Tag / Free Fair and Alive

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  • 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…

  • Ontology as a Hidden Driver of Politics

    One of the big epiphanies that I had in writing Free, Fair and Alive with Silke Helfrich, was that a lot of political disagreements are not just about law, politics, or economics. They reflect fundamental clashes of worldviews. They are disputes about how human beings should or can relate to each other and to nature, and what…

  • Silke Helfrich: “Technologies can be an important part of a commons”

    Interview conducted by Genoveva López and originally published in the P2P Models Blog. Silke Helfrich is a writer author and commons defender. She was the Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation from 1996 to 1998. She travels throughout Europe meeting with leading theorists of the commons and frontline activists. She is co-founder of the Commons-Institut in…

  • On the Road with ‘Free, Fair and Alive’

    Book tours are known for being grueling odysseys. While it wasn’t a breeze to speak at two dozen events in ten weeks of travel in Europe, UK and the US, it was a joy for me to connect with so many different commoners. I found my visits often amounted to field research filled with unexpected…

  • “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…