| There have been some attempts to analyse the new empirical evidence
for common resource management and common knowledge in terms
of Karl Polanyi’s thoughts, especially by American legal scholars and
social scientists. However, the question of why the commons are often
corrupted by the institutional setting of market economies and how they
might be adapted has rarely been considered. If the cases of sustainable
and innovative common property arrangements discussed below can be
elucidated by using Karl Polanyi’s theoretical framework, this would
disprove the charge of his purported backward ‘romanticism’. Moreover,
Polanyi’s somewhat sketchy ideas of embeddedness and fictitious commodities
might be further developed in the light of the recent developments
in common property.
To this end, an account of the discussion on the role of common property
regimes for natural resource management will be given (Section II).
Then, Polanyi’s notion of nature as a fictitious commodity will be explored
in the light of new developments in ecological theory (Section III).
In the next section (Section IV), the institutional misfit between common
property and market economy will be analysed in terms of Polanyi’s idea
of the economy as an instituted process. Finally, the prospects for the
integration of dispersed knowledge, and the co-operative management
of natural resources and environmental risks in general will be discussed
(Section V). |
Dilling, Olaf
2011
Oxford: Hart Publishing, 131-153
in: Christian Joerges, Josef Falke (ed.), Karl Polanyi, Globalisation and the Potential of Law in Transnational Markets
|
