Putting Property in Context: From Common Property to the Properties of the Commons

Abstract

"For me, this Commons Forum represents an opening for my own work to be central rather than peripheral to the mission and the definition of the Association. Previously, I felt the social and ecological dimensions were peripheral, with legal, economic, and political dimensions at the center. This change of name and definition puts those fields all on equal footing and makes it easier to ask questions about the legitimacy, justice and ecological viability of current property regimes, procedures and management practices in the Commons. It puts us in the center of discussions about The Commons and Whose Common Future, as discussed in the Ecologist in 1992, and gets us beyond technical discussions of specific kinds of property relations as the only legitimate subject of study. We can now engage, as an intellectual and practitioners' community, the moral and ecological dimensions of commons and commoners."