SpanishPreface12-17.pdf

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1 Syracuse University From the SelectedWorks of Charlotte Hess Spring 2016 SpanishPreface12-17.pdf Charlotte Hess This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-NC-SA International License. Available at:

2 Hess, Charlotte. Preface (English version of Prólogo a la edición en Español ) to Los bienes communes del conocimento, 2016, ed. C. Hess and E. Ostrom; Quito and Madrid: Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales de Ecuador and Traficantes de Sueños; the Spanish edition of Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice, 2017, Ed. C. Hess and E. Ostrom, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. I. Since the original publication of Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice (UKC) by Elinor Ostrom and me in 2007 by MIT Press, the study of knowledge and information commons has skyrocketed around the globe. This is not cause and effect. Knowledge commons finally have the embrace as legitimate commons or common-pool resources by international scholars and practitioners; the crucial importance of universal and equitable access to timely, accurate, and authoritative information to all, including, if not especially in, the global south; and the meteoric rise of social media that foster powerful forms of political and social collective action. Commons thinking allows us to see shared digital knowledge as outputs of new types human institutions reflecting a complexity of rules and behaviors. Ten years out, we can see more clearly that understanding knowledge as a commons can help manifest new ways of human organization grassroots, ground up, hands-on, and people-centered. With its long tradition of commons institutions, such as huertas and ejidos, most of the Spanishspeaking world already is familiar with the concept of commons. The study of natural-resource commons has been quite strong in the Spanish-speaking world. The steady rate of recent articles and papers on knowledge commons (KC) demonstrates the utility for the kind of analytical blueprint that this book provides. But while there are around 2000 volumes of UKC in libraries around the world, there are only 40 or so volumes in Spanish-speaking countries. This new Spanish edition will now give access to the many commons scholars in Latin America, Spain, North America, and other Spanish-speaking regions. I have no doubt that Elinor Ostrom would be as delighted as I am at the momentous occasion of this translation into one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world. The Preface to the original edition outlines the book s intellectual fermentation during the Workshop on Scholarly Communication as a Commons (March 30-April 2, 2004), a three-day event that gathered together leading scholars and knowledge professionals to discuss KC issues of great concern. The book arose out of the excitement at the insights and lessons learned that were shared by our colleagues who, like us, had ventured into this new area of study. Our goal with the book was to provide a useful guide for further study of KC and adapt a specific research methodology employed in the study of traditional commons. The volume presents various perspectives from interdisciplinary scholars on this new commons domain. We were eager to be able to situate the knowledge commons within the context of natural-resource commons analysis by providing adaptations of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework, while including in-depth discussions of specific questions and puzzles about these new types of commons. UKC was reviewed by at least 20 scholarly publications from various disciplines. All the reviews were generally favorable but they were not without useful criticisms. A few correctly pointed out that the book is too northern and U.S.-centric in focus. The book possibly should have distinguished between knowledge commons and information commons. It fails to cover some

3 important areas such as field of knowledge management or the Creative Commons. It tends to overly emphasize the Tragedy of the Commons (TOC) and under-emphasizes the possibilities negative outcomes of shared knowledge and the utility of the TOC paradigm. Yes, yes, yes! We agreed to most all these criticisms. We could list our rationale and excuses but they are beside the point. There are most certainly are many other gaps and shortfalls. Now, however, it must be said that therein lies the assignment and the challenge for future scholars. Although is has been ten years since Ostrom and I collaborated on this book, it remains, I believe, as relevant now as ever. The types and complexities of shared digital commons have grown exponentially since (See a review of subsequent KC research in Hess, The Unfolding of the Knowledge Commons. St Antony's International Review, Volume 8, Number 1, May 2012, pp [12]. Available open access). The importance of libraries and archives, careful and systematic preservation of the cultural record and the quest for open access to all useful information still remain critical issues to understand and safeguard. But, in other ways, it seems whole new landscapes have arisen in the KC universe in only a few short years. II. There are so many new areas of knowledge-commons study it is impossible to mention them all in this short space. Open systems of shared scientific research and data has become an important area of research, practice, and collaboration in the past ten years with frequent international conferences, research collaboration, and publications. Crowdsourcing scientific research and funding; and the challenges of big data collection, management, sharing, preservation are all important new areas. Concerns for rising surveillance, collection of personal data, and the loss of privacy generally contain some important commons issues that need to be teased out and addressed. Knowledge commons as global commons is a huge open area for future research. There are, even today, few solid studies on global commons in general and almost none on global knowledge commons. The complexities are great, international communications systems are relatively new and social transaction costs are high. The failure of international warning systems caused thousands of lives in the tsunami disaster of This was a colossal failure of the knowledge commons. Successful global knowledge commons such as international warning communications can be life-saving but how do we get there? There has to be greater awareness that these global events are commons problems. And there needs to be adequate understanding of how to make them work. Issues of public health coordination, disaster relief, cybersecurity, etc. are all important types of KC global commons in need of greater research and better practice. Perhaps the biggest development in the knowledge commons is the dramatic use of new social media and smart phones to generate effective political collective action. These examples extend far beyond the well-known Arab Spring digital organizing. One needs only to think of the use of social media as the organizing tools used to mobilize peace marches in Colombia in 2008 or Democracia Real YA! protests in Spain in The millions of Facebook and Twitter users in Central America fed up with endemic political corruption demonstrated their digital-commons

4 strength in Guatemala. They organized protests, influenced voting, and ultimately ousted their president, Otto Perez Molina, in We rarely read the word commons in reports about online political action but they are no less commons. Social media in combination with cell phones can be employed to inform during disease outbreaks, political migration, or local protests against corporate domination or police brutality. How can social media facilitate action to support climate change when public collective action is banned as it was recently in Paris 2015? Are there alternative methods to managing these disparate types of knowledge commons still to be learned? How do they work? How do they stay open and relevant and effective? How do they engage in effective governance? Are they sustainable? Who makes the decisions? What are the rules? Regardless of the type of KC, the issues of institutional design, property rights, threats of enclosure, and the other commons factors discussed in this book continue to be essential in the analysis. It is well known that access to data, information, knowledge and cultural heritage are intricately connected to political and economic systems. The growing corpus of knowledge commons work in Spanish is important. It will not only contribute to the global knowledge pool. It will begin to address the persistent inequalities in the global south where a fraction of the amount is spent on research and infrastructure development in, Latin America, for example, than in the US or in Europe. Growing public awareness of importance of understanding knowledge and information as commons may help organize greater resistance to international agreements that restrict freedom to knowledge and further enclose the commons. We already know that the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (which includes Peru, Chile, and Mexico) will have extensive negative ramifications for users freedom of expression, right to privacy and due process, and hinder peoples' abilities to innovate. (See III. Most are well aware that Elinor Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (along with Oliver Williamson) in 2009 for her contribution challenging the conventional wisdom by demonstrating how local property can be successfully managed by local commons without any regulation by central authorities or privatization. This was an enormous stride forward in the study of the commons, giving it greater international recognition and legitimacy. It was also a public testimonial to the rigor, scope, and intellectual creativity of a woman who was formally a political scientist. The prize pays homage to her interdisciplinary approach and her impressive output of hundreds of publications on her research in forest, irrigation, atmosphere, knowledge, and global commons; on public entrepreneurship, social capital, trust, property rights, institutional analysis, policy analysis, game theory applications, and many other subjects. Her groundbreaking research and analysis presented in her 1990 book Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action still serves as the bible for the study of the commons. Through her analysis (using complex instruments and a relational database) she was able to discern eight design principles common to long-enduring robust commons. This discovery changed our thinking about commons and what makes them work (or not). Throughout her professional work, Ostrom was a champion of the power of collective

5 action and self-governance. She demonstrated repeatedly that there are no panaceas that there is no one right solution, that local design always matters. Later, drawing upon Vincent Ostrom s important work, she argued for deeper analysis and application of polycentric systems for the governance of global commons. In my opinion, two other contributions made by Ostrom to the world scholarship on commons are 1. The strong network of international, interdisciplinary commons scholars she built before there were established threads to tie them together. With her staff, she collected names and addresses of everyone she met or read about throughout the world working on some aspect of shared resources, property rights and /or collective action; and 2. Her entrepreneurial initiative and generous funding to build the world s first commons library. In the early 1980s she hired a professional librarian. Using her global network file, they established a highly successful publications/research exchange and began amassing a rich research collection on the commons. This effort was facilitated by Ostrom s strong belief in the crucial importance of grey literature in the building of any new research area. Ostrom s untimely death in 2012 was a tremendous loss to the large community of students and colleagues who knew her. Since then, hundreds of publications document her rich intellectual legacy. But Ostrom was not only a scholar admired for her research, teaching, and publications. Lin, as everyone called her, was universally loved, known far and wide as an amazingly kind and generous person. She was very warm, relentlessly cheerful, and with an infectious laugh, especially for someone who worked so much and slept so little. (She was notorious for her occasional 6AM breakfast work meetings). She loved to meet new people and to connect people with one another. Lin and Vincent Ostrom, both personally lived the commons ethos, and from early on infused a collaborative spirit as the modus operandi of their highly productive institute at Indiana University called the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. All new staff were drilled on the Workshop methodology: work hard, have fun, take risks, speak your mind, and always show respect for all other colleagues, no matter what their job. The weekend we rearranged the library in 1990, Lin and Vincent showed up in their work clothes and helped move shelves and books along with the rest of us until the job was done. The Ostroms would frequently invite colleagues out to their house and, in the old days, would do much of the cooking themselves. Take a look at her online cv (curriculum vitae) at and you will see the long list of her collaborating authors. I, personally, cannot imagine a more energizing, patient, nor interesting person to collaborate with. IV. A note about a quote: We opened the Introduction to this book with an ancient zen koan cited in Hofstadter s Gödel, Escher and Bach:

6 Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said, The flag is moving. The other said, The wind is moving. The sixth patriarch, Zeno, happened to be passing by. He told them, Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving. It was a simple point. We liked the appropriateness of wind, flag, no mind, to our emphasis on the influence of human institutions and institutional design on natural and artificial resources. Later, while attending a Genzo-e zen retreat at Sanshin Zen Community, Abbot Shohaku Okumura, eminent scholar and translator, gave a reading and lecture on the same koan from the Shobogenzo of Dogen, the 13 th c. founder of Japanese Soto Zen. This zen tradition teaches a much different understanding of this koan. Dogen says: It is not the wind; it is not the flag; it is not the mind. All are connected. There is no separation. This teaching requires us to go deeper, to grasp our interconnectedness with all life, beyond greed, beyond hierarchy, and beyond separateness. Indeed, these ten years later, I find greater meaning in understanding our ultimate interconnectedness and see this as even more relevant in the success of commons.