Wengrow & Graeber)

This was reflected in human-environmental relationships. A shift from mixed faunal and floral strategies in which fauna and flora still maintained their freedom for part of the year if not all of it, to more homogeneous and intensive faunal and floral strategies in which fauna and flora were enclosed as domesticated.

Updating our understanding of the past changes how we understand the present.

Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons is built on the premise of Private or State property being needed as part of a regime of coercive authority, to stop the environment from being degraded under anarchy. Having updated the prehistoric premise, combined with Elinor Ostrom’s work on what ‘Common’ resources actually involve, we find heterarchical social structure more conducive to better environmental management than property regimes embedded in coercive authority.

Our human-environmental relationships are reflected in the ‘narrative’ stories we have learnt that help make sense of our world in the past according the norms of the present.

I live in a market-state whose governance regime is premised on the need for Private and State property otherwise anarchy and environmental degradation will take place. Hence the stories we tell reflect that.

Section from an undergraduate lecture I gave last year.