Based on your readings, explain different

approaches
to
the
commons,
and
the
challenges
facing
contemporary
struggles
protecting and/ or claiming the commons.

Commons as an object of study has received sparse attention

from sociologists and social anthropologists alike. Commons
can be seen as resources which belong to everybody in
common. No one has an exclusive right to them, making them
by definition resources to which everybody enjoys open access
but in reality they are controlled by people who have power.
Each individual does not have a claim to any part of the
resource, but rather, to the use of a portion of it for his/her own
benefit. In the contemporary world, without a clear definition
and a coherent vocabulary about the commons it becomes very
difficult to protect them from instances of privatization.
To understand the commons today, its worth starting in feudal
Englandthe birthplace of modern capitalismby looking at
the Magna Cartas twin charter, the Charter of the Forest. Now
largely forgotten, the Charter of the Forest guaranteed the right
of commoners to access pasture for their animals, to till land, to
collect wood, harvest honey, use medicinal plants, forage, and
so on. Historian Peter Linebaugh observes in The Magna Carta
Manifesto that a commons right guaranteed freedoms in
perpetuity over local resources for everyone. This did not mean
that everyone could take as much as he or she wanted. To have
a commons isnt to license a free-for-all, and it is not what
happened historically. The precise shape of commoning was
negotiated in a particular place and time, dependent on the
ecology and the community. Common rights evolved over time,
shaped by the relative power of those around the table as well
as the changing geography of the physical commons itself. The
commons was, in other words, both a place and a process of
freedom in which people fought for the right to shape the terms
on which they could share the commons.

The commons were an ongoing battlefield between lords and

their serfs, but it was one in which the poor had won some
victories, and had managed to stake a claim to public space in
defiance of those who oppressed them. The Magna Carta itself
represented a line in the sand, a negotiated end to the rapacity
of King John of England, who, in order to bankroll both a
crusade and a war in France, had committed all manner of
crimes. The Magna Carta included demands made by the
barons, the merchants, and the well-to-do in London, but it also
strongly protected common rights, providing common access to
the food, fuel, freedom, and fruits of the forest for common
people, returning to the public the natural resources that King
John had taken for himself. Contrary to the theory, people
figured out how to manage and maintain access to a scarce
resource, despite the desire of kings and nobles to privatize it.
If one is looking to affix the word tragedy to the commons, the
nightmare began not with the creation of the commons, but
with the process of its destruction.
By the end of 16th century enclosure was the process by which
land was once again taken out of public hands. Not only fields
but also forest and water were similarly enclosed. Within a
generation, displaced peasants became the proletarian
backbone of the Industrial Revolution.
In Europe, basic distribution of property after the enclosures
initially corresponded to the system of property rights that had
prevailed before. In the feudal order, property was always
shared property, that is, the nobility or the priory loaned the
peasant his holding and the land that belonged to it; he had to
perform labour services and pay rents in kind or money rents
and was subject to the jurisdiction of the feudal lords. In Latin
America social function doctrine gave more flexibility and
elasticity to property rights. Under the social function
doctrine land can be privately owned as long as its being put
to use, but the moment it is left derelict, or if the land is owned
purely for speculative purposes, ownership rights to the land
are forfeited and it becomes available to anyone who will put it

to greater use. Brazils most effective and Latin Americas

largest social movement Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais
Sem Terra (MST) got legal status because of social function
doctrine.
What will happen to a nation when ninety three percent of its
citizens are at the mercy of the drug lords to rescue them from
crippling poverty and remaining seven percent of the citizens
travel to and fro from work by helicopters to escape kidnapping
and violence? Such is the scenario of Brazil, where the
fundamental problem is that of inequality, which is all pervasive
in the lives and in the culture of the nation. It is the pattern of
unequal land ownership that forms the bedrock of poverty and
stark inequalities. It was in this context that peaceful protests
of one million people forced the Brazilian government to
redistribute more than 20 million acres of land to 350000
families and has assisted them in creating new livelihoods.
These are the members of the MST (landless workers
movement), wherein the particular agenda of this movement
was to redistribute land to the people who were landless by
occupying land owned by wealthy land owners. The broader
modus operandi of the movement was to persuade the
government to pursue a broader program of agrarian reform
and social change. The major challenge that came in this quest
to claim the commons was the interference of the Brazilian
government that acted as a major hindrance to the economic
development of the settlements that were established by the
MST by the manner of shaping its policies that have always, in
general favoured industrial development over agriculture, and
export agriculture over domestic agriculture. The export
earnings may have increased thanks to the extensive produce.
This increase in produce however, creates more hunger than to
satisfy it in Brazil. Thus one in this case can see an extensively
cosmetic agrarian reform approach undertaken by the state
that attempts to mostly nullify the major problem areas and
attempts to suppress and thwart attempts at real reform.

MST movement is not only redistribution of land but now its a

response to privatization and neoliberal polices encouraged by
government. The wave against foreign capital and concern of
indigenous knowledge is not limited to Brazil only; it is
throughout the world. Various claims on commons have been
raised and questions of who can access land and who is
excluded from it underlie many recent social and political
conflicts in Southeast Asia. Through neoliberal polices and
economic processes shifts in land relations are taking place,
notably state land allocation and provision of property rights,
the dramatic expansion of areas zoned for conservation, booms
in the production of export-oriented crops, the conversion of
farmland to post-agrarian uses, "intimate" exclusions involving
kin and co-villagers, and mobilizations around land farmed in
terms of identity and belonging. In case studies drawn from
several Southeast Asian countries, it can be said that four
"powers of exclusion" - regulation, including legal and informal
rules; force, including the coercion and violence that can
underpin the law; the market, prices for goods and services,
both high and low; and legitimation, including justifications of
all kinds have combined to shape land relations in new and
often surprising ways.
To fight against the exclusion from land as territory or
productive resource people have mobilised collectively under
various legitimating discourses. People have mobilised under
the name of environment conservation that they can help in
maintain environment through their indigenous or local
knowledge so they should be given access to land and forests.
Various struggles had been done to restore ethno-territorial
sovereignty, to implement land reforms and to resists eviction.
Despite facing huge problems from state, capitalist world, they
put their lives at risk because they are very much better off
with access to land than they are without.
In modern state commons is increasingly privatized in the
name of a financial state of exception. With presence of
multinational institution, Governments are forced to devolve

and divest themselves of what were once seen as core

responsibilities towards their citizens. Its high time to include
local people in managing the commons because they are
associated with the commons at grassroots level and their
traditional knowledge can also be used for efficient use of
resources. Both the future and the universal access to common
resources depends on joint management, as neither state
power nor private players are capable of ensuring their
sustainable use for generations to come.

References

Linebaugh, P. 2008. The Magna Carta Manifesto. Berkeley.

University of California Press.

Wright, A and W. Wolford. 2003. To Inherit the Earth: The

Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil.
Oakland. Food First Press.

Hall, D. et al. 2011. Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in

Southeast Asia. Honolulu. University of Hawaii

http://wealthofthecommons.org/essay/commons-%E2%80%93historical-concept-property-rights