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russellarbenfox 's review for:
David Bollier's brief argument on behalf of the importance of defending those places and processes in our lives which could be labeled "commons"--parks and pathways, obviously, but also all sorts of things from open-source software to natural aquifers to regular assemblies on public squares--is wonderful and important. Much of what he argues for are matters familiar to me from other works of socialist or anarchist or radically democratic theory, but he puts them all together in a wonderfully practical and persuasive way. I think he may be a little too enamored of the technology-enabled aspects of "commoning"; his enthusiasm for the "sharing economy" would have been better balanced with a little more time addressing the "subsistence" aspect to the commons, and the fact that--which, to his credit, he doesn't deny, even if he doesn't address it at length--turning away from the profit-maximizing habits of enclosure and privatization would probably often result in less overall productivity and wealth. Still, I learned a great deal from this book, both about the history of the commons (I'd never heard of the Charter of the Forest, a companion document to the Magna Carta before) and the ways in which commons-thinking necessarily pushes in philosophical directions that prioritizes the tactile and the local, rather than the abstract and rational. A great, thoughtful primer on an important social, economic, and environmental topic.