Tragedies, Hot Dogs and Flourishing
In which the author narrowly misses the opportunity for new underwear and where academic disputes are settled by means of hot dogs.
As I’ve mentioned, in the small city of Dundee, on the East coast of Scotland, I’m part of a group of artists who have embarked on a project called ‘If the city were a commons’. We learn there is a bit of money available to fund the year-long project. We’re all going to be putting in some effort to the project – so should we divvy up this money? There are about twenty of us at this stage, so it doesn’t work out to much. Why bother? – that’s my feeling, as the conversation is drifting on. Then my thoughts start to turn to what a commons should really be doing with money – and indeed stuff generally. I imagine us all getting into the hall next to the café where we are meeting. We have brought our belongings in suitcases, boxes and wheelbarrows. It is all deposited in a large heap on the floor. The lights are switched off. We all undress and add our clothes to the pile of stuff. Then it’s open season, to rummage through the loot and get kitted out with new clothes, books and whatever else takes our fancy. Now that would be a commons!
That view – that a commons is about divvying things up on an equal basis – is, I must confess, a bit misleading. A commons can certainly be about shared resources. Often it is land, but it might also be a forest, a fishing ground or even buildings and artefacts. Recently the term commons has been associated with even broader things. The atmosphere, for instance, may be a commons, and the oceans and even the solar system. This might be a useful way of expanding our environmental awareness. But I have to say that to be of practical use the idea of a commons needs to be local and it needs to be about close co-operation within a small community.
Anyone who has heard of ‘the commons’ has usually heard of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ – an idea put forward by the late Garrett Hardin. In Hardin’s view, the kind of co-operative commons I’m suggesting is just not something he thought could happen. It is against the kind of individual self-interest that has come to dominate economic and political thinking. However, the idea of a co-operative commons was championed by the late Elinor Ostram. Sometimes academics take pot-shots at one another through their writing, but Elinor took a different approach. There’s a lovely story about her inviting Garrett Hardin around to her house for dinner. She made hot dogs. I don’t know if hot dogs were a particular favourite of Garrett’s or not, but his views did seem to change! Eventually he told us that it is an unmanaged commons that is the real tragedy. He was thereby implicitly accepting Elinor’s work, which demonstrates that with the right governance in place a commons can be successful. Common land or other common resources can be owned by someone. The commons is not really about dividing everything, sharing everything or distributing everything equally. It’s more about managing what is within our area of responsibility such that the resource, whatever it might be, is there for the long-term and such that everyone is treated fairly and such that nature is not destroyed but may even be enhanced by our activities.
Going back to the start of my story – why did those artists get so upset over the distribution of the little bit of money that came our way?
Well, artists – and especially those involved in what is described as ‘socially-engaged art’ – often have this notion of their work being a kind of cultural commons. And that idea is often linked to the further notion of a ‘gift economy’. This takes a bit of unpacking. A gift economy is seen as the alternative to transactions and an alternative to a ‘cost-benefit analysis’ view of life. We’re so used to hearing about the economy in terms of financial transactions that we forget there is a huge amount of co-operation and good will required to keep any kind of economy running. Capitalism would collapse without care – and care is a gift, the gift economy. So the gift economy is not something we need to aspire to – it already exists. Our socially-engaged work might then be to demonstrate that this is the case. To show that it is really care and compassion that keeps the world afloat even when we think it’s capitalism.
But then that leads to a bit of a dilemma. If we are promoting ‘the gift’ then should we at the same time be asking for money for our efforts? It seems like a contradiction, and that’s what caused our artists to get flustered over the finances. But really, it doesn’t need to be this way. Of course we need our food, our clothes and a place to stay – and in a modern society most of this is achieved through money. But it can still be a ‘gift economy’. There can be ownership and wages and transactions without all this destroying care, compassion, responsibility, service and reciprocity. That’s a commons – or rather a whole series of commons working together within a larger society. It is a wholly different philosophy of life – one where the over-riding principles are the flourishing of individuals, communities, societies and nature. And all of that flourishing is not simply about exchanges of goods and services. A commons is to manage the gifts that nature and our fellow humans have bestowed on us. A commons is to get everything into balance and to live wisely. A commons is to help us to flourish and to let us work for the flourishing of others. If the city were a commons, what would you do?
