The Gifting Logos. E. Johanna Hartelius
Unfortunately, many analysts—in academia, special interest groups, governments, and the press—still presume that common-pool problems are all dilemmas in which the participants themselves cannot avoid producing suboptimal results, and in some cases disastrous results. [. . .] Instead of presuming that some individuals are incompetent, evil, or irrational, and others are omniscient, I presume that individuals have very similar limited capabilities to reason and figure out the structure of complex environments.10
Ostrom’s work demonstrates that the notion of unmanaged commons, as Hardin might call them, is misleading, even oxymoronic.11 The pasture is never entirely open. Common pool resources are governed by rules and norms that are enforced by variously elected community leaders. They are “stinted.”12 The authority of leaders is assured by consent, which naturally entails conflict and continuous negotiation.13 The networks of the commons are maintained by the participants’ adherence to explicit and implicit codes; this adherence assures the endurance of the networks. Codes are in effect even when the networked interactions and the products thereof seem chaotic. When this is not the case, the commons falters and requires repair.
Because the Norman Conquest was a long time ago, and the Alanya inshore fisheries of Ostrom’s research are remote, it is helpful to bring the natural commons closer to home, connecting it to my project here and now. Specifically, before proceeding to the next section on the cultural commons I highlight a few ways in which the natural commons directly informs my analysis of digital rhetorical networks and processes. First, it is significant that the boundaries of ownership and access in the natural commons are negotiated continuously rather than through a one-time purchase, and that this negotiation happens through the symbols and practices of the commons rather than through the markers of official authority. As Linebaugh explains, undeterred English commoners persisted with their customs for centuries after the enclosure movement. Indeed, the example of so-called perambulations illustrates this point: long after the privatization of English common lands had begun, the commoners would ceremoniously walk along the perimeters of their territories, walk through the invisible lines dictated by parchment maps, and walk on the grounds where their families had long lived.14 These perambulations were a rhetorical negotiation of ownership and access. They entailed potentially hostile conflict and an enactment of rights, expectations, and motives through spatial and generational networks. To fully appreciate this practice, we might envision a group of commoners walking through the damp chill of spring and coming upon a fence in the middle of a field, a limit that previously was not there. What do they do? What should they think? As Hyde notes, the annual tradition of the walkabout did not become subversively defiant until legal edicts began to inscribe the land with property regulation.15 At that time, the physical act of moving through a network (of fields) was a way of establishing belonging: what belonged to whom and who belonged where. In the networks of the natural commons (as in the networks of the digital commons, which I get to later in the chapter), proprietary rights are not managed by a single buy-and-sell transaction, despite the best laid plans of mice and kings. Rather, the relationship between commoners and ownership is constituted through living habits.16
Second, it is significant for my study of the commons that the distinction in the natural commons between labor time and not-labor time is indeterminate, as commoners are continuously engaged in some form of production. One may think of it this way: in a village, commoners work continuously to make the things that sustain life, such as shelter, tools, and food. There is no “on the clock” or “off the clock” in terms of labor, nor are there clearly distinguishable places of labor and leisure. The products that are made in the evening hours (such as knitted socks or sharpened knives) are not worth less than the products that are made between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon. All production is part of the livelihood of the commons. By contrast, laborers in an industrial setting may only be said to be working per se when they are at work in the factory, plant, or office. In this context, not-labor is the activity that happens in the not-workplace, which is to say at home or in establishments of social pleasure. Moreover, the indistinction of labor and not-labor in the natural commons must be correlated with governance. As Bollier explains with reference to historical industrialization, “One of the lesser-noticed aspects of enclosures was the separation of production and governance. In a commons, both were part of the same process, and all commoners could participate in both. After enclosures, markets took charge of production and the state took charge of governance.”17 I underscore this point about productive labor, time, and access to governance in the natural commons to explain that when we think of the continuous labor of village commoners from centuries ago, we might also think of today’s digital commoners, whose productivity is similarly continuous. The latter are engaged in digitally organized labor not just from nine to five but most of the time. This labor takes place not only at the office but in domestic and social venues: on the couch or at the coffee shop. Thus far, the analogy make sense. What is perhaps more complicated, and receives more attention in chapters 2 and 4, is the issue of managerial control. Bollier argues that productive commoners of the pre-enclosure time were involved actively in the governance of the commons. In later chapters I explore the extent to which this may apply to the decision-making procedures and power negotiations of the digital commons.
Third, the natural commons are relevant to my study of the digital commons insofar as they thrive on a rhetorical tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the mundane and the mysterious. Put differently, the commons are conditioned by a dialectic of what is readily known and what is potentially knowable. This is so in the past and present, and in the natural as well as the digital. Regarding the familiar, perhaps it goes without saying that the commons are common. They are routinized and dependent on predictability. In the natural commons, village life contains few surprises and plenty of well-worn habits. In the digital commons, routines are both mathematical, which is to say algorithmic, and human; most of us execute the chores of everyday life through communication technologies. At the same time, however, the natural commons are liminal, shaped by a boundary separating cultivated space from wilderness.18 In the uncharted, unmapped territory of the forest, ocean, and outer space, there is no telling what mysteries may dwell, exceeding or resisting human control. We the commoners watch these knowable phenomena from our windows, looking into the deep woods, the dark sky, or the World Wide Web. The commons and their unboundedness thus stimulate the imagination and beckon rhetorical invention. In the digital commons the mystery hides somewhere deep in the machine. In the inaccessible paths of the electronic networks, certain functions exceed the knowledge of most digital commoners. We who know precious little about the networked machines and their impenetrable languages are as mystified by them as the village commoners were by the idea of wood nymphs and krakens.
This dialectical feature of the natural commons is important for my analysis because delineating what is familiar and what is unfamiliar, or moving the line such that what was unfamiliar becomes familiar, is a rhetorical act of expertise. It is to make something known or knowable, to invent something in such a way that it is intelligible. It is to explain something, such as the movements of stars or the binary code of a computer program, so that we commoners understand: to make known and to give. This is a process of invention designed both to demystify and to maintain enough mystery that the expert remains necessary for the common good; for without some measure of mystery, the commoners would not need explanation from an authority figure. The mystery that exists at the periphery of the commons, like a horizon against which the commons may know itself, is significant not only for the commoners’ experience of everyday life but also for the identification and appointment of authority figures, the function of which is to make things known.
THE CULTURAL COMMONS
Reflecting on the vast concept of the cultural commons, it is helpful to begin with something concrete. In 1963 the Walt Disney Corporation released an animated film titled The Sword in the Stone, loosely based on the legend of King Arthur and the sword Excalibur. The film depicts a young boy, a wise old wizard with a pet owl, and a critical moment in which the boy rises to a challenge to fulfill his destiny. In short, the film is generic. Its narrative is familiar even to those who have not seen it. With this film as a starting point, my introduction of the cultural commons