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150-500: The concept of the "information commons" refers to the shared knowledge-base and the processes that facilitate or hinder its use. It also refers to a physical space, usually in an academic library, where any and all can participate in the processes of information research, gathering and production. The term commons refers to the land (or common grounds) that villagers shared for grazing purposes in simpler times. The issues that fall under this topic are varied and include: Some believe that

300-462: A low culture , popular culture , or folk culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital . In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as body modification , clothing or jewelry . Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in

450-424: A collective psychological shift: it also entails a process of subjectivization, where the commoners produce themselves as common subjects. A commons failure theory, now called tragedy of the commons , originated in the 18th century. In 1833 William Forster Lloyd introduced the concept by a hypothetical example of herders overusing a shared parcel of land on which they are each entitled to let their cows graze, to

600-453: A community and that tend to be non-exclusive, that is, be (generally freely) available to third parties. Thus, they are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity. Additionally, the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources." Examples of digital commons are Misplaced Pages , free software and open-source hardware projects. Following

750-583: A community-run organization known as Acequia Associations supervises water in terms of diversion, distribution, utilization, and recycling, in order to reinforce agricultural traditions and preserve water as a common resource for future generations. The Congreso de las Acequias has since 1990s, is a statewide federation that represents several hundred acequia systems in New Mexico. In the late 1980s, Nepal chose to decentralize government control over forests . Community forest programs work by giving local areas

900-699: A community. In Paris, France, there are over 1,200 free drinkable water fountains distributed throughout the city. The first 100 were donated by Englishman Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890) in 1872, called the Wallace fountains, and since then the Parisian water company "Eau du Paris" have put more of them around the city, this give people living Paris and tourists all around the world access to free drinkable fresh water in Paris. Since then, many other countries like Spain, Brazil, Italy or Portugal have put these fountains on

1050-722: A complex ecosystem that operates as a common – a shared resource that is subject to social dilemmas and political debates. The focus here was on the ready availability of digital forms of knowledge and associated possibilities to store, access and share it as a common. The connection between knowledge and commons may be made through identifying typical problems associated with natural resource commons, such as congestion, overharvesting , pollution and inequities, which also apply to knowledge. Then, effective alternatives (community-based, non-private, non-state), in line with those of natural commons (involving social rules, appropriate property rights and management structures), solutions are proposed. Thus,

1200-520: A computer and screen, so students can work together efficiently on projects. Commons The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves

1350-406: A culture with an abacus are trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people view the same outcome of events differently. Westerners are more motivated by their successes than their failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the avoidance of failure. Culture is important for psychologists to consider when understanding the human mental operation. The notion of

1500-471: A decentralized approach, there is a strong emphasis on inclusion and democratic regulation which has led Commons as an alternative, emancipatory and emerging form of social organization that goes beyond democratic capitalism. Accordingly, through the cooperation of diverse stakeholders and the equitable distribution of means of production, technological development becomes more accessible and bottom-up projects are fostered in communities. Urban commons present

1650-437: A distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures. In 1860, Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) argued for "the psychic unity of mankind." He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of

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1800-819: A financial stake in nearby woodlands, and thereby increasing the incentive to protect them from overuse. Local institutions regulate harvesting and selling of timber and land, and must use any profit towards community development and preservation of the forests. In twenty years, some locals, especially in the middle hills, have noticed a visible increase in the number of trees, although other places have not seen tangible results, especially where opportunity costs to land are high. Community forestry may also contribute to community development in rural areas – for instance school construction, irrigation and drinking water channel construction, and road construction. Community forestry has proven conducive to democratic practices at grass roots level. Many Nepalese forest user groups generate income from

1950-474: A full picture, but it does not provide an ultimate explanation ." There are a number of international agreements and national laws relating to the protection of cultural heritage and cultural diversity . UNESCO and its partner organizations such as Blue Shield International coordinate international protection and local implementation. The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in

2100-574: A group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in

2250-481: A group was able to restrain access to a resource from outsiders, while regulating the communal use in an effective manner. This has allowed the local communities to reap the benefits of the rewards of their restrain for decades. Essentially, the local lobster fishers collaborate without much government intervention to sustain their common-pool resource. Acequia is a method of collective responsibility and management for irrigation systems in desert areas. In New Mexico,

2400-476: A historical event should not be thought of as culture unless referring to the medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally; however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their friends to "fit in" certainly qualifies since there is no grounded reason for one's participation in this practice. In the context of cultural studies, a text includes not only written language , but also films , photographs , fashion , or hairstyles :

2550-438: A larger brain. The word is used in a general sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively. This ability arose with the evolution of behavioral modernity in humans around 50,000 years ago and is often thought to be unique to humans . However, some other species have demonstrated similar, though much less complicated, abilities for social learning. It

2700-847: A limited concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to a wider culture sometimes referred to as Western civilization or globalism . From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall's pioneering work, along with that of his colleagues Paul Willis , Dick Hebdige , Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie , created an international intellectual movement. As the field developed, it began to combine political economy , communication , sociology , social theory , literary theory , media theory , film/video studies , cultural anthropology , philosophy , museum studies , and art history to study cultural phenomena or cultural texts. In this field researchers often concentrate on how particular phenomena relate to matters of ideology , nationality , ethnicity , social class , and/or gender . Cultural studies

2850-576: A low cost, contrary to physical resources which are quite limited. Shared resources represent in this context data, information, culture and knowledge which are produced and accessible online. In accordance with the "design global, manufacture local" approach digital commons may link the traditional commons theory with existing physical infrastructures. It further connects with the degrowth communities since transformations in use-value creation by employing new technologies, decoupling society from GDP growth and lower CO2 emissions, are envisioned. Moreover, as

3000-552: A lower scale. In the Stockholm region, green spaces are predominantly owned and managed in either private or municipal forms, allotment gardens being the most common form. The system provide cultural ecosystem services to lot holders, as well as the offer of vegetables, fruits, and ornamental flowers. The majority of allotment land in Stockholm is owned by the local municipality, and leaseholds are set for extended periods of time (up to 25 years). The local allotment association makes

3150-440: A measure. At Indiana University, for example, the main library gate count almost doubled from the year prior to the opening of the information commons to the second full year of its existence. Although statistics such as gate counts illustrate the impact of an information commons, there is more to success than just getting students into the library's facilities. St. Thomas University's librarian explained: I see that one rationale for

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3300-406: A member of society." Alternatively, in a contemporary variant, "Culture is defined as a social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of

3450-468: A modern context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy was man's natural perfection. His use, and that of many writers after him, " refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism , and through artifice, become fully human." In 1986, philosopher Edward S. Casey wrote, "The very word culture meant 'place tilled' in Middle English, and

3600-522: A new approach to culture was suggested by Rein Raud , who defines culture as the sum of resources available to human beings for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach, combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production, dissemination or transmission of purposes), thus making it possible to re-link anthropological and sociological study of culture with

3750-439: A part of the cooperative gives them consistent access to the best whiting grounds in the area which allows them to be highly successful, sometimes even dominating regional whiting markets during the winter season. It is a relatively high price to be a member of the collective, which limits entry, while also establishing catching quotas for members. They prevent unlimited entry or access to cap the number of members that are allowed in

3900-428: A particular group of people at a particular time." Terror management theory posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that provide humans with the basis for perceiving themselves as "person[s] of worth within the world of meaning"—raising themselves above the merely physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal insignificance and death that Homo sapiens became aware of when they acquired

4050-432: A person to make sense of the culture they inhabit, "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately." The sociology of culture concerns culture as manifested in society . For sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." As such, culture in the sociological field can be defined as

4200-442: A restoration of the population and commerce that beavers provided by the 1950s. The experience of the 1920s is not an isolated incident in the community either. Business conflicts among fur trading companies has led to a couple other times of resource overuse, but gradually resource use was restored to a proper balance once local control was restored. This case study reflects how communal resource sharing can be effectively propagated by

4350-431: A result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative sociologists to the field. Thus, there is now a growing group of sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists. These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural sociology, and instead, look for a theoretical backing in the more scientific vein of social psychology and cognitive science . The sociology of culture grew from

4500-448: A right to over pollute. It is a type of cap and dividend program. Ultimately the goal would be to make polluting excessively more expensive than cleaning what is being put into the atmosphere. While the original work on the tragedy of the commons concept suggested that all commons were doomed to failure, they remain important in the modern world. Work by later economists has found many examples of successful commons, and Elinor Ostrom won

4650-462: A seasonal lake and wetland area – into smaller parcels of land that were bought by people from Grassy Park who shared experiences of oppression and marginalization during apartheid. After 10 years of being utilised as a landfill, the area was covered in "non-indigenous" plants. While constructing their homes, the locals decided to do something different: rather than erecting security walls to demarcate and guard their individual property, they would restore

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4800-415: A social group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical behavior for an individual and duty, honor, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional responses in the continuum of conflict . In

4950-440: A social relation with a common whose uses are either exclusive to a social group or partially or fully open to all and sundry. At the heart of the practice of commoning lies the principle that the relation between the social group and that aspect of the environment being treated as a common shall be both collective and non-commodified-off-limits to the logic of market exchange and market valuations." Some authors distinguish between

5100-526: A variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism. Commons can also be defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates. The Digital Library of the Commons defines "commons" as "a general term for shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest". The term "commons" derives from

5250-463: A watershed role in landscape development and cooperative land use patterns and property rights. However, as in the British Isles, such changes took place over several centuries as a result of land enclosure . Economist Peter Barnes has proposed a 'sky trust' to fix this tragedic problem in worldwide generic commons. He claims that the sky belongs to all the people, and companies do not have

5400-583: Is comparative cultural studies , based on the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies. Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies had originated in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson , and Raymond Williams , and later that of Stuart Hall and others at

5550-490: Is "not negated but revolutionized". Communalizing housework also serves to de-naturalize it as women's labour, which has been an important part of the feminist struggle . As reproductive rights over unwanted pregnancies have been denied in many countries for many years, several resistance groups used diverse commoning strategies in order to provide women safe and affordable abortion. Care, knowledge, and pills have been made commons against abortion restriction. In New York, U.S.,

5700-413: Is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences." David Moshman has also stated in regards to adolescence that brain research "is crucial for

5850-745: Is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction and exist in specific human groups, or cultures, using the plural form. Raimon Panikkar identified 29 ways in which cultural change can be brought about, including growth, development, evolution, involution , renovation, reconception , reform, innovation , revivalism, revolution , mutation , progress , diffusion , osmosis , borrowing, eclecticism , syncretism , modernization, indigenization , and transformation. In this context, modernization could be viewed as adoption of Enlightenment era beliefs and practices, such as science, rationalism, industry, commerce, democracy, and

6000-534: Is an example of the production and maintenance of common goods by a contributor community in the form of encyclopedic knowledge that can be freely accessed by anyone without a central authority. Tragedy of the commons in the Wiki-Commons is avoided by community control by individual authors within the Misplaced Pages community. The information commons may help protect users of commons. Companies that pollute

6150-459: Is as important as human rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of Bildung : "For Herder, Bildung was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people." In 1795, the Prussian linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kant's and Herder's interests. During

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6300-422: Is concerned with the meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television or eating out) in a given culture. It also studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Specifically, culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of reason. Watching television to view a public perspective on

6450-411: Is considered a central concept in anthropology , encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies . Cultural universals are found in all human societies. These include expressive forms like art , music , dance , ritual , religion , and technologies like tool usage , cooking , shelter , and clothing . The concept of material culture covers

6600-414: Is important to adopt a commons discourse that actively resists this re-branding. Secondly, articulations of the commons, although historically present and multiple have struggled to come together as a unified front. For the latter to happen she argues that a "commoning" or "commons" movement that is effectively able to resist capitalist forms of organizing labour and our livelihoods must look to women to take

6750-469: Is necessarily situated within the value system of a given culture. The modern term "culture" is based on a term used by the ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes , where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi", using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood teleologically as the highest possible ideal for human development. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in

6900-424: Is not to be construed, therefore, as a particular kind of thing, asset or even social process, but as an unstable and malleable social relation between a particular self-defined social group and those aspects of its actually existing or yet-to-be-created social and/or physical environment deemed crucial to its life and livelihood. There is, in effect, a social practice of commoning. This practice produces or establishes

7050-424: Is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization , which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in

7200-520: Is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture: biological anthropology , linguistic anthropology , cultural anthropology , and in the United States and Canada, archaeology . The term Kulturbrille , or "culture glasses," coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas , refers to the "lenses" through which a person sees their own culture. Martin Lindstrom asserts that Kulturbrille , which allow

7350-527: Is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make or have made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological and anthropological studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or present. Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany (1918–1933), where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie ('cultural sociology'). Cultural sociology

7500-400: Is the real challenge, and the real goal, of the learning commons. Information commons have drawn students by offering environments that address their needs, bringing together technology, content, and services in a physical space that results in an environment different from that of a typical library. Traditional libraries offer technology, content, and services, so what is new or different about

7650-439: Is to refer to particular rights of common, and to reserve the name "common" for the land over which the rights are exercised. A person who has a right in, or over, common land jointly with another or others is called a commoner . In middle Europe, commons (relatively small-scale agriculture in, especially, southern Germany, Austria, and the alpine countries) were kept, in some parts, till the present. Some studies have compared

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7800-602: The Native Americans who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature; this opposition was expressed through the contrast between "civilized" and "uncivilized." According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer 's theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgan 's theory of cultural evolution . Just as some critics have argued that

7950-513: The Nobel prize for analysing situations where they operate successfully. For example, Ostrom found that grazing commons in the Swiss Alps have been run successfully for many hundreds of years by the farmers there. Allied to this is the "comedy of the commons" concept, where users of the commons are able to develop mechanisms to police their use to maintain, and possibly improve, the state of

8100-787: The Romantic movement was an interest in folklore , which led to identifying a "culture" among non-elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture , namely that of the ruling social group , and low culture . In other words, the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies. Matthew Arnold contrasted "culture" with anarchy ; other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau , contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature." According to Hobbes and Rousseau,

8250-547: The Romantic era , scholars in Germany , especially those concerned with nationalist movements—such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire —developed a more inclusive notion of culture as " worldview " ( Weltanschauung ). According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has

8400-399: The public domain that is not technically open source software. Many innovative programmers have and released open source applications to the public, without the restrictive licensing conditions of commercial software. A popular example is Linux , an open source operating system. The server computers for Google Search run Linux. Open-source programs started emerging in the 1960s. IBM

8550-864: The 1980s is one such license: "The GNU Free Documentation License is a form of copyleft intended for use on a manual, textbook or other document to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifications, either commercially or non-commercially." “In the 1980s, many professional societies turned over their journal publishing to private firms as a way to contain membership fees and generate income.” Prices of scholarly journals rose dramatically and publishing corporations restricted access to these journals through expensive licenses. Research libraries had no other choice but to cut many of their journal subscriptions. European and American academic communities began to find alternate ways to distribute and manage scholarly information. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)

8700-431: The 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory , have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the proletariat and create a false consciousness . Such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies . In the wider social sciences , the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from

8850-588: The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham . This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as "capitalist" mass culture ; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the " culture industry " (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see

9000-451: The Commons is to "get the students to the library." In our case, it has been very effective in attracting students…our gate count was 110 percent higher…so, it will attract students. But that begs the question?once they are in the building, what do we do with them? How do we engage them? The rationale for the learning commons, in my view, is that, properly designed, implemented, and operated, it will enhance student learning and scholarship. That

9150-664: The Event of Armed Conflict and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions deal with the protection of culture. Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights deals with cultural heritage in two ways: it gives people the right to participate in cultural life on the one hand and the right to the protection of their contributions to cultural life on

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9300-479: The German and English dealings with the commons between late medieval times and the agrarian reforms of the 18th and 19th centuries. The UK was quite radical in doing away with and enclosing former commons, while southwestern Germany (and the alpine countries as e.g. Switzerland) had the most advanced commons structures, and were more inclined to keep them. The Lower Rhine region took an intermediate position. However,

9450-813: The U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age , plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture , which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion ,

9600-965: The UK and the former dominions have till today a large amount of Crown land which often is used for community or conservation purposes. Based on a research project by the Environmental and Cultural Conservation in Inner Asia (ECCIA) from 1992 to 1995, satellite images were used to compare the amount of land degradation due to livestock grazing in the regions of Mongolia, Russia, and China. In Mongolia, where shepherds were permitted to move collectively between seasonal grazing pastures, degradation remained relatively low at approximately 9%. Comparatively, Russia and China, which mandated state-owned pastures involving immobile settlements and in some cases privatization by household, had much higher degradation, at around 75% and 33% respectively. A collaborative effort on

9750-482: The United States. In the 19th century, humanists such as English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the world." This concept of culture is also comparable to the German concept of bildung : "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all

9900-461: The Witch", Federici interprets the ascent of capitalism as a reactionary move to subvert the rising tide of communalism and to retain the basic social contract. The process of commoning the material means of reproduction of human life is most promising in the struggle to "disentangle our livelihoods not only from the world market but also from the war machine and prison system". One of the main aims of

10050-405: The addition of walkways, benches, and areas for barbecues. Here, management is done by the locals themselves, often with assistance from the local government, through paid employees and voluntary labour. Because of its immense size, governance is extremely difficult. Currently, the project spans 6-7 ha, potentially even more. Its proximity to a busy road and hundreds of residential homes exacerbates

10200-581: The anxious, unstable, and rebellious adolescent has been criticized by experts, such as Robert Epstein , who state that an undeveloped brain is not the main cause of teenagers' turmoils. Some have criticized this understanding of adolescence, classifying it as a relatively recent phenomenon in human history created by modern society, and have been highly critical of what they view as the infantilization of young adults in American society. According to Robert Epstein and Jennifer, "American-style teen turmoil

10350-468: The association represents the land owners in various administrative proceedings. In the post-apartheid metropolis of Cape Town, South Africa, the history of land rights is particularly noticeable since a large number of residents have vivid memories of being forcibly evacuated from their homes or of being assigned to live in specific regions. In 2005, the city re-zoned the Northern shore of Zeekoevlei –

10500-434: The cities in a complementary way with the state and the market. Some examples are community gardening , urban farms on the rooftops and cultural spaces. More recently participatory studies of commons and infrastructures under the conditions of the financial crisis have emerged. In 2007, Elinor Ostrom along with her colleague Charlotte Hess, did succeed in extending the commons debate to knowledge, approaching knowledge as

10650-399: The club. This is done through a closed membership policy, as well as having control over the docking spaces. This leads to exclude outsiders from entering the regional whiting market. The "quotas" are established based on what they estimate can be sold to the regional markets. It directly contrasts government imposed regulations which are typically considered to be inflexible by the fisherman in

10800-418: The common was an integral part of the manor , and was thus legally part of the estate in land owned by the lord of the manor , but over which certain classes of manorial tenants and others held certain rights. By extension, the term "commons" has come to be applied to other resources which a community has rights or access to. The older texts use the word "common" to denote any such right, but more modern usage

10950-403: The commons has a defined set of users. The use of "commons" for natural resources has its roots in European intellectual history, where it referred to shared agricultural fields, grazing lands and forests that were, over a period of several hundred years, enclosed, claimed as private property for private use. In European political texts, the common wealth was the totality of the material riches of

11100-461: The commons metaphor is applied to social practice around knowledge. It is in this context that the present work proceeds, discussing the creation of depositories of knowledge through the organised, voluntary contributions of scholars (the research community, itself a social common), the problems that such knowledge commons might face (such as free-riding or disappearing assets), and the protection of knowledge commons from enclosure and commodification (in

11250-516: The commons. This term was coined in an essay by legal scholar, Carol M. Rose, in 1986. Silvia Federici articulates a feminist perspective of the commons in her essay "Feminism and the Politics of the Commons". Since the language around the commons has been largely appropriated by the World Bank as it sought to re-brand itself "the environmental guardian of the planet", she argues that it

11400-529: The community forests, although the amount can vary widely among groups and is often invested in the community rather than flowing directly to individual households. Such income is generated from external sources involving the sales of timber from thinned pine plantations such as in the community forest user groups of Sindhu Palchok and Rachma, and internally in Nepal's mid-hills' broad leaf forests from membership fees, penalties and fines on rule-breakers, in addition to

11550-490: The concept of bildung : "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: " Sapere Aude " ("Dare to be wise!"). In reaction to Kant, German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes unpredictable and highly diverse forms,

11700-555: The control of some of more traditional publishing methods. Information published online are neither regulated by managers nor are they coordinated by price signals in the market. This results in a common-based production of knowledge that can be easily shared among individuals. The software commons consists of all computer software which is available to everyone to use for any purpose. It includes licensed open source software which can be used, studied, modified, and redistributed with few, if any, obligations. It also includes software in

11850-488: The decisions about who gets land rights. Only residents of multifamily homes inside the municipality were permitted to sign contracts, signifying a commitment to the original goals of allotments, which were to enhance the health of city dwellers in outdoor settings. Land is organised and managed cooperatively; outside enterprises are not involved in any way. The allotment association recognises lot holders as official members, granting them equal voting rights and shares. In turn,

12000-430: The detriment of all users of the common land. The same concept has been called the "tragedy of the fishers", when over-fishing could cause stocks to plummet. Forster's pamphlet was little known, and it wasn't until 1968, with the publication by the ecologist Garrett Hardin of the article "The Tragedy of the Commons", that the term gained relevance. Hardin introduced this tragedy as a social dilemma, and aimed at exposing

12150-434: The distinction between high and low cultures is an expression of the conflict between European elites and non-elites, other critics have argued that the distinction between civilized and uncivilized people is an expression of the conflict between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects. Other 19th-century critics, following Rousseau, have accepted this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen

12300-469: The environment release information about what they are doing. The Corporate Toxics Information Project and information like the Toxic 100, a list of the top 100 polluters, helps people know what these corporations are doing to the environment. Mayo Fuster Morell proposed a definition of digital commons as "information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between or among

12450-411: The event of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg , President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is the identity of the opponent, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to affect the particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and

12600-541: The field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view comes through in the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al. ), which seeks to challenge

12750-907: The form of intellectual property legislation, patenting, licensing and overpricing). At this point, it is important to note the nature of knowledge and its complex and multi-layered qualities of non-rivalry and non-excludability. Unlike natural commons – which are both rival and excludable (only one person can use any one item or portion at a time and in so doing they use it up, it is consumed) and characterised by scarcity (they can be replenished but there are limits to this, such that consumption/destruction may overtake production/creation) – knowledge commons are characterised by abundance (they are non-rival and non-excludable and thus, in principle, not scarce, so not impelling competition and compelling governance). This abundance of knowledge commons has been celebrated through alternative models of knowledge production, such as Commons-based peer production (CBPP), and embodied in

12900-488: The form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as China opened its economy to international trade in the late 20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct borrowing", on

13050-822: The former is not to be equated automatically with urban commons. Public spaces and goods in the city make a commons when part of the citizens take political action. Syntagma Square in Athens, Tahrir Square in Cairo, Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv, and the Plaza de Catalunya in Barcelona were public spaces that transformed to an urban commons as people protested there to support their political statements. Streets are public spaces that have often become an urban commons by social action and revolutionary protests. Urban commons are operating in

13200-417: The free software movement. The CBPP model showed the power of networked, open collaboration and non-material incentives to produce better quality products (mainly software). Scholars such as David Harvey have adopted the term commoning , which as a verb serves to emphasize an understanding of the commons as a process and a practice rather than as "a particular kind of thing" or static entity. "The common

13350-409: The fynbos and wetland ecology and establish a public communal garden. As stated by the locals, the initial plan was to build a "blueprint" for communal gardening that would serve as an example for other abandoned green areas, with the goal of "correcting the imbalances of apartheid" and "beautifying and dignifying". The nine residents and the city's conservation managers signed an agreement that allowed

13500-415: The globe during the process of colonization . Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation . The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) formulated an individualist definition of "enlightenment" similar to

13650-450: The group Haven Coalition volunteer provide pre and post abortion care for people who have to travel for abortion which is considered illegal in their places of origins, and with New York Abortion Access Fund, they are able to provide them with medical and financial assistance. Underground networks outside medical service establishments are where women's networks oversee the abortion and assist each other physically or emotionally by sharing

13800-487: The highly stratified capitalist systems of the West . In 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion . According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms. In the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities characteristic of all human societies. This view paved

13950-461: The increasing control and commodification of information restricts humanity's ability to encourage and foster positive developments in its cultural, academic, and economic growth. The internet, and the subsequent internet age, took the information commons to another level by empowering consumers to create and distribute information on a mass scale. The internet facilitated the decentralized production and distribution of information because it bypasses

14100-415: The individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the arts , sciences, education , or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and

14250-425: The inevitability of failure that he saw in the commons. However, Hardin's (1968) argument has been widely criticized, since he is accused of having mistaken the commons, that is, resources held and managed in common by a community, with open access, that is, resources that are open to everyone but where it is difficult to restrict access or to establish rules. In the case of the commons, the community manages and sets

14400-454: The information commons occupies one floor of a library facility, generally a main service floor, which often includes or replaces the library's reference area. Most information commons are currently in library spaces that have been renovated; a minority are in totally new buildings. A small number of information commons are in non library buildings. These renovated facilities have become enormously successful, if gate count statistics are used as

14550-399: The information commons? The technology in an information commons is intentionally more pervasive than in most traditional academic libraries. If not already a feature of the library, wireless access is added when the information commons is developed. In addition, increased hardwired Internet connections let students access large files, such as multimedia, or offer an alternative to wireless when

14700-414: The intersection between sociology (as shaped by early theorists like Marx , Durkheim , and Weber ) with the growing discipline of anthropology , wherein researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early development of the field lingers in the methods (much of cultural, sociological research is qualitative), in

14850-615: The knowledge of herbalism or home abortion. These underground groups operate under codenames like Jane Collective in Chicago or Renata in Arizona. Some groups like Women on Waves from Netherlands use international waters to conduct abortion. Also, in Italy, Obiezione Respinta movement collaboratively map spaces related to birth control such as pharmacies, consultors, hospitals, etc., through which users share their knowledge and experience of

15000-534: The lead in organizing the collectivization of our daily lives and the means of production . Women have traditionally been at the forefront of struggles for commoning "as primary subjects of reproductive work". This proximity and dependence on communal natural resources has made women the most vulnerable by their privatization, and made them their most staunch defendants. Examples include: subsistence agriculture , credit associations such as tontine (money commons) and collectivizing reproductive labor . In "Caliban and

15150-431: The liberatory aspects of fandom . The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded. Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School , but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on

15300-478: The local area. The cooperative on the other hand is considered to be effective and flexible in their sustainable use of the resources in the region. The widespread success of the Maine lobster industry is often attributed to the willingness of Maine's lobstermen to uphold and support lobster conservation rules. These rules include harbor territories not recognized by the state, informal trap limits, and laws imposed by

15450-416: The material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions. When used as a count noun , a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions , and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values

15600-407: The matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world." In practice, culture referred to an elite ideal and was associated with such activities as art , classical music , and haute cuisine . As these forms were associated with urban life, "culture" was identified with "civilization" (from Latin: civitas , lit.   'city'). Another facet of

15750-402: The most popular web browser . Licensing is the process that copyright owners use to monitor reproduction, distribution, or other use of creative works. Many commercial licensing conditions are costly and restrictive. Licensing models used in information commons typically grant permission for a wide range of uses. The GNU General Public License (GPL), developed by Richard Stallman at MIT in

15900-498: The narrative of post-growth, the digital commons can present a model of progress that guide commoners to build counter-power in the economic and political field. Being able to digitally share knowledge and resources through internet platforms is a new capacity that challenges the traditional hierarchical structures of production, allowing for a higher collective benefit and a sustainable management of resources. Non-material resources are digitally reproducible and therefore can be shared at

16050-408: The network becomes saturated at peak use times. Another major difference between an information commons and traditional libraries is the way in which they accommodate groups. Traditional libraries have focused on providing quiet space for individual study. Occasionally, a few group study rooms are available, but they are considered a peripheral feature of the library. In an information commons, much of

16200-422: The notion of progress. Rein Raud , building on the work of Umberto Eco , Pierre Bourdieu and Jeffrey C. Alexander , has proposed a model of cultural change based on claims and bids, which are judged by their cognitive adequacy and endorsed or not endorsed by the symbolic authority of the cultural community in question. Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to

16350-538: The notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis . The writer Julia Kristeva is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism . Petrakis and Kostis (2013) divide cultural background variables into two main groups: In 2016,

16500-402: The number of licenses themselves. In practice there are many restrictive exclusionary systems that are generated, dictated, and upheld by the community through a series of "traditional fishing rights" that have been locally grandfathered in. One must obtain confirmation to fish from the community to actually be granted access. Once an individual is granted access, they are still only able to access

16650-423: The opportunity for the citizens to gain power upon the management of the urban resources and reframe city-life costs based on their use value and maintenance costs, rather than the market-driven value. Urban commons situates citizens as key players rather than public authorities, private markets and technologies. David Harvey (2012) defines the distinction between public spaces and urban commons. He highlights that

16800-549: The organization of production. In the United Kingdom, cultural studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture ; that is, on the social meanings of mass-produced consumer and leisure goods. Richard Hoggart coined the term in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall , who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as

16950-539: The other hand, tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. Acculturation has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across

17100-405: The other. In the 21st century, the protection of culture has been the focus of increasing activity by national and international organizations. The UN and UNESCO promote cultural preservation and cultural diversity through declarations and legally-binding conventions or treaties. The aim is not to protect a person's property, but rather to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity, especially in

17250-517: The part of Mongolians proved much more efficient in preserving grazing land. A trawl fishery in the Blight region, located in New York, provides a completely different example of a type of community-based solution to what is sometimes referred to as the dilemma or "tragedy of the commons". The multitude of fishermen in the region make up a fishing cooperative who specialize in harvesting whiting. Being

17400-439: The peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g. " bro culture "), or a counterculture . Within cultural anthropology , the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated because any evaluation

17550-422: The perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures , which themselves are subject to change. Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models , and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example,

17700-446: The physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions ), mythology , philosophy , literature (both written and oral ), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society. In the humanities , one sense of culture as an attribute of

17850-412: The place and provide access to information that is difficult to obtain. Culture Culture ( / ˈ k ʌ l tʃ ər / KUL -chər ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior , institutions , and norms found in human societies , as well as the knowledge , beliefs , arts , laws , customs , capabilities, attitude , and habits of the individuals in these groups. Culture

18000-432: The practice of religion, analogous attributes can be identified in a social group. Cultural change , or repositioning, is the reconstruction of a cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies. Organizations like UNESCO attempt to preserve culture and cultural heritage. Culture

18150-419: The process of commoning is to create "common subjects" that are responsible to their communities. The notion of community is not understood as a "gated community", but as "a quality of relations, a principle of cooperation and responsibility to each other and the earth, the forests, the seas, the animals. In communalizing housework, one of the supporting pillars of human activity, it is imperative that this sphere

18300-439: The production of meaning . This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts . In a Marxist view, the mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences superstructures , such as culture. Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of

18450-495: The refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. These critics considered folk music (as produced by "the folk," i.e., rural, illiterate, peasants) to honestly express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples as " noble savages " living authentic and unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by

18600-431: The region due to a new railroad coming to the area, as well as an increase in fur prices at the time. The Amerindian communities' lost control over these territories for a short time during this period which helped to eventually lead to what is known as a "tragedy of the commons". In the 1930s conservation laws were enacted which prohibited outsiders from trapping in the area, and reinforced locals' customary laws. This led to

18750-436: The region. Beaver has been an important source of food and commerce for the area since the fur trade began in 1670. Unfortunately, beavers are an easy target for resource degradation and depletion due to their colonies being easily spotted. Luckily, the area has grandfathered in many traditions, and stewards of the land to safeguard certain territories populations. In the 1920s there was a massive influx of non-native trappers in

18900-477: The residents to incorporate the public shoreline area into the rehabilitation project, even though the city had retained the area closest to the shoreline as public property. Meanwhile, the city saw an opportunity to restore the fynbos and provided labour and plants for clearing and planting. About 50,000 plants were planted (and "weeds" eradicated) along Bottom Road over the course of four years, drawing bees, birds, dragonflies, and toads in addition to humans through

19050-450: The resources shared (the common-pool resource s), the community who governs it, and commoning , that is, the process of coming together to manage such resources. Commoning thus adds another dimension to the commons, acknowledging the social practices entailed in the process of establishing and governing a commons. These practices entail, for the community of commoners, the creation of a new way of living and acting together, thus involving

19200-424: The rules of access and use of the resource held in common: the fact of having a commons, then, does not mean that anyone is free to use the resource as they like. Studies by Ostrom and others have shown that managing a resource as a commons often has positive outcomes and avoids the so-called tragedy of the commons, a fact that Hardin overlooked. It has been said the dissolution of the traditional land commons played

19350-509: The sales of forest products. Some of the most significant benefits are that locals are able to use the products they gather directly in their own homes for subsistence use. Hunting wildlife territories in James Bay, Quebec; located in the northeastern part of Canada, provide an example of resources being effectively shared by a community. There is an extensive heritage of local customaries that are used to effectively regulate beaver hunting in

19500-418: The same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of "elementary ideas" ( Elementargedanken ); different cultures, or different "folk ideas" ( Völkergedanken ), are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas (1858–1942) was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for

19650-449: The same word goes back to Latin colere , 'to inhabit, care for, till, worship' and cultus , 'A cult, especially a religious one.' To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly." Culture described by Richard Velkley : ... originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meaning in

19800-625: The software commons grew with the help of a bulletin board servers , accessed with dial-up modems . This expanded in the late 1990s with the growth of the Internet , which facilitated international cooperation and allowed individuals and groups to share their products more freely. The GNU Project was founded in 1983 to develop free software . In 1998 Netscape Communications Corporation announced that all future versions of their software would be free of charge and developed by an Open Source Community (Mozilla). This included Netscape Navigator , then

19950-507: The space is configured for use by small groups of students, reflecting students' desire for collaborative learning and combining social interaction with work. Information commons frequently have furniture built to accommodate several people sharing a common computer and provide large tables where several students can use their laptops while working together, comfortable seating areas with upholstered furniture to encourage informal meetings, cafes with food and drink, and group study rooms, often with

20100-441: The state of Maine (which are largely influenced by lobbying from lobster industry itself). Lobster is another resource that is sometimes considered vulnerable to overharvesting, and many people within the industry itself have been predicting a collapse for years. Nonetheless, the lobster industry has remained relatively unscathed by resource depletion. The state government of Maine establishes certain regulations, but they do not limit

20250-423: The territories held by that community. Outsiders may be persuaded by threats of violence even. It is impossible to know if the lobster resource would have been sustainably used if there was more regulation, or without the internal regulation, but it is certainly being used sustainably in its current state of affairs. It also seems to be run relatively efficiently. This case study of Maine lobster fisheries reflects how

20400-435: The texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture, for a cultural-studies researcher, not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups ) and popular culture , but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach

20550-771: The theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities), and in the substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture , political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field. In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism such as Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams (1921–1988) developed cultural studies . Following nineteenth-century Romantics, they identified culture with consumption goods and leisure activities (such as art, music, film, food , sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as determined by relations of production , which led them to focus on class relations and

20700-560: The tradition of textual theory. Starting in the 1990s, psychological research on culture influence began to grow and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. Culture psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and culture , and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese, suppress their positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect

20850-416: The traditional English legal term for common land , which are also known as "commons", and was popularised in the modern sense as a shared resource term by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in an influential 1968 article called " The Tragedy of the Commons ". As Frank van Laerhoven and Elinor Ostrom have stated; "Prior to the publication of Hardin's article on the tragedy of the commons (1968), titles containing

21000-467: The traffic issue. In addition to the disregard shown by the city administration, the neighbourhood has deteriorated as a result of people setting up barbecues at random and cars driving around freely, both of which have been linked to criminal activity. Today, the commons are also understood within a cultural sphere. These commons include literature, music, arts, design, film, video, television, radio, information, software and sites of heritage. Misplaced Pages

21150-435: The way for the modern understanding of religion. Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culture, in the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American anthropology , where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode human experiences symbolically , and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially. American anthropology

21300-572: The way that people experience and express emotions. On the other hand, some researchers try to look for differences between people's personalities across cultures . As different cultures dictate distinctive norms , culture shock is also studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other cultures. LGBT culture is displayed with significantly different levels of tolerance within different cultures and nations. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently cross culture. For example, people who are raised in

21450-412: The ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a people's way of life. Culture can be either of two types, non-material culture or material culture . Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that individuals have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material culture

21600-461: The words 'the commons', ' common pool resources ', or 'common property' were very rare in the academic literature." Some texts make a distinction in usage between common ownership of the commons and collective ownership among a group of colleagues, such as in a producers' cooperative. The precision of this distinction is not always maintained. Others conflate open access areas with commons; however, open access areas can be used by anybody while

21750-465: The work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy . In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition." The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture ; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about

21900-546: The world, such as the air, the water, the soil and the seed, all nature's bounty regarded as the inheritance of humanity as a whole, to be shared together. In this context, one may go back further, to the Roman legal category res communis , applied to things common to all to be used and enjoyed by everyone, as opposed to res publica , applied to public property managed by the government. The examples below illustrate types of environmental commons. Originally in medieval England

22050-471: The writings of the 18th-century German thinkers, who were on various levels developing Rousseau 's criticism of " modern liberalism and Enlightenment ." Thus a contrast between "culture" and " civilization " is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. In the words of anthropologist E.B. Tylor , it is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as

22200-454: Was founded in 1998. “It is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. Its pragmatic focus is to stimulate the emergence of new scholarly communication models that expand the dissemination of scholarly research and reduce financial pressures on libraries." Many institutions are renovating their libraries to become information commons or learning commons. Frequently,

22350-411: Was one of the first computer companies to offer their products to the public. Most of these computers came with free software that was universal among similar computers, and could be altered by anyone with the software. This changed in the 1970s when IBM decided to take more control of their products, removing the source codes and not allowing the redistribution of their software. In the 1980s and 1990s

22500-683: Was then reinvented in the English-speaking world as a product of the cultural turn of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may be loosely regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory . Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically focusing on words, artifacts and symbols. Culture has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including resolutely scientific fields like social stratification and social network analysis . As

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