Tag / Commons

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  • In Remembrance of My Dear Friend Silke Helfrich, a tribute from David Bollier

    [This was originally published on http://www.bollier.org/. You can read the original post here.] It’s hard to recall exactly when my friendship and countless collaborations with Silke Helfrich began. In a strict sense, they began at the first-ever activists’ conference on the commons –  one that she organized in Mexico City in 2006 as head of…

  • Silke Helfrich: Free Fair and Alive

    That was Silke Helfrich’s life, and that is what it will remain. Now we are grieving her, our staff member of many years, our colleague, our friend. We are all shaken that Silke was fatally injured while hiking in the Liechtenstein Alps on 10 November. She would no longer return to give her lecture planned…

  • ‘Libres, dignos, vivos’: The Spanish Edition of ‘Free, Fair & Alive’ Is Published

    Silke and I are excited about deepening the conversation about the commons in Spain and Latin America with a Spanish translation of Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons – Libres, dignos, vivos: el poder subversivo de los comunes. The book will be published this week in Spain by Editorial Icaria; in…

  • How the coronavirus is forcing us to think beyond market and state

    The Corona crisis demonstrated in fast motion the dilemma into which market-state-thinking leads. This is where commons come into play, i.e. what people do and are able to do with each other in a self-determined, self-organised, needs-oriented manner and without any marketing interest. If this article were a sonata, its minor key would show us…

  • The Pandemic as a Catalyst for Institutional Innovation

    The following essay is adapted from a talk given on May 5 at Radical May, a month-long series of events hosted by a consortium of fifty-plus book publishers, including my own publisher, New Society Publishers. My talk — streamed and later posted on YouTube here — builds on two previous blog posts. As the pandemic continues, it…

  • The Economist Magazine Gets Religion on the Commons

    It’s only a short article with not much analysis or detail, but The Economist magazine seems to have embraced the commons. This is a stunning reversal for a publication that has long regarded Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” fable as gospel and sufficient reason to expand private property rights. Yet there it was, in…

  • “Free, Fair and Alive”: The New Language of the Commons

    How do we talk about the commons when we talk about the Commons? Silke Helfrich and David Bollier have spent years devising a new language for a future commons society. The video shows their working method and their exuberant creativity. The authors explain the necessity of invented terms: “Somehow we had to escape the powerful…

  • Free, Fair and Alive. The Insurgent Power of the Commons. On tour in Europe (Sept. 2019)

    Yeah, the English version of our book is out. Have a look at our website to explore the introduction and more. There have been several things I’ve felt realy touched by during the last few months while preparing the book launch. One of it is Peter Linebaugh’s praise for the book.   Like a medieval cathedral…

  • Strong Roots: Translating as a Commons

    In the commercial translation world, a text does not usually get due diligence during the translation process. This means that translators often lack of expertise in the subject matter, work under unrealistic deadlines and are paid too little for their skills. Essentially, all of these problems boil down to the fact that the client grossly…