commons include activities, knowledge, skills, and patterns of mutual support that do not rely on a monetized economy. In non- Western cultures, where the monetized economy may consist of just a few dollars a day, the cultural commons are what sustain daily life. The cultural commons in communities across North America include the intergenerational knowledge, skills, and activities that range from how to prepare and share a meal, to healing practices, creative arts, narratives and ceremonies, craft knowledge and skills, games and out- door activities, and political traditions such as civil liberties and democratic debate. Each of these categories encompasses a depth of embodied knowledge and relationships that would take many papers to fully describe. Clearly there is not a single description that fits the diversity of the world’s cultural commons. And while the cultural commons of some communities include traditions of discrimination and violence toward marginalized groups, many aspects of the cultural commons of even these communities may have little adverse ecological impact. We are caught in Western cultures in a series of double
T
binds. For example, success in expanding the economy is further reducing the viability of natural systems; students who graduate from public schools and universities are becoming increasing addicted to finding their sense of community in cyberspace instead of in face-to-face, intergenerationally connected communities where they could learn the skills and discover talents that lead to non-material forms of wealth and mutual support; and current foreign policies are directed at Westernizing other cultures, and thus are destroying the diversity of languages and intergenerational knowledge that have been adapted over hundreds and thousands of years of living within the limits and possibilities of local bioregions. Public schools and universities continue to perpetuate these double binds by what they designate as high-status knowledge, and by the silences and prejudices in the curriculum. A key characteristic of high-status knowledge is learning to use various systems of representation that foster abstract, context-free thinking, while a key characteristic of low status knowledge is that it is acquired in face-to-face intergenerational relationships, including mentoring and learning a culture’s patterns of moral reciprocity. The way out of these double binds is first to learn about the nature and ecological importance of regenerating the local cultural commons, and secondly, to learn the various ways they are being enclosed by ideologies, market forces, silences, and misconceptions that have their roots in the industrial system of production and consumption. Enclosure refers to the process of transforming aspects of a
culture (broadly understood) that are freely shared by members of the community into what is privately owned—into a commodity or service that has to be purchased. Since the processes of enclosure vary from culture to culture, what will be addressed here are the forms of enclosure that, in the name of progress and growing the economy, are aggressively transforming what remains of the cultural commons into market opportunities. Enclosure has occurred when individuals lack the intergenerational knowledge of how to pre- pare a meal and instead rely upon industrially produced food, or upon commercially produced artistic performances instead of developing personal talents in a
CLEARING 2011
he “cultural commons” are not an abstraction, but rather exist in every community: rural, suburban, urban, tribal, wealthy, impoverished, religious, secular, north, and south. Within different communities the cultural
mentoring relationship, or upon the government to deter- mine whether the traditions of habeas corpus and the right to privacy now threaten national security. The farmer who plants genetically modified seeds that require the purchasing of new seeds for the next year’s planting not only has accepted the enclosure of intergenerational knowledge of how to identify which seeds should be saved, but also the enclosure of a complex body of knowledge of soil and weather conditions that in times past were essential to successful farming. Examples of enclosure of intergenerational knowledge and skills are as numerous as daily life is complex.
of how the local cultural commons represent alternatives to the consumer dependent lifestyle that further undermines community and degrades the Earth’s natural systems. These educational reforms should enable students to recognize the different forms of enclosure, and the consequences they have for the individual, community, and the environment. The initial challenge, however, is to get students to recognize the cultural commons they participate in on a daily basis. There are two problems here that need to be taken into account. First, most of the cultural commons are part of daily experience that is largely taken for granted. Examples may include learning the language group’s pattern of writing from left to right, how to prepare certain foods, the way in which a guest is greeted, the narratives that are the source of individual and group identity, the differences between private and public space, the right of each individual to express her/his ideas, and so forth. The other major difficulty is becoming explicitly aware that language, which is also part of the cultural commons, serves the same role in connecting generations of individuals as the DNA does in the realm of human biology. The analogy even holds to the point where a metaphor, like a mutated gene, can be seen as reproducing over generations the misconceptions of earlier thinkers. Just as genes influence biological development over many generations, metaphors constituted in the distant past influence thought and behavior over many generations. The major difference is that we can make explicit the analogy that is reproduced in the use of metaphors such as tradition, individualism, intelligence, data, and so forth—and then identify analogies that give the metaphor a more current and ecologically accountable meaning. The shift from thinking of wilderness as wild and in need of human control to thinking of it as a pristine ecology with its own cycles of regeneration represents an example
W
www.clearingmagazine.org/online
hat needs to be discussed are the educational reforms that are essential if students are to graduate with a knowledge
What needs to be discussed are the
educational reforms that are essential if students are to graduate with a knowledge of how the local cultural commons represent alternatives to
the consumer dependent lifestyle that further
undermines community and degrades the Earth’s natural systems.
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