PODCAST

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier

The Schumacher Center for a New Economics, David Bollier

A monthly conversation with creative activists pioneering new forms of commoning.

society & culture

All Episodes

00:52:00

WIll Ruddick on 'Commitment Pooling' to Build...

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2024/03/01

Will Ruddick, development economist and founder of Grassroots Economics, has spent the past 16 years in Kenya developing innovative "community inclusion currencies" for dozens of poorer communities. By combining ancient mutual aid practices with credit vouchers (circulating as a kind of money) and digital ledger technologies (to expand the scale of exchange), people are able to develop their own economic commons to meet everyday needs. Ruddick credits the success of the currencies to "commitment

00:42:25

Kathryn Milun: Sharing the Sun's Energy through Solar...

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2024/02/01

Kathryn Milun, a community-engaged scholar, writer, and energy democracy advocate at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, has spent the past 15 years developing the innovative Solar Commons model. This powerful prototype uses decentralized solar arrays to generate steady revenue streams to build community wealth. Through partnership agreements, four Solar Commons trusts are now channeling funds to low-income neighborhoods, rural communities, regenerative farming, and Native American food

00:40:11

Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann's Project to Reimagine...

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2024/01/01

Appalled by the dismal state of economics education for young people, Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann, an international secondary school educator, has launched an open, collaborative project to develop a comprehensive Regenerative Economics syllabus. Instead of framing "the economy" as a growth-obsessed machine standing apart from society and nature, Brandsberg-Engelmann showcases alternative economic approaches such as 'Doughnut Economics,' the circular economy, and feminist critiques of care, as

00:51:04

Aaron Perzanowski on Bottom-up Creativity & the Right...

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/12/01

Professor Aaron Perzanowski of the University of Michigan Law School explains how many artistic communities flourish as commons, without copyright protections that privilege private ownership and marketization. Tattoo artists, fashion designers, chefs, and stand-up comedians are among the communities that don't strictly own their primary creative works. This ethic of bottom-up collaboration and sharing also flourishes in many repair commons, where resourceful people have created pools of shared

00:41:09

Shane O'Donnell: The Breakthrough Insulin Device...

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/11/01

Shane O'Donnell, a sociologist and researcher, has been at the forefront of the "device activism" and #WeAreNotWaiting movement, a globe-spanning community of techies and people living with diabetes who have pioneered patient-led innovations in medical devices and healthcare. Outflanking a stodgy, risk-averse medical device industry, the movement has relied on commoning to develop the Tidepool Loop device, the first open source, interoperable, and automatic insulin-delivery system, and Nightscout, a

00:43:40

Mihnea Tanasescu on the Need for 'Ecocene Politics'

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/10/01

The best term for this era of geological history is not the Anthropocene, says Mihnea Tănăsescu, a research professor at the University of Mons in Belgium, but the Ecocene. "The increasingly frequent intrusion of ecological processes into political life” requires us to shed our anthropocentric notions, and recognize our deep, entangled relationships with nature and other living beings. In this interview, Tănăsescu talks about his book 'Ecocene Politics' and explains what it means to unlearn the

00:43:47

Hannes Gerhardt: Compeerism as a Path from Capital to...

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/09/01

Hannes Gerhardt, a professor of geography at the University of West Georgia (US), talks about his new book, 'From Capital to Commons: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism', especially as it applies to digital technology and online life. While Big Tech monopolies have crushed the hopeful experimentation that once prevailed in Internet culture, Gerhardt argues that commoning and technology might engineer a transition away from capitalism through "compeerism," a lens that highlights the

00:44:01

Natasha Hulst: The Campaign for an Amsterdam Food Park

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/08/01

Natasha Hulst, Director of the European Land Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, describes a spirited campaign by commoners to build an urban farm and green space, Voedselpark, or Food Park, on the edge of Amsterdam. While climate change and global economics argue for relocalizing agriculture, city officials and businesses are determined to build a big-box distribution center on the unspoiled land. The question at hand: Will a famously progressive city double-down on capitalist

00:51:47

Thomas Linzey on Nature's Rights and Self-Owning Land

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/07/01

Thomas Linzey, Senior Legal Counsel at the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, has been at the forefront of ambitious campaigns to create novel legal doctrines for "community rights," "the rights of nature," and more recently, "self-owning land." The primary goal is to expand democratic self-determination, especially at the local level, and provide stronger legal protections for land, water, animals, and other elements of living ecosystems. More on the commons at Bollier.org

00:50:45

Alnoor Ladha & Lynn Murphy on Post-Capitalist...

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/06/08

Long-time activist Alnoor Ladha and former program officer Lynn Murphy explain why so many philanthropies aren't really interested in system change. In their book 'Post Capitalist Philanthropy', they explain how large foundations are more intent on reproducing capitalist modernity and its norms than in moving beyond the growth economy. The real challenge for philanthrophy, say Ladha and Murphy, is to help the world move to a post-capitalist economy and culture that overcomes the cultural traumas of

00:52:19

Leah Penniman on 'Black Earth Wisdom'

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/05/01

Leah Penniman, cofounder of Soul Fire Farm in the Hudson Valley, New York, showcases the history of African-American farming and Indigenous land traditions in her new book 'Black Earth Wisdom' in which sixteen Black elders of various backgrounds discuss the intertwined fate of the earth and our spiritual lives. The book brings attention to often-neglected protectors of the Earth such as enslaved herbalists, seeds-savers, scientist-mystics like George Washington Carter, artists, musicians, poets, and

00:42:19

Christian Iaione & Sheila Foster on Urban Commoning...

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/04/01

How might the commons paradigm be applied to cities in a more focused, effective way? Professors Sheila R. Foster of Georgetown University and Christian Iaione of Luiss Carli University in Rome, share their insights into this topic after years of study and collaborative experimentation. Their new book, 'Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions Toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities,' describes lessons from Elinor Ostrom's research, the six distinct phases of the "co-cities protocol," and the work of

00:47:39

Dorn Cox: When Open Source Meets Regenerative...

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/03/01

Dorn Cox is a New Hampshire family farmer who has long been in the vanguard of improving regenerative agriculture with open source technologies. He sees participatory science and knowledge commons as powerful tools for improving crop yields, soil health, and ecosystem resilience, especially in the face of climate change. Here, Cox talks about his new book 'The Great Regeneration' on these themes, and the encouraging vistas of possibility that open source hardware, data analytics, knowledge-sharing

00:31:23

Binna Choi: Curating Art through Commoning

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/02/01

As Director of the Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Binna Choi is in the vanguard of exploring how commoning can be used to make art and curate exhibitions. Choi and her colleagues in Utrecht, Netherlands, see commoning as an organizing principle for how artists can produce art collaboratively, in service to the community. As the Institute puts it, "Art is an imaginative way of doing and being which connects, heals, opens, and moves people into new social visions." PDF transcript

00:45:54

John Thackara on Designing for Life

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2023/01/01

John Thackara is one of the brilliant irregulars exploring how humankind can make the transition to a climate-friendly, relocalized, post-capitalist world. A Brit with extensive academic and journalistic background in design, Thackara is an independent writer, activist and thinker who is probing the idea of "designing for life." For him, this means elevating the many brave local projects that are pioneering new eco-friendly, socially constructive ways of living while critiquing corporate

01:00:53

Joe Brewer's Bold Quest to Restore a Bioregion

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier ·

2022/12/01

Frontiers of Commoning, with David Bollier

All Episodes

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