Think Like a Commoner

“We don’t live alone in the world, but it’s organized in ways that push us apart. Think Like a Commoner restores those relationships—with place, as well as with each other. In place of passive anxiety, these pages are filled with meaningful acts of care—as already practiced by grassroots communities across the world.”

—John Thackara, author, convenor, educator

“In Think Like a Commoner, David Bollier, the trailblazing commons thinker and activist, has formulated the economic principles of an animate universe. He manages the rare task of both sketching a bold new economic cosmology and detailing the filigree of its practical applications. The intrigued reader comes to understand: Not only is reality as such a commons, centered around the reciprocity of the gift of life, so are the bulk of our cultural practices and many systems of material and social exchange. The commons, it turns out, are what underlies everything and what ultimately fulfills our deepest longings.”

—Dr. Andreas Weber, biologist, philosopher, and author of The Biology of Wonder and Matter and Desire

"Curious about the commons and eager to build a new world? You could not find a more accessible, inspiring guidebook than Think Like a Commoner. It’s a penetrating history of commoners fighting market enclosures and a survey of innovative new forms of commoning now spreading across the world. Drawing on three decades of work as an activist-scholar, Bollier identifies key challenges facing commoners and provides useful strategies and resources for expanding the Commonsverse. Highly recommended!"

—Susan Witt, Cofounder and Executive Director, Schumacher Center for a New Economics

“Since the first publication of David Bollier’s earlier version of Think Like a Commoner in 2014, I have consistently used in in classes I teach at my university. I know of no work that so gracefully presents commons history, the many types of commons that exist in our world, and key issues they face.  This book should be required reading—not just for all students—but for every person on the planet, to allow them to rediscover ideas they may have forgotten, introduce new ones, and become inspired toward collectively generating a better world, one commoning instance at a time.”

—Charlie Schweik, Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the President of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (2022–2024)

"This book opened worlds to me that I have spent all the years since exploring. The new edition once again crystallizes, better than anything I know, where we are in this collective journey of discovering and rediscovering ourselves as commoners."

—Nathan Schneider, author of Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life

"With nature financialized, the commons securitized, people individualized, sharing criminalized, and life’s work commodified, David Bollier, like a gallant knight of old, wields a muck-raker’s lance and carries a social scientist’s shield on behalf of the “republic of the commons.”  His introduction is supple, generous, comprehensive, colloquial, kind, and clear.  Privatizers beware for here truth will out, and error be uprooted."

—Peter Linebaugh, author of Red Round Globe Hot Burning

"Hidden beneath the norms of markets and states lies another way for people to live and work together—one that’s radically different from conventional practice and yet fundamentally attuned to core human values. As Bollier illuminates in this wide-ranging and penetrating book, this is the way of the commoner. Bollier shows how the commons are all around us—in cities, technology, agriculture, art, and education—even when they’re not ordinarily recognized as such. By making the invisible become visible, this landmark book lays out a comprehensive framework for a parallel polis: how we might reorient our society around a way of commoning that sets the conditions for collective human flourishing."

—Jeremy Lent, Author, The Patterning Instinct and The Web of Meaning

"If, like me, you are deeply bothered by the incessant erosion of community life, collective forms of care for each other and our natural environment and the colonization of our life worlds by private gain, read this brilliant book. David Bollier not only sharply dissects many of the ills haunting contemporary capitalist societies, as one of the most pre-eminent thinkers and advocates of the commons, he demonstrates that the ideas, tool and practices to build a different, better world for everyone are all around us. Pick up this hopeful book, start commoning, and ‘intensify and diversify’ the many commons you are already part of to the next level!"

—Bram Buscher, professor, chair of the sociology of development and change group, Wageningen University, and co-author, The Conservation Revolution

"As we grapple with collapsing ecosystems, savage inequalities, and much else, it’s time to realize that practical options are already at hand. A rich world of possibilities can be found in the commons—a re-emerging social form that is quietly reinventing political economies and cultures worldwide. In this wise, compelling book, Think Like a Commoner, David Bollier explains how the deep relationality of commoning is helping people meet important needs themselves, directly, while developing new ways of being in the world."

—Jonathan F.P. Rose, author, The Well Tempered City; Founder, Jonathan Rose Companies; and Co-Founder, the Garrison Institute

"This is an excellent book that deserves to be read from cover to cover. If we cannot rely on corporations, the market, or government to solve the social, economic, and environmental problems of the twenty-first century, then where else should we look? In Think like a Commoner, David Bollier makes a passionate and compelling case for massively expanding the commons, an effective and just organizing structure with a long history and widespread, if unrecognized, presence in the world today. Bollier draws on history, philosophy, law, anthropology, ecology, economics and more to show a way to a fairer and genuinely democratic future that is built on reciprocal relationships with all of nature."

—Peter A. Victor, Professor Emeritus, York University, author of Escape from Overshoot: Economics for a Planet in Peril