Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier

Federico Savini, a professor in environmental planning at the University of Amsterdam, talks about the state of the degrowth movement today -- its priorities, challenges, and hotspots of possibility. As the author of the book 'Post-Growth Planning' and many essays on degrowth, Savini advocates many policy changes that could make agriculture, energy, transit, and social services more ecologically sustainable. Of course, degrowth as a political agenda faces formidable challenges, especially in the US and Europe. But coming to terms with climate change will ultimately require reducing economic growth, which is tightly linked to carbon emissions usage. Projects based on commons, the Solidarity Economy, cooperatives, cosmo-local production, bioregionalism, mutual aid, and more, offer promising pathways forward. More on the commons at https://www.bollier.org. For more on the commons, go to www.Bollier.org.

For the past five years, Stéphanie Leyronas has been part of an internal team at the French Development Agency (AFD) exploring how it might pioneer new forms of development by supporting commoning in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Instead of promoting the linear "progress narrative" of capitalist markets and growth, AFD's efforts seek to strengthen social collaboration and shared benefits, drawing upon the distinctive strengths of each local context. The experiments are forging a Global North-assisted development approach rooted in traditional "relational logics" of cooperation, co-learning, and long-term eco-stewardship. For more on the commons, go to www.Bollier.org.

Lewis Hyde, a celebrated scholar, essayist, literary critic and poet, wrote two classic books on aspects of the commons -- 'The Gift,' in 1979, about the power of gift-exchange in forging and maintaining social reciprocity, and 'Common as Air,' in 2010, about creativity as a force nourished by cultural commons. In this episode, Hyde discusses the origins of his striking perspectives on creativity as a gift that must be shared ("the gift must always move"), and the ways in which the US Founding Fathers sought to protect the free circulation and sharing of knowledge rather thane excessive private control through copyrights and patents. More more on the commons, visit www.Bollier.org. Credit for photo of Hyde: Anna Schuleit Haber For more on the commons, go to www.Bollier.org.

As the capitalist economy grows more expensive and predatory, Stephanie Rearick and her colleagues are building an alternative social economy that meets people’s needs through care and cooperation. As founder of the Madison Mutual Aid Network Cooperative and Dane County Timebank in Wisconsin, Rearick is a leading champion of mutual aid projects as a force for building the "real wealth" of community. She also works internationally through Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks (HUMAN), a global network of networks dedicated to building the mutual aid economy. More on Mutual Aid Network at https://mutualaidnetwork.org/man. More on the commons at www.Bollier.org. For more on the commons, go to www.Bollier.org.

At a time when the superstructures of modern civilization seem terminally messed up, the authors of 'Relationality: An Emergent Politics of Life Beyond the Human' argue that we must start a new conversation about the nature of being and modern myths of the self. Anthropologist Arturo Escobar, cultural studies scholar Michal Osterweil, and biologist Kriti Sharma draw on a diversity of sources – evolutionary science, cultural studies, art and poetry, Indigenous practices, wisdom traditions, and more – to explain the deep interdependence of all living beings: a perspective can help us develop a new political economy and culture. More on the commons at www.Bollier.org. For more on the commons, go to www.Bollier.org.