ABSTRACT
I am drawn to thinking about the commons because of its ability to define a
place as outside of capitalism; I am enticed by stories of societies and environments and their myriad productive combinations before capitalism;
and I am inspired to imagine alternative ways of being that real people have
lived and are living on the commons. I am, however, frustrated by repre-
sentations of the commons as always subject to an inevitable displacement
by a dominant and invasive capitalism (Gibson-Graham and Ruccio 2001).
It would seem that all of our stories of the commons revolve around a
capitalist imaginary: capitalism’s origin in the enclosure of the commons,
capitalism’s commodification of natural resources, capitalism’s expansion and its penetration of common property regimes globally, and capitalism’s
most recent push to privatize remaining common property resources via
neoliberal policies at a variety of scales (Community Economies Collective
2001). A commons future is difficult to imagine.
