structure vs non-structure

August 12, 2004 at 12:36 am | In Uncategorized |

Is that a real duality?

That question isn’t the point of my writing this post tonight. My point is to see if I can figure out a bit about when structure is important for an undertaking. Coming out of the Giving Conference in June, several of us started work on a commons that would be owned by it’s members (individuals and networks or institutions of various kinds) and would allow these members to collectively accomplish what they couldn’t do alone, all the while operating under their own individual names, not giving up identity to the commons.

Yesterday we had our 2nd conference call to see about moving forward and I’m so confused about what happened. What happened was (I think) that some people on the call were advocating for structure only when necessary to facilitate particular interactions between two or more members of the “giving community” which wouldn’t ever really define itself, but could losely be described as anyone at the giving conference or who joins the process now going forward at the conference website or at any of the various online (mailing lists, wikis, blogs, omidyar.net, etc) or fact to face spaces created for work of this kind.

In my mind that’s all fine and good as well, but totally misses the point of the conference call and what the convenors of that call are trying to do. What am I missing? Is there a defiition of a commons somewhere that I should’ve read before trying to figure this out? Someone, please help!

2 Comments

  1. Yes, the energy of that was a bit strange. It seemed that some had in mind different purpose for the call. Just keeping in touch and informed about activities in the extended network, or trying to build something together.

    I think the definition of a commons is part of what is at stake. Or maybe definition isn’t quite strong enough, the ontology maybe? I am reading a paper about how communities manage commons resources that counters the conventional concept of “Tragedy of the Commons”. It seems that when local groups get together to actually manage a commons and create rules and sanctions in grass-roots locally based processes, the tragedy can be avoided and resources are well managed. But when this doesn’t happen for various local reasons or a control regeme is imposed by a centralized authority, the commons doesn’t fair so well.

    Comment by Gerry — August 19, 2004 #

  2. I think what isn’t completely understood is that what Julie is trying to organize is a sort-of meta-commons. A commons for holding and propagating the principles that make for healthy commons structures. I would have hoped that purpose wasn’t seen as controversial, and I’m not sure where it went wrong. Perhaps the difficulty was how Julie connected her concept to a specific project that didn’t make clear the separation between the meta-processes and the specific project. IIRC, we discussed that some and I thought that made that distinction more clear. Working at the meta-level can be confusing because it is abstract and when you make it concrete you’ve left the meta-level.

    Comment by Gerry — August 19, 2004 #

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