David Bollier

David Bollier

David Bollier is an American activist, scholar, and blogger who is focused on the commons as a new/old paradigm for re-imagining economics, politics, and culture. The commons is as old as the human race but newly discovered, too, as the Internet, open source software, alternative currencies, and platform co-operatives.

Bollier pursues his commons scholarship and activism as Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics (Massachusetts, US), and as cofounder of the Commons Strategies Group, an international advocacy project. He is particularly focused on the role of commons in re-imagining local economies to empower community self-reliance, prevent market enclosures, and anticipate the coming disruptions of climate breakdown and Peak Oil.

Bollier has co-organized pioneering international conferences and strategy workshops on the commons, and consults regularly with diverse activists and policy experts in the US and Europe. His blog, Bollier.org, is a widely read source of news about the commons, and his book Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons [www.thinklikeacommoner.com] (2014), has been translated into six languages. He and coauthor Silke Helfrich  published Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons in 2019.

Bollier’s other books include Patterns of Commoning (2015) [www.patternsofcommoningorg] and The Wealth of the Commons (2012), [www.wealthofthecommons.org] both with co-editor Silke Helfrich; Green Governance (2013), co-authored with the late Professor Burns Weston; and Viral Spiral (2009), Brand-Name Bullies (2005), and Silent Theft (2002). Bollier lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

 

The Insurgent Power of the Commons in the War Against the Imagination

Journal Article

I believe the commons paradigm can help us develop a new social and cultural vision, and new strategies for practical change. Paradoxically enough, redirecting our attention away from conventional politics and policy may offer the most promising possibilities for developing a transformational vision.


The Treasure of Our Living, Relational Commons

Journal Article

As I have learned about the social life of trees and the intimate bonds that indigenous peoples have with various lifeforms and rivers – and as I pore through recent ecophilosophy that explains aliveness to the western mind — I’ve concluded: We really ought to be talking more about animism and commoning.


Honoring Commons-based Circuits of Value

Journal Article

​It is becoming clear that our path beyond the pandemic, climate change, social inequality and much else will require some serious social and political transformations. But to navigate a reliable path forward, we must learn how to protect forms of value that cannot be expressed through price or created through markets.