First Edition
First Edition of Think Like a Commoner (2014)
In the early 2000s, a growing literature on the commons, much of it associated with Professor Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues, was taking root in academic circles. There was also a surge of novel commons-based projects, especially in software and Internet contexts, providing an odd counterpoint to many ancient Indigenous and traditional c ommons. Myriad self-organized collectives were engaged in commoning without the benefit of vocabularies or discourses to explain them. Still others were struggling to overcome the hammerlock of neoliberal economics on people’s imaginations and capacity for change-making.
These factors prompted David Bollier to decide, in 2012, that it was time to write a short, accessible popular introduction to the commons. After fifteen years as a participant-observer-activist working with commoners in the US and internationally, he realized that many rich, scattered veins of knowledge about the commons that needed to be synthesized. The misleading economic narrative about the “tragedy of the commons” (i.e., the tragedy of the market) needed to be debunked, and the generative social dynamics of commons explained. Countless commoners, often isolated and unknown to each other, needed to come together to co-learn, collaborate, and organize politically.
Think Like a Commoner, published by New Society Publishers in 2014, helped address many of these problems. Since then, there have been so many significant developments in the Commonsverse – new initiatives, websites, books, scholarship, cross-sectoral collaborations, and seven translations of Think Like a Commoner – that Bollier decided it was time to update and revise the book. The original edition remains a useful general introduction to the commons, but the new edition gives it a richer grounding in contemporary realities.
“The Commons is among the most important and hopeful concepts of our time, and once you’ve read this book you’ll understand why!”
—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy
More advance praise
David Korten
"Think Like a Commoner is a brilliant, accessible, practical, path-breaking intellectual tour de force. A defining contribution to the New Economy movement and an essential read for everyone who cares about the human future. I expect to return to it as a basic reference for years to come."
—David Korten, author, Agenda for a New Economy, board chair YES! Magazine, and co-chair, New Economy Working Group
Maude Barlow
"Our world is in need of reviving an ancient wisdom if it is to survive. David Bollier has a beautiful, bold but practical vision for our commons future and lights the path forward. I love this book!"
—Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians; international water activist
Max Haiven
"Fabulous and invaluable. I want to hand copies out to people on street corners."
—Max Haiven, Assistant professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and author of Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power: Capitalism, Creativity and the Commons.
Michel Bauwens
"The commons is truly the new paradigm, the missing third link for the reform of civilization. But the commons is not a thing, but above all the expression of a cultural revolution and of subjective changes. David Bollier has done a great job of explaining the importance of this great cultural shift."
—Michel Bauwens, Founder, Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives
Peter Barnes
"If you’re doubtful that government or private corporations can solve the problems of the twenty-first century, don’t despair. Instead, read this eloquent book. With examples from around the world, David Bollier shows how commoners are co-creating and protecting wealth of many kinds — and how commons, far from being relics of the past, are harbingers of a better world to come."
—Peter Barnes, author of Capitalism 3.0 and Who Owns the Sky?
Ralph Nader
"It probably surprises you to know that the wealth we own together as a commons is far more valuable than the wealth we and corporations own separately. Corporations know this fact and have commercialized or taken control of what we the people own – such as the public airwaves, the public lands, our genes and trillions of dollars of knowledge (e.g., research and development) paid by taxpayers, for starters. For this and more you must read Bollier’s brilliant distillation of the huge variety of commons and how we can take control of what we own to transform our economy for us, our posterity and the planet. Once you pick it up, you’ll tremble with the excitement of what we all own in the form of the commons that somehow escaped notice in our years of formal education."
—Ralph Nader