But what exactly are the commons? Traditionally they refer to natural resources, such as air, water or forests, not publicly or privately owned, but held in common. Now they have come to include the cultural sphere as well, like language, knowledge, our cities and the Internet. We can consider them shared gifts, which we receive as members of a community and govern in common: a self-organized system by which communities manage resources (both depletable and replenishable) with minimal or no reliance on the market or the state.
The world is our home, not your property
Community gardens, collective childcare, communal living and other commoning practices are becoming more and more visible and popularised, but can these commons provide a viable alternative, or a real challenge to our current economic system?
This reading group is participatory, self-organised and free of charge. We collectively decide which subtopics to cover and literature to read by splitting up into groups, which will each organize one of the sessions. The reading group will be in English, held from Oct. 8 to Dec. 17, bi-weekly on Wednesday evenings from 19:30 until 22:00 in political bookshop de Rooie Rat at Oudegracht 65 in Utrecht.
Reading group sessions
October 22: Defining the commons, commoning the definitions
November 5: Primary Education
November 19: Transformative/Community Justice, gender liberation and & commoning practices in Brasil and Kurdistan
December 3: Alternative currencies: the Masters Tools
December 17: Protecting the commons from co-optation
This reading group is organised within the framework of (Un)usual Business (Un)usual Business (Un)usual Business is an enthusiastic group of commoners, that grew out of a collaboration between Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory and Kritische Studenten Utrecht. We are organized as a collective, which means we function non-hierarchically and make decisions consensually. We rely on ... , a collaboration between Kritische Studenten Utrecht and Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory Casco - Office for Art, Design and Theory Casco is an open and public space for artistic research and experiments. We consider artistic practice as a way of engaging with the world we live in and as an investigative, imaginative, and inventive practice. The artistic practices we focus on are cross-disciplinary, open to ...