Shrinking Commons
Cambridge University
The Shrinking CommonsWhat do we mean by common property?What resources do we continue to hold in common?What is their fate?The commons have been described as a drama, even - famously - a 'tragedy'. Their fate, their future, has never seemed more parlous, with climate change, population growth, and competition for scarce resources seemingly threatening our greatest common property, the planet itself. Enclosure - once seen as the end of the commons - is touted by some as the only way to protect precious environments subject to encroachment. At the same time, undergirded by a general anxiety that the natural, social and political commons are at risk from the encroachments of capitalist expansion, hyper-consumption, and corporatist politics, critics of enclosure grasping for a new counter-narrative, propose a new global commons as the only solution to pressing global problems. The commons, far from disappearing, and irreducible to merely 'public goods', remain central to material s