De op de maatschappij gerichte kunstenaar van nu reageert niet langer vanuit een avantgardistische motivatie op voorgaande kunststromingen, maar vanuit innerlijke motivatie op grond van een besef van maatschappelijke urgentie. De wereld ontwikkelt zich razendsnel en thema’s als bijvoorbeeld klimaatverandering en migratiestromen dwingen regeringen en burgers tot complexe en ingrijpende acties. Traditionele organisatievormen lijken niet langer te voldoen.

De uitdaging voor de hedendaagse kunstpraktijk ligt steeds minder in de kunsten zelf, en steeds meer daarbuiten, stellen Anke Coumans en Sikko Cleveringa vast in hun inleiding tot deze Boekman. Er wordt steeds meer samenwerking gezocht met bestaande activistische bewegingen en veranderingsinitiatieven zonder deel uit te willen maken van een institutioneel verdienmodel. Dat gebeurt op allerlei manieren, zo blijkt uit de bijdragen in deze Boekman. Van deze varianten lijkt vooral commons het nieuwe buzzword dat te pas en te onpas gebruikt wordt, zo constateren Pascal Gielen en Hanka Otte. Commonsgedreven initiatieven worden van onderop, door de onmiddellijke stakeholders, gevormd om door samenwerking een collectief belang na te streven, vertelt Tine de Moor. Dat commoning-projecten experimenteel van aard zijn, met niet zelden een open einde, kan lastig zijn voor cultuurprogramma’s zoals Connected Action for the Commons van de European Cultural Foundation, beschrijft Maite García Lechner. Eenzelfde spanning treedt op als de systeemwereld en commons elkaar ontmoeten zoals bij projecten in Amsterdam en in Leidsche Rijn, zo leggen Jeroen Boomgaard en Erik Uitenbogaard uit. Waar velen het als tegengestelde begrippen zien, beschrijft Gerard Rooijakkers in zijn epiloog de systeemwereld en de commons als complementair.

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[…] “What, then, are the key conditions for liveable, sustainable and prosperous cities? And, more practically, which forms of governance can contribute to reaching these goals? The limits of allocation through markets, which was promoted as part of the neoliberal drive after 1980, have become much more manifest in the wake of the credit crisis of 2008 notably in the realm of social equity and climate change (Klein, 2014 ; Mason, 2015 , Milanovic, 2016 ). A return to more statist approaches as in post- war Western Europe (Judt, 2005 ), it seems, is also not very feasible due the fundamental Hayekian problem of lack of knowledge which, arguably, has become even more serious with the increasing complexity and fragmentation of post- Fordist urban societies, and also because of the more mundane problem of lack of financial resources which many public actors face. There is, consequently, a quest for governance options which may counteract the obvious shortcomings of market allocation while avoiding some of the problems inherent in more statist approaches. There are many ways to look at urban governance – from the highly abstract to the detailed concrete and from the explicit normative to the descriptive and analytical empirical. There is, consequently, a quest for governance options which may counteract the obvious shortcomings of market allocation while avoiding some of the problems inherent in more statist approaches. There are many ways to look at urban governance – from the highly abstract to the detailed concrete and from the explicit normative to the descriptive and analytical empirical.Below, I will use a rather modest window to analyse a specific case of the functioning of the so- called urban commons, the pool of resources in cities for which property rights are hard or even impossible to establish and therefore require forms of collective action. I will look briefly at how forms of collective action underpin a successful Dutch cultural industry, namely architectural design. The focus is on architectural design as an economic activity which can be seen as emblematic of advanced urban economies. Looking at architectural design may thus give us an understanding of how the urban commons function in relation to a wider set of economic activities.”  [read more…]

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For now, we’ve taken the insights and critical remarks that came up during the launch to specify our focus. Here’s a summary (with many thanks to all participants for helping and challenging us):

Our take on the commons

We study urban culture, and we try to find out how the notion of the commons can help us to understand various kinds of social organisation in cultural and creative industries.

Others have written extensively on definitions (see for instance the ‘new to the commons’ posts by David Bollier), but here are some key elements.

Commons refer to a resources that are shared by a group of people. Often, the commons comprise those resources and assets without clear property rights. In this sense it is close to ‘common-pool resources‘.

Commons are about social relations. As pointed out by Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom, sets of rules are needed in order to exploit resources collectively. These are not universal or static, and they are defined and negotiated within social relationships. This also means there is not a single recipe for a commons, but that there are what Ostrom called ‘design principles’.

Commons may also be understood as an activity, historian Peter Linebaugh has argued. It’s more than an idea or a material resource, it’s about engaging with resources through labour, and about ‘making common’.

Commons have become a umbrella concept for many different kinds of activities and organisations. And that’s way historian Tine De Moor prefers to talk about institutions for collective action instead, and these may include commons.

Commons are also seen as a social movement countervailing market and government action, or even as a (sometimes activist) mindset with concern for social inclusion, equal access to resources, and the environment.

Where to start?

As complex as it all is, for now we start with the first element. We’re busy working on ways in which we can identify common-pool resources in  cultural and creative industries.

Empirical studies have identified a variety of common pool resources in cities: specialized skilled labour and related knowledge, dedicated institutions and third spaces, venues and festivals where people can meet and exchange ideas, but also more generic and abstract resources such as trust and quality of place. While cities cannot function properly without these common pool resources, they tend to be undersupplied through market allocation. How, then, are these resources created and maintained in urban contexts? Which forms of orgainsation can be identified and what makes them effective?

To address these questions, we focus on how these common pool resources function in relation to one of the mainstays of contemporary urban economies, namely the cultural and creative industries: those economic activities in which the symbolic or aesthetic qualities of the goods and services is the main selling point.

By looking at a wide array of concrete examples of how all kinds of cultural activities are boosted, buttressed, and enabled by common pool resources we will be able to present a rich, empirically informed panorama of forms of self-organisation, commoning, and collective action.

What does this mean?

We report on our research approach and  findings on this website.

We reflect on cultural expressions that have to do with our theme, such as movies or artworks.

We invite colleagues to share ideas on this website, and we reflect on their work.

We irregularly organise public and expert meetings.

We try to motivate students to further explore this topic in their own research.

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Part One

Part 2

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The Urban Commons of Culture, Past & Present

Wednesday April 4th, from 1 PM to 4.30 PM (followed by drinks)

 A Lab, Overhoeksplein 2, 1031 Amsterdam.

Theme

Commons are a hot topic, often presented as the ultimate solution for the challenges of our day and age. Whether we talk about social inequality, housing shortage, food scarcity, climate change, or access to arts and culture, the general idea seems to be that if we could only take matters back from in our own hands, away from greedy corporations and ineffective governments, the world would be a better and more inclusive place.

But how does shared ownership and self-organisation work? What do institutions for collective action in culture and the creative industries look like in practice? Who is in and who is out? How do their organisational cultures, with norms and rules, evolve over time? What (local) governance and market structures support or hinder them?  And ultimately, in what ways do they shape the success and resilience of urban culture and creativity?

We cannot promise to deliver on all of these questions, but on April 4th we’d like to make start with the following three themes:

1. Consumption, Production, and the Common Good – on social status and cultural capital in an age of precarity

2. Institutional Diversity  – on the relations between markets, governments, and institutions for collective action, and the potential to upscale

3. Agency, Inclusion, and Responsibility – on commons as a process, a set of social relations

Programme

12.30                         Doors open

13.00-13.15               Welcome

13.15-14.15

Immaterial Wealth and the Aspirational Class: The Expense of Cultural Capital in the 21^st Century.

Keynote lecture by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett –  Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and professor of public policy at the Price School

14.15-14.45

Power to the urban imagination: The struggle over the redevelopment of Dutch city centres 1965-1980

Lecture by Tim Verlaan – Assistant professor, Urban History, University of Amsterdam

14.45-15.15                 Coffee & Tea

15.15-15.45

The Precarious/Creative City. Some thoughts on the urban commons

Column by Roel Griffioen – Journalist and PhD researcher, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University

15.45-16.30

“Urban commons, an opportunity for what?”

Panel discussion with Floor Milikowski (journalist), Vera de Jong (Urban Connectors), Joachim Meerkerk (HvA/Pakhuis De Zwijger) on the promises and pitfalls of commons and other urban institutions for collective action. The panel is chaired by Marielle Hendriks (De Boekmanstichting).

16.30                       Closing remarks & drinks

Please register here (free of charge)!

The platform and the event are sponsored by the Research Priority Area’s Centre for Urban Studies and the Amsterdam Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity /CREATE of the University of Amsterdam.

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Commons as a resource.

The first conception is linked to economy and economic thought. In 1954, Paul Samuelson published the seminal work “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure” categorising goods in four categories according to their caracteristics of excludability and rivalrousness of their consumption. Common-pool resources would be those resources which are non-excludable, like public goods, but rival in their consumption. This meant that users cannot prevent new users from consuming this resource but they cannot sustain too large a number of users.

Rational-choice theorists have taken from this point of view coining the concept “The Tragedy of the Commons”. Being non-excludable but rival, users will tend to free-ride on the efforts of others, consuming too much and not contributing to their maintenance. Thus, all commons, unless privatised, will tend to disappear. This conception is very much linked to neo-classic economics where all individuals are rational and oriented to their own profit. It also has an implicit assumption, that private property is the best solution for providing resources in a sustainable way.

Commons as a resource managed by a community.

In 1990, Elinor Ostrom challenged the view that commons were doomed to privatisation or disappearance. In her book “Governing the Commons” she investigated several successful cases of communities managing commons. The research showed it was possible without a top-down authority, privatising them, or consuming them to their exhaustion. To do so, they would need social institutions of trust, shared responsibilities, penalties for free-riders… This approach  would be linked to sociological thought and introduces ideas of social relations, power, institutions. Thus a commons becomes so because a community of “commoners” manages and consumes it.

There are two main sub-branches within this approach. The first stems from neo-institutionalist theory and focuses on questions such as “who gets to use the commons in a concrete situation and who sets the rules to do so?”  On the other hand, the current linked to critical social theory focuses on their potential to disrupt Capitalist institutions. Both traditions see the commons as modes of exchange of goods and services that are neither state nor market. The “critical” tradition, then, sees this as an opportunity to create alternatives to Capitalism, as well as spaces that can turn into higher-scale mobilisations against the system.

However, asking questions about “who gets to use the commons and who decides” brings us to who should do so. In the following paragraphs I will review the line of thought that has tried to answer this question.

Commons as a right

This tradition is possibly the oldest and yet the smallest of the three. The first definition of the commons comes from pre-modern England and referred to shared grazing fields. The tradition continued with juridic decisions establishing that the public as a whole could access some resources (essentially open spaces). This would be true even if the public would be “disorganised”, i.e. not bounded in a formal political institution. Thus, a commons becomes defined by a normative conception of justice and is thus linked to the fields of law and political theory. In the Anglo-saxon tradition (see the article ‘The Commedy of the Commons’ by Carol Rose), this was that commons should be beneficial to the general interest. Commons were spaces that would serve social purposes, particularly commerce, and thus open access would make them more valuable to the community as a whole.

Yet, this is not the only possible definition. The Spanish philosopher of law José Luís Martí Mármol proposes a new conception in the book ‘The republican conception of property‘. There he understands commons as goods publicly owned (through the state or not) which would harm common good if they should be privatised. In any case, most conceptions of commons as a right tend to value general interest as more than the sum of particular benefits and a more or less egalitarian distribution of resources. Thus, they oppose the neoclassic inspired vision that the privatisation of the commons would be the best option for the maximum overall happiness.

Conclusion

While the story of the commons is long, they have only sparked a strong interest in the last three decades. Most of the main social sciences have developed literature on them, inspired by normative ideas from neo-Liberalism to Egalitarianism and Libertarian Communism. While there is no definite answer, the field keeps developing and growing in many different directions.

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The notion of intangible cultural heritage was central to the discussions. It challenges us to think about heritage in terms of the living expressions of a social group. Intangible cultural heritage also encapsulates the leitmotif of the cultural life of a community through time. Unlike material culture, it relies on and necessitates past, present and future generations to embody and transmit its values. But what happens if a community loses interest in its intangible cultural heritage? Should we care about this? Or what if a younger generation seeks to radically transform a tradition making it more consonant to the here and now? Is it even possible to preserve living heritage, without mummifying it?

There seems to be no straightforward recipe on how to balance the forces of continuity and change that are at the heart of thriving traditions. But one message resonates loud and clear in my mind: living intangible cultural heritage is about openness. Openness to be inspired by and inspire others; to share one’s culture and cherish that of others; to accept changes to our culture that make it more respectful of others and their culture.

The musical intermezzo by the band Shaian provided the perfect illustration of this. Based in the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz, it is composed by local residents, migrants and refugees from numerous countries (from Syria to Indonesia, via Eritrea). Shaian’s only common language is music. In just twenty minutes they took us on a whistle-stop tour of some of the world’s music traditions. Yet this musical patchwork made complete sense. It captured the great heights to which urban diversity can aspire when focusing on the commonalities, and not just the differences.

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