Commons and Alternative Rationalities: Subjectivity, Emotion and the (Non)rational Commons

Abstract

When I tell people that I work on inshore fisheries management the response is inevitably disparaging. Most people continue to assume that the commons is an ecological disaster waiting to happen and that all fishermen are greedy individuals. Yet my experience on the west coast of Scotland suggests that the fishing ground is governed by a variety of rationalities and subjectivities that often override the desire to maximize individual benefit. The question is how to understand these rationalities and subjectivities and what they mean for governance of the commons. When I first began thinking about ideas of subjectivity and emotion in relation to fisheries most people thought I was crazy. Talk to fishermen about their feelings? But it quickly became clear that I was on the right track. As one fishermen’s advocate said to me, laughing, “People are definitely not rational, especially fishermen. They make decisions based on other factors.” I became fascinated by what some of these “other” factors might be. My project begins with the excellent work done by Ostrom (1992) and others on design principles for the commons . Design principles focus on the institutional rules and norms required for effective management of collective resources. This work has been done within a rational choice framework, however, which leaves little space for understanding alternative rationalities or “non-rational” behaviors. If we simply add in perspectives on gender, kinship relations, emotional attachments to resources and land- and seascapes to our understanding of design principles, it prevents us from exploring how design principles emerge in the first place. Rather, I suggest we need to explore how institutions, resources and societies are co-emergent. This starting point shows how the “design” of a commons is a product of interactions, histories and relationships that need to be continually renewed . Taking co-emergence as a starting point has major implications for how we understand the dynamics of the commons. It is not a question of explaining how resource use affects the commons, but rather a question of exploring how the commons, as an institution, a place and an ecosystem, is embedded within and productive of the societies that use the commons. The two cannot be neatly separated, spatially, temporally or analytically. In terms of management, we need to understand how social processes both emerge from the commons ecosystem and are reflected in it.

Keywords

emotion; subjectivity; marine fisheries governance; Scotland; commons

Published in

Title: Patterns of Commoning
Publisher: The Commons Strategies Group, Levellers Press

SLU Authors

• Nightingale, Andrea

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Associated SLU-program

Coastal and sea areas

UKÄ Subject classification

Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified

Publication identifier

• ISBN: 978-1-937146-83-2

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/74925