Patterns of commoning

Written 19th December 2019

So, this issue, we’re taking it back to basics looking at a framework for understanding commoning; because frameworks structure worldviews and provide a language for making sense of what we can observe. If we take a look at the Free, Fair and Alive framework in particular (the wonderful new book by Silke Helfrich and David Bollier on the ‘insurgent power of the commons’…read more here), we can see it’s based on the premise that commoning is about creating and maintaining relationships among:

• People in small and big communities and networks
• Humans and the non-human world
• Present, past and future generations

…and this relational understanding of the world creates new ways of manifesting value beyond standard policy and economic frameworks.

Next, if we move on to understand the ‘Triad of Commoning’, we can see that it articulates the deep correspondences among all commons, whether natural, digital or social — all which share structural and social similarities, identified by patterns. Patterns are like DNA: underspecified, adaptive instructions. They also describe but not prescribe, helping us see:

• Structural communalities based on recurring elements and relationships
• A common core without ignoring difference and context
• Kernel solutions for problems showing up again and again in different settings
• Tensions positive and negative by going beyond normative moral abstracts to include situational realities
• No patterns is complete unto itself: it must relate to others

The purpose of commoning is to create peer-governed, context-specific systems for free, fair and sustainable lives.

Commoning is world-making in a pluriverse. Each sphere of the triad of commoning provides different perspectives for looking at the same phenomenons: social life (social), peer governance (political) and peer provisioning (economic). Each sphere of the Triad offers a Commons Pattern Language. It is a map providing structure, terminology and pathways.
It is not the territory, as the commons are ultimately experimental.

Fascinating, imagination exploding stuff right? If you want to know and explore more, Free Fair and Alive is available to buy and also to read for free(!) as it is released in serial on the website throughout the year. The ideas we’ve discussed above come from the Introduction to Part II: The Triad of Commoning. Also online now is Chapter 4: The Social Life of Commoning.