How to maintain communities?

A collective thought by Archipelago

This article is a result of interactions on Archipelago, an online community that engaged 18 participants from different parts of the world, all experts on community building, to share and learn during one month. As part of the landing of all knowledge created, the group wrote three articles about 1) how to create communities; 2) how to maintain communities; 3) how to increase the impact of communities. The idea is to organize content and references, help the group to expand the work of every participant and also inspire others. This is the article on the topic “How to maintain communities”.

This article addresses the question posed to one of the groups of Archipelago — which is: how to maintain communities. The question came from points raised during one meeting of Archipelago, on different angles of communities, listed below. They give us an idea on how to understand the way people interact in existing communities and what drives communities forward.

1. How to create trust in a community?
2. How to balance between giving and receiving in a community?
3. How to install values to create a behavior to make us collaborate/work together?
4. How to align people together who have different values and different agendas, which cause friction in the community?
5. What are the essential ingredients in a community which will drive action and positive impact?

Before thinking about the questions, it is important to give some context on two different frameworks that called the group’s attention during the discussions. Both talk about different subjects than community building but are extremely relevant to understand communities nowadays. Especially because communities today are more self-organized than never as we embarked on a journey from tribal communities to religion, nation-states and corporations/business based communities.

//Knowledge commons, a framework by Ellinor Ostrom

The commons can be cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society. can be also defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.

The commons is not so much a fixed, universal thing as a general concept describing durable, dynamic sets of social relationships for managing resources — all sorts of resources: digital, urban, natural, indigenous, rural, cultural, scientific, to use some crude categories.

Elinor Ostrom was an American political scientist who devoted much of her life to studying cooperative management and organization. Her most important work is undoubtedly Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, published in 1990.

What Ostrom proposes is self-government of the commons through binding commitments between those who participate in using the resource. Insofar as individuals trust a community and its management mechanisms, they will be willing to abide by the community’s rules, to help uphold them and to monitor compliance to keep the resource safe and sustainable for collective welfare. “What we have ignored is what citizens can do and the importance of real involvement of the people involved,” Ostrom says.

This idea completes the definition of the commons as the coupling of community and resource in a conscious relationship. What emerges from that system is self-government, community, and collective awareness. The commons conjure up a holistic and ecological vision of the world, based on relations of reciprocity, cooperation, and community.

The term commoning suggests that commons is really more of a verb than a noun. It is a set of ongoing practices, not an inert physical resource. There are no commons without commoning. This helps explain why the commons is different from a “public good”; the commons is not just an economistic category floating in the air without actual people. There are no commons without commoners.

One of the most ancient recorded commons is that of the village of Torbel, in the Swiss Alps, which has successfully managed the communities’ property of forests and grazing lands for centuries, maintaining sustainable resources. The first written rules can be traced back to the thirteenth century. On February 1, 1483, the villagers of Torbel created an association to regulate the communal exploitation of the wood from their forests and the use of their high Alpine grazing meadows. In 1517, they set forth grazing rules that are still in force. They established that the villagers can put their cattle out to pasture in the mountain during the summer, but may not send more cows than they can feed in the winter. The cows are sent up to the highest Alpine lands all at the same time and immediately counted since each household is allocated cheese in proportion to the cows it owns.

Ellinor Ostrom 8 Principles for Managing a Commons

David Bollier perspective on Ostrom’s * design principles provides a useful template for the following points of reference.

1 — The limits of the resource are clearly defined.

As a commoner and member of the community, everybody understands for which resources they need to care for and with whom they share this responsibility. Commons resources are those that the community creates together, that they maintain as gifts of nature or whose use has been guaranteed to everyone.

2 — The rules governing the use of collective assets are well adjusted to local needs and conditions

The community uses the commons resources that they create, care for and maintain. They use the means (time, space, technology, and the quantity of a resource) that are available in a given context. As commoners, they are satisfied that there is a fair relationship between their contributions and the benefits they receive.

3 — The majority of the people affected by these rules can participate in modifying them.

The community can enter into, or modify their own rules and commitments, and every commoner can participate in this process. The commitments serve to create, maintain, and preserve the commons to satisfy the co needs.

4 — The community members’ right to design their own rules is respected by external authorities.

The community monitors the respect of these commitments themselves and sometimes they mandate others whom they trust to help reach this goal. They continually reassess whether their commitments still serve their purpose.

5 — There is a surveillance system for the members’ behavior; community members agree to perform this monitoring.

They work out appropriate rules for dealing with violations of their commitments. They determine whether and what kinds of sanctions shall be used, depending on the context and severity of a violation.

6 — Conflict resolution systems must be clear, simple, accepted by all, and not subject to appeal.

Every commoner can make use of a space and means for conflict resolution. The community seeks to resolve conflicts among them in an easily accessible and straightforward way.

7 — The communities’ right to create and apply the resource management rules is respected by the state authorities.

The community regulate our own affairs, and external authorities respect that.

8 — The organization of great communal assets is performed through multiple levels of organizations integrated with each other, which are responsible for supervision, conflict resolution, application of decisions, and regulation.

They realize that every commons is part of a larger whole. Therefore, different institutions working at different scales are needed to coordinate stewardship and to cooperate with each other.

//Regenerative economy, a framework by John Fullerton

John Fullerton, a former executive of Wall Street, one day left the bank he had been working for and started a journey to understand how to transform the economic system towards a more sustainable approach. Some years later he founded Capital Institute to bring a regenerative approach to capital. The website states the following:

Since its founding, Capital Institute and its collaborative network have been on a journey in search of a path that leads beyond today’s unsustainable economic system and the finance-dominated ideology that drives it toward an economy that operates in service to human communities without undermining the health of our biosphere and all life that depends on it.

Along the way, we discovered a new way of thinking about economics — an approach aligned with the latest understanding of how the universe and its living systems actually work. We call this approach Regenerative Economics, defined as the application of nature’s laws and patterns of systemic health, self-organization, and self-renewal to the vitality of socio-economic systems.

Fullerton and collaborators designed 8 Principles of a Regenerative Economy that we understand as relevant for knowledge-based communities.

1. In Right Relationship: Humanity is an integral part of an interconnected web of life in which there is no real separation between “us” and “it.” The scale of the human economy matters in relation to the biosphere in which it is embedded. What is more, we are all connected to one another and to all locales of our global civilization. Damage to any part of that web ripples back to harm every other part as well.
2. Views Wealth Holistically: True wealth is not merely money in the bank. It must be defined and managed in terms of the well-being of the whole, achieved through the harmonization of multiple kinds of wealth or capital, including social, cultural, living, and experiential. It must also be defined by a broadly shared prosperity across all of these varied forms of capital. The whole is only as strong as the weakest link.
3. Innovative, Adaptive, Responsive: In a world in which change is both ever-present and accelerating, the qualities of innovation and adaptability are critical to health. It is this idea that Charles Darwin intended to convey in this often-misconstrued statement attributed to him: “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals.” What Darwin actually meant is that: the most “fit” is the one that fits best i.e., the one that is most adaptable to a changing environment.
4. Empowered Participation: In an interdependent system, fitness comes from contributing in some way to the health of the whole. The quality of empowered participation means that all parts must be “in relationship” with the larger whole in ways that not only empower them to negotiate for their own needs but also enable them to add their unique contribution towards the health and well- being of the larger wholes in which they are embedded.
5. Honors Community and Place: Each human community consists of a mosaic of peoples, traditions, beliefs, and institutions uniquely shaped by long-term pressures of geography, human history, culture, local environment, and changing human needs. Honoring this fact, a Regenerative Economy nurtures healthy and resilient communities and regions, each one uniquely informed by the essence of its individual history and place.
6. Edge Effect Abundance: Creativity and abundance flourish synergistically at the “edges” of systems, where the bonds holding the dominant pattern in place are weakest. For example, there is an abundance of interdependent life in salt marshes where a river meets the ocean. At those edges, the opportunities for innovation and cross-fertilization are the greatest. Working collaboratively across edges — with ongoing learning and development sourced from the diversity that exists there — is transformative for both the communities where the exchanges are happening and for the individuals involved
7. Robust Circulatory Flow: Just as human health depends on the robust circulation of oxygen, nutrients, etc., so too does economic health depend on robust circulatory flows of money, information, resources, and goods and services to support exchange, flush toxins, and nourish every cell at every level of our human networks. The circulation of money and information and the efficient use and reuse of materials are particularly critical to individuals, businesses, and economies reaching their regenerative potential.
8. Seeks Balance: Being in balance is more than just a nice way to be; it is actually essential to systemic health. Like a unicycle rider, regenerative systems are always engaged in this delicate dance in search of balance. Achieving it requires that they harmonize multiple variables instead of optimizing single ones. A Regenerative Economy seeks to balance: efficiency and resilience; collaboration and competition; diversity and coherence; and small, medium, and large organizations and needs. The resulting theory shows us how to build a vibrant, long-lived, regenerative economy and society using the same holistic principles of health found consistently across widely different types of systems throughout the cosmos. This theory grounds our understanding of why integrity, ethics, caring and sharing lead to socially vibrant communities and healthy economies — while at the same time making perfect practical and scientific sense.

Below, we propose a loose association of the regenerative principles with community principles:

Having brought some context based on modern theories about communities, we answer the questions raised by the group during the meeting on Archipelago.

How to create TRUST in a community?

Trust is a key element for communities to thrive. Without trust is very hard to commune people and make shared interests blossom in different ideas, creations and connections. Communities make sense when people feel they are learning from it and also sharing knowledge. Those six points below have the power to create communities.

• Transparency: Members are identified and known by the community. There have established relationships. In the case of an online community, a trustworthy digital identity must be established.
• Purpose: is a key factor of cohesiveness of communities.
• Reciprocity: AYNI (Andean concept, meaning reciprocity and alignment of actions between at least 2 parts) shared work, mutualism, there is a system of communion
• Commitment: to create, maintain, to preserve and to… serve.
• Shared Values: Values are clearly defined and shared: members in the community are actively practicing these values.
• Accountability — Traceability: People are accountable for their actions, there is a reputation cost or penalty above all.
• Clear Rules

How to balance between giving and receiving in a community?

People work for the common good. They are commoning for the “Common”. It is a system, defined as a group of Elements interacting around a common purpose.

People connect stronger when they have shared values and this is essential to keep the bonds of communities growing stronger. Looking to develop shared interests is also important.

As it happens in Nexus Global, a network of investors distributed around the world, to keep the community engaged, the organizers create once in a while new areas to explore their passions further, as people will find new interests to keep collaborating and engaged. The idea is to “build up instead of building out” as narrowing the possibilities and interests makes people more engaged. Feeling the sense of belonging to the community is also very important as it can lead to pride of belonging to it.

How to install values to create behavior to make us collaborate/work together?

A) Collectively:

Purpose driven. There has to be a transcendent motive beyond personal interests. A community is not extractive but regeneratively driven. By functioning like that, we believe they can thrive, be relevant and sustainable.

The values are co-constructed and well adjusted to needs and conditions. Ownership in co-creating is a key factor of belonging in communities.

That does not necessarily apply to “forced communities” (such as the one that emerged during 3 months in a plane crash in the Andes) since it is difficult to expand as people get united by circumstance only and not because of interest.

A public school can be a forced community as well if you need to choose a place for kids to study that is close to the place where you live. But condos can never be considered a forced community as you can always choose where do you want to live. However, the connections are not necessarily based on shared values and/or interests.

B) Individually:

When you express yourself authentically in thoughts, words and deeds. When you free yourself to express everything you are, you are also energetically freeing others to do the same. After all, Ayni, the andean concept, means reciprocity.

In any of these cases, trust plays an important role.

How to align people together who have different values and different agendas, which cause friction in the community?

Again a clear common purpose. The acceptance of our differences as an asset for co-constructing from different perspectives.

From a systems perspective, the general systems theory affirms that the properties of systems cannot be significantly described in terms of their separate elements. Systems can only be understood when studied globally, involving all their parties’ interdependencies. A System is a collection of elements in orderly interaction, whose properties do not arise from the mere addition of the properties of its components, but from the whole which arises from the relations that such components establish among themselves, keeping the system more or less stably united in pursuit of a purpose.

Emergent properties arise from the interaction of a system’s elements and are not found in the separate elements but in the whole. The most often repeated example is that of an orchestra — from the musicians’ harmonious interaction a magical symphony emerges.

What are the essential ingredients in a community which will drive action and positive impact?

• Self Governance: The community has to be able to exercise all of the necessary functions of power without intervention from any authority that they cannot themselves alter.
• Commoning: The commitment to preserve the aggregate and emergent values, knowledge, and culture that is co-constructed by the community.
• Knowledge: to create commonality, it is important to create interaction around knowledge and learning. Everyone is an apprentice in something, thus creating groups of interest around one or more subjects are important ingredients to keep the interaction active. If someone receives the right feeding and entertainment, it is possible to create the pleasure of learning which feedbacks into people’s interests.
• Collaboration: Creating in-person moments of collaboration — at Nexus, you are only part of an online cohort after you participated in a meeting in person. The idea is that if you create personal/physical connections, the power of the community grows faster and stronger.
• The sense of belonging is key. A participant needs to feel and understand he belongs to that place, whether because we know how to welcome her/him or they already are familiar with community’s members or subjects.

Final Comment

Trust between individuals seems to be an indispensable, but not sufficient condition, for the functioning of a community. It seems that to be sustainable, a community needs a common purpose. From purpose a new dimension emerges transcending that of the community: the “Commons” that in order to exist and persist, needs the active commitment of its participants. The community is now defined as an interactive group of “commoners” following a common purpose. Both Ostrom and Fullerton propose eight fundamental principles to support this community emergent dimension.

Fullerton’s perspective becomes interesting in the sense that it redefines economy and finance, that, until now, have been acting only for the benefit of the individual, destroying the Commons as a principle, (The tragedy of the Commons). Fullerton proposition defines economy and financial resources as an active process of “commoning”. This new perspective converts the economy into a new flow of processes and behaviors, a new regeneration protocol for sustainable human communities.

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This article is a result of the first cohort of Archipelago, a learning collective focused on community building.

Co-authors: David Dietz, Ernesto van Peborgh, Jack Abbott, Luis Alt, Rafael Vasconcelos, Rodrigo V Cunha and Sebastian Lindstrom.