Abstract
Increased interest in systemic design approaches and their impact on climate and societal crises make revisiting the theories of the commons and their applicability to system transitions a timely endeavour. By examining a case study of a marine protected area in the South African ocean, the paper explores how a commoning practice could be applied more intentionally in system design to increase cooperation amongst system actors and apply a multispecies - as opposed to human-centred - perspective to the management of natural, social, and immaterial resources. By tracing the historical understandings of the commons, the study explores how Ostrom’s design principles could be applied as a set of heuristics to help system actors thrive in improved cohabitation. Thus, the paper draws on a working hypothesis of how economic and complexity theory could be integrated with systems thinking to create the conditions for increased stakeholder cooperation and alternative systems by design.
Keywords
commons, systemic design, beyond-human-centred design, complex systems
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.511
Citation
Schaeper, J., Kothari, S., and Hamilton, G. (2022) Social commoning as a way to transition towards alternative systems by design, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.511
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Social commoning as a way to transition towards alternative systems by design
Increased interest in systemic design approaches and their impact on climate and societal crises make revisiting the theories of the commons and their applicability to system transitions a timely endeavour. By examining a case study of a marine protected area in the South African ocean, the paper explores how a commoning practice could be applied more intentionally in system design to increase cooperation amongst system actors and apply a multispecies - as opposed to human-centred - perspective to the management of natural, social, and immaterial resources. By tracing the historical understandings of the commons, the study explores how Ostrom’s design principles could be applied as a set of heuristics to help system actors thrive in improved cohabitation. Thus, the paper draws on a working hypothesis of how economic and complexity theory could be integrated with systems thinking to create the conditions for increased stakeholder cooperation and alternative systems by design.