ABSTRACT
For many people in the West, the word “commons” carries an archaic flavour; that of the medieval village pasture which villagers did not own but where they had rights to graze their livestock. Yet, for the vast majority of humanity, the commons is an everyday reality. Despite its ubiquity, the commons is hard to define. It provides sustenance, security and independence, yet typically does not produce commodities. Unlike most things in modern industrial society, moreover, it is neither private nor public: neither commercial farm nor communist collective, neither business firm nor state utility, neither jealously-guarded private plot nor national or city park. Despite their resolutely local orientation and resistance to being swallowed up by larger systems, commons regimes have never been isolated in either space or time. Each commons regime may be as different culturally from the next as all are from, say, a factory.
