On the Multiple Languages of the Commons

摘要

The commons are social, cultural, semi-legal contracts a people make with their local natural systems that have embedded within them codes of moral and ethical orientations. This paper argues that there exists a lacuna in the current theoretical understandings of the commons in terms of languages, cultures and religions. This lacuna, the author argues, may radically affect the potentiality for negotiations around climate change. Through a set of three propositions, it calls for expanding the conceptual theoretical frameworks on the commons, a call for investigating a "multiple languages of the commons," that are far more inclusive of a diversity of cultures, religions and languages.