Elinor Ostrom's Rules for Radicals: Cooperative Alternatives beyond Markets and States

Thanks, Neil.

Hi Matt, to reply to your comment on the time poll - I can't make the Thursday unfortunately as my organisation has a board meeting that evening. Sorry about that. Your trip on the weekend sounds fantastic!

My interests and expectations are a lot like Neil's -- I like the idea of a radical reading of book that is not necessarily radical in intention. I also like those idiosyncratic thinkers who are hard to pigeon-hole, sounds like Ostrom is one. Since reading Gibson-Graham and Kate Raworth, I am interested in how feminism helps us reframe economics.

Really interested in Ostrom for a while. Already read the first chapter. I'm interested in her rather unique influences, as she seems to be influenced a lot by Buchanin. She, however, seems to take an extremely critical view of almost all major assumptions of the free market fanatics. She's not explicitly left, but she payed attention to the data and it lead her to left wing conclusions. Can't wait to continue reading once the book gets here.

Just got the ebook, can't wait to jump into it! :)

Hey all - checking in after W1 of reading. How's everyone getting on? Thoughts on the book so far?

I've read chapters 1 and 2 and have captured my thoughts in a couple of blog posts:
https://doubleloop.net/2018/02/11/thoughts-ostroms-rules-radicals-chapter-1/
and
https://doubleloop.net/2018/02/12/thoughts-ostroms-rules-radicals-chapter-2/

In a very short summary: it's ticking the boxes that I hoped for before starting - it's practical rules on getting things done, and certainly Ostrom's not-easy-to-define position is making me think outside of my usual box - definitely a good thing. Good to also get a basic intro to some of ideas and terms around commons and their management too.

To keep on a decent pace for finishing by March 11th, I'm aiming for these chapters in the coming week:

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

I still find contradiction between statements like "her work shows that the foundational assumption that human beings are rational maximisers, locked into selfish and competitive behaviour, can be challenged" (p.17) and "Clearly, some kind of punishment or sanction is necessary as it is unlikely that good will on its own will prevent abuse of the commons.” (p.30) but thanks to the discussion on Mastodon for some thoughts on that. Thoroughly enjoying the reading group so far!

Hey all, end of week 2 of the reading group. Erik's finished and written a review here: https://lib.reviews/review/e77ddff2-0ea2-47b1-9341-10031a2e27a2

Thomas mentioned he was still waiting for the book to arrive. As a short one at around 120 pages, still plenty of time for completion.

I'm going at a pretty leisurely pace, and have finished chapters 3, 4, and 5. I've not had chance to write detailed thoughts on each chapter yet, but have been posting a few thoughts here and there on the #readinggroup tag.

I think Erik's review of the book is pretty fair - I think it could have been executed better, the writing/editing could have been tighter; shame, because a rigorous application of Ostrom's thinking to modern activist dilemmas (as put by Luke) if done well could have been 5 stars for sure. Still, it works as a light primer on Ostrom's ideas (at least for me who knew nothing of them previously) and I'm getting a lot from the book.

Over the next week I'll be reading:

6 Feminism and Intersectionality

7 Trust and Cooperation

8 Science for the People

Here's a rough plan for the call today:

Time: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=social.coop+monthly+chat&iso=20180311T21&p1=136
Duration: 1 hour (I personally can overrun to 1 hour 30 mins if needed :) )

• 5 mins setup/welcomes
• 15 minutes, a few minutes each person giving their thoughts on the book overall
  • flag if there's any particular topic you'd like to discuss in more depth
• 35 minutes discussing topics as raised during the intros
  • loosely aligned with the chapters
• 5 minutes wrap up

We'll be at https://meet.jit.si/socialcoop (more notes on call logisitcs in the logistics thread: https://www.loomio.org/d/VOMadXxu/reading-group-logistics)

Catch you later!