ABSTRACT
“The commons” refers to shared resources, “common wealth” owned and stewarded collectively by all. The concept is at once a paradigm, a discourse, an ethic, and a set of social practices. It is also a starting point for envisioning an alternative to neoliberal capitalism based on an expansive definition of what is in the commons and thus excluded from market commodification. The so-called “tragedy of the commons” is not an inevitable consequence of such expansiveness; a commons-based system would be flexible, controlled by communities and responsive to their needs, and would integrate production, governance, and bottom-up participation into new sorts of institutions.
