Commoning

Commoning as a process

Scholars such as David Harvey have adopted the term commoning, which as a verb serves to emphasize an understanding of the commons as a process and a practice rather than as "a particular kind of thing" or static entity. Some authors distinguish between the resources shared (the common-pool resources), the community who governs it, and commoning, that is, the process of coming together to manage such resources. Commoning thus adds another dimension to the commons, acknowledging the social practices entailed in the process of establishing and governing a commons. These practices entail, for the community of commoners, the creation of a new way of living and acting together, thus involving a collective psychological shift: it also entails a process of subjectivization, where the commoners produce themselves as common subjects.