As we enter a time of climate catastrophe, worsening inequality, and collapsing market/state systems, can human societies transcend the old, dysfunctional paradigms and build the world anew? There are many signs of hope.
In The Great Awakening, twelve cutting-edge activists, scholars, and change-makers probe the deep roots of our current predicament while reflecting on the social DNA for a post-capitalist future. We learn about seed-sharing in agriculture, blockchain technologies for networked collaboration, cosmolocal peer production of houses and vehicles, creative hacks on law, and new ways of thinking and enacting a rich, collaborative future. This surge of creativity is propelled by the social practices of commoning new modes of life for creating and sharing wealth in fair-minded, ecologically respectful ways.
It is clear that the multiple, entangled crises produced by neoliberal capitalism cannot be resolved by existing political and legal institutions, which are imploding under the weight of their own contradictions. Present and future needs can be met by systems that go beyond the market and state. With experiments and struggle, a growing pluriverse of commoners from Europe and the US to the Global South and cyberspace are demonstrating some fundamentally new ways of thinking, being and acting. This ontological shift of perspective is making new worlds possible.
Table of Contents //
1. INTRODUCTION / Anna Grear and David Bollier
2. MODERNITY, ANTHROPOCENE, CAPITALOCENE AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS / Sam Adelman
3. TWILIGHT OF THE NATION-STATE (AT A TIME OF RESURGENT NATIONALISM)? / Richard Falk
- THE DECLINE OF LIBERAL POLITICS / Andreas Karitzis
- AWAKENING TO AN ECOLOGY OF THE COMMONS / Michel Bauwens and Jose Ramos
- BEATING THE BOUNDS: INSIDE THE STRUGGLE TO MAKE OPEN-SOURCE SEED / Maywa Montenegro de Wit
- BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY: TOWARD A DECENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS? / Primavera De Filippi and Xavier Lavayssiere
- HACKING THE LAW TO OPEN UP ZONES FOR COMMONING / David Bollier
- THINKING LAW, ECOLOGY, AND THE COMMONS / Vito De Lucia
- COMMONSWEALTH: THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE: COMPLEXITY AND GENERATIVITY—NEW ONTOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS / Paul B. Hartzog
- RESISTING ANTHROPOCENE NEOLIBERALISM: TOWARDS NEW MATERIALIST COMMONING? / Anna Grear
Is it possible to pre-order The Great Awakening ? So I don’t forget?
Preorders are not possible, so you have to stay tuned. Apologies we cannot be more precise.