Since the Festival of Commoning in Stroud, I’ve been to events about community land ownership in the town and used community asset spaces for parties and group meetings, and yet I still can’t quite communicate the idea of Commons.
The Stroud event still left a hole in my understanding. I understand corporate/community ownership. There is a formal legal body that is invested in and which legally owns a thing. That thing (place, product, service) is then shared and maintained.
One speaker in Stroud did help. One spoke of Naming and the pressure to Own those things that are named. The need to clarify that everything is being held responsibly but that responsibility can only be demonstrated in formal claims of ownership.
That a set of agreements, in rights and responsibilities, could exist without ownership is hard for governments and institutions. It is hard for people brought up with such structures to imagine too.