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New Website Tracks De-Privatisation of Water Services
Filed Under Water, Public Goods, De-Privatization, Literature/Books | Leave a Comment
A new website - www.remunicipalisation.org - goes live today to highlight the growing trend to return failing privately managed water services to public management.
Wasser. Die Kommerzialisierung eines öffentlichen Gutes
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Studie: Die Reorganisation des öffentlichen Sektors in Spanien
Filed Under Literature/Books, Privatization | Leave a Comment
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Leitfaden für Bürgerinis
Filed Under Housing, Practical Struggles, Literature/Books | Leave a Comment
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New book: Reclaiming public water in Asia
Filed Under Water, Literature/Books | 1 Comment
“Water Democracy: Reclaiming Public Water in Asia” is a compilation of 19 new essays written by civil society activists, trade unionists and other water practitioners. The essays show that the privatization wave has far from come to a halt in Asia: from India and Indonesia to Japan and South Korea (where public water delivery has been very successful), neoliberal governments promote privatisation as the way forward. At the same time the essay collection also highlights a very different trend: democratisation and other progressive reforms of public water management are gaining ground in Asia, providing an attractive alternative to privatisation.
Sowas kommt von sowas: Wie der Geldadel H. zur Macht verhalf
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Ralf Streck: Immer für einen interessanten Hintergrundartikel aus dem spanischsprachigen Bereich gut
Filed Under Practical Struggles, Press, Literature/Books, Privatization | Leave a Comment
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Neue Artikel in der Digital Library of the Commons
Filed Under Public Goods, Debates: Theories/Alternatives, Literature/Books | Leave a Comment
Und wieder ein wochentlicher Auszug aus der Digital Library of the Commons -…
Commons in Flandern, 18. und 19. Jahrhundert
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“The Historical Evolution of Commons in Flanders: Results from a Microstudy (18th-19th century)” (Die historische Entwicklung der Commons in Flandern: Ergebnisse einer Microstudie, 18.-19.Jhrhd.)
Ein Konferenzbeitrag der alle zwei Jahre stattfindenden Konferenz der International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), http://www.iascp.org
Abstract
“Although the metaphor of the tragedy of the commons refers to a historic situation and although ’sustainability’ — as one of the main interests of social scientists — is a concept that necessitates a long-term approach, the non-historical social scientists have only since a number of years shown an increasing interest for the historical dynamics and context in which commons develop(ed) and change(ed). In short: historians and other the other social scientists have clearly been following a different track, and have missed several opportunities to enrich each others work and in particular to learn from each others case studies. In this paper, I want to take a first step towards bringing both parties together, hereby concentrating in the first place on a number of definition questions that currently stand in the way of the mutual exchanges of information. The terminology that is used by the different disciplines was also influenced by their different approaches. Thereafter, I will make the differences clearer by analyzing and structuring the debate. Some of the issues dealt with will be considered by social scientists working on commons as common knowledge. The first two parts are especially meant to broaden the debate to clarify the particular difficulties when studying commons in the historical Europe, to explain the differences in approach between social scientists and historians and to introduce the case study that follows in part three. In that last part of the paper, the applicability of the theoretical analysis will be illustrated with a case study situated in Flanders. With this survey, I hope to enhance the mutual exchange of research results and methods between historiography and other social sciences and to give the debate a more interdisciplinary turn.”
Feast and Famine. A conversation with Iain Boal on scarcity, catastrophe and enclosure
Filed Under Distribution of Wealth, Literature/Books | Leave a Comment
http://www.commoner.org.uk/feastandfamine.htm
Iain Boal is an Irish social historian of science and technics, associated with Retort, a group of antinomian writers, artisans and artists based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is one of the authors of Retort’s recently published Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War - http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June05/Schaefer0616.htm -, which Harold Pinter described as “a comprehensive analysis of America’s relationship with the world. No stone is left unturned. The maggots exposed are grotesque.”
