Author: Socrates

  • Apologies to my English-reading friends

    I updated WordPress to the newest version and switched themes before I checked compatibility with the Polylang language switcher. Now the English interface has largely disappeared and defaults to Dutch. Apologies, I will fix this as soon as the plugin gets updated..! Click here for the Dutch website >

  • The rebound effect of 5G

    The rebound effect of 5G

    The ‘rebound effect’: in the field of sustainability, this is known as the effect where you leave your energy-efficient heating on for longer, because it’s so efficient… and end up consuming the same amount of energy as you did with your old, inefficient heating system. When discussing 5G, the rebound effect – even more than the…

  • Bruno Latour: Climate Changes Politics

    Bruno Latour: Climate Changes Politics

    It no can longer be denied that we live in the ruins of capitalism, observes Bruno Latour. The French philosopher’s latest work, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (Où atterrir?), argues that the ecological disaster that is both the present and near future shapes today’s politics, forcing people to drastically reassess their outlooks…

  • Lost in the numbers: the missing politics of big data

    Everyone encounters big data: via social media, financial transactions and public transport. Although all of these things are useful and fascinating, they simultaneously arouse feelings of discomfort: how far does the – largely invisible – influence of all of these data collections reach? Marleen Stikker has been following developments in this sphere since the beginning…

  • Baby steps on the road to a basic income

    Baby steps on the road to a basic income

    Seven Dutch towns and cities are beginning experiments with versions of a ‘basic income light’. Some of those in favour are disappointed by the restrictions raised by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. One municipality decided to ignore those restrictions: Amsterdam. As happens so often, it decided to determine its own course. Socrates Schouten…

  • Digital Social Innovation and the commons

    A new vocabulary of peer production and the commons emerges from the need to converge the work of a growing network of socially oriented organizations, companies, and individuals. In the new DSI4EU project, these movements are studied and supported through the lens of ‘digital social innovation’.

  • Interview Ton Lemaire: ‘I’m an animal in the depths of my thoughts’

    Interview Ton Lemaire: ‘I’m an animal in the depths of my thoughts’

    Whether ‘the political animal’ literally exists Ton Lemaire only ventures to say about the chimpanzee. But that animals differ much less from humans than was assumed for a long time, he’s quite sure about that. That’s why he pleads for a new universal morality, which he calls humanimalism.

  • Practicing the Commons: conference days 4 and 5

    Practicing the Commons: conference days 4 and 5

    My third and last blog in this series covers days 4 and 5 of the 16th IASC conference, held from 10 to 14 July in Utrecht. Thursday was a day unlike the others, because it was a day of field trips with destinations all over the Netherlands, instead of a regular conference day. While I wasn’t…

  • Practicing the Commons: conference days 2 and 3

    Practicing the Commons: conference days 2 and 3

    My second blog in the series covers both day 2 and day 3 of the 16th IASC conference, because yesterday I could not find the time. The general theme I derive from the two days is: what can we use the ‘commons’ lens for? This is a major and indefinite topic of which I can…

  • Practicing the Commons: conference day 1

    Practicing the Commons: conference day 1

    Because of the abundance of ceremonies and niceties on the first day (see introductory post here) the attendees were to sit through only one block of parallel sessions. That does not prevent me from making this first day journal a long one. I attended the practitioners’ lab on communal land ownership, titled “What can customary…

  • Practicing the Commons: conference introduction

    Practicing the Commons: conference introduction

    This week I’m attending the 16th biennial conference ‘Practicing the Commons’ of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) I announced earlier. Quite a mouthful, and it’s something that needs explaining. That’s why I’ll be blogging about the conference today and throughout the week. It’s a conference of decent proportions: over 700…

  • Anticipating the global wave of collective action and citizens’ collectivities

    Between 10 and 14 July, academics and experts from the professional practice will be gathering in Utrecht at the ‘XVI Biennial IASC-Conference: Practising the Commons’. This will be the largest international commons meeting ever, with 570 presentations from 65 countries, given by academics, people from practice and policymakers. With a keynote address by Saskia Sassen,…