Hi all
The first book selected for our reading group is "Elinor Ostrom's Rules for Radicals: Cooperative Alternatives beyond Markets and States" by Derek Wall.

You can find the book here: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399355/elinor-ostroms-rules-for-radicals/

(Apologies for the high price for the book, I'll be borrowing a copy from a friend and as such did not check the cost when suggesting it. If you happen to be in the UK, it's slightly cheaper from Hive: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Derek-Wall/Elinor-Ostroms-Rules-for-Radicals--Cooperative-Alternativ/21084598 - and hopefully available in the local library wherever you are).

I will start a time poll shortly to schedule in a call, taking place in around about a month from now, which will be a wrap-up discussion on the book. In the meantime there will be plenty of opportunity for online discussion on social.coop mastodon instance and in the matrix chat room.

I'll kick this online discussion off shortly with some thoughts on my expectations from the book.

You can find it on the Kobo bookstore for less than 24€
https://www.kobo.com/mt/it/ebook/elinor-ostrom-s-rules-for-radicals

These are my initial thoughts on my expectations of the book:

I’m keen to learn about Ostrom’s work on the commons and its governance, in particular her debunking of the notion of the tragedy of the commons.

I’m hoping that the book will be quite practical in outlining ways to achieve alternatives to markets and states. Given its nod to the original Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky (subtitle: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals), and my understanding that Elinor Ostrom was herself very practically-minded, this will hopefully be the case. I’m also assuming that the alternatives presented will be commons-based, given Ostrom’s work.

I also think it will be interesting to find challenges in the ideas, opinions outside of my usual bubble, as I understand that Ostrom did not identify with the ‘traditional’ left (whatever that is). Although Derek Wall is quite definitely left-wing, I have seen some description of Ostrom as having no easily defineable politics in the usual terms, being neither anarchist, free marketeer, or central planner. I do hope it will focus mostly on the ideas and not too much on the individual, but nonetheless Ostrom does seem an interesting character.

What do others hope to learn?

Here's some ideas on how we can get discussion flowing on the book:

• Mastodon: toot about the ideas in the book with the #readinggroup tag. As not everyone on social.coop is in the reading group, try to keep toots based around the book's content, which will probably be of general interest, and we'll use Loomio for more admin-y stuff.
• This Loomio thread: I will weekly put an update on progress and summarise/prompt discussion if someone wants to post something a bit longer than a toot on thoughts so far.
  
• Matrix - I'll schedule in a chat halfway through the month, but of course anyone can dip in at any time to the room, organize chats for different timezones, etc.
• Jitsi/Zoom - I'll schedule a call for the end of the reading period.
• Wiki - I'll try to capture the essence of the discussions and debates on the wiki and everyone is encouraged to add/edit.

All sounds great to me Neil, thanks for getting the ball rolling. What I hope to get from the book: I'm a secular humanist and democratic socialist, with strong emphasis on the "democratic" part. I'm interested in cooperative economic models that keep the role of central government to what's necessary (which may well be significant support in terms of data, shared resources, and so on, as well as a muscular redistributive component and strong incentives for cooperative economic action). Ostrom sounds like a fascinating thinker I'd never heard of, so I look forward to getting to know her ideas better through Wall's perspective.

For those that just participated in the poll (thanks for being so prompt!) - I just added a couple of extra times in.

Turns out it's a pretty short book - minus bibliography and index we're looking at ~30 pages a week.
Everyone free to go at your own pace of course, but this is personally how I'm going to try and break the chapters down:

W1
1. Elinor Ostrom’s Radical Life
2. The Commons: From Tragedy to Triumph

(Bonus read if people want something while waiting to access the book: Tragedy of the Commons - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full)

W2
3. Climate Change, Ecology and Green Politics
4. Beyond Markets and States
5. Deep Democracy

W3
6. Feminism and Intersectionality
7. Trust and Cooperation
8. Science for the People

W4
9. Transforming Institutions
10. Conflict and Contestation