Commons stand for a plurality of practices ‘beyond market and state’ as the famous Commons scholar – and first female noble prize winner of economics - Elinor Ostrom put it. Their practice and theory challenge classical economic theory and stand for a different mode of caring, producing and governing. Within this workshop we want to dive into theory, practice and utopia of Commons following four blocks...

After completing the module, participants should be able to have general overview on the theory of commons. They can differentiate between neoclassical, new institutional and social/critical commons theory and can use these theories to assess real life common-pool resource management and commoning pratices.

After completing the module, participants should be able to analyse the concepts of degrowth, ecological unequal exchange, Green New Deal, and embeddedness by applying theories situated within the fields of academic research of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology.

The first day of the workshop is intended to initiate students to the foundational concepts of ecological economics. Ecological economics is an ecological critique of economics, applying the energetics of life to the study of the economy. It also investigates the social distribution of environmental costs and benefits. It does so by deconstructing concepts that are taken for granted like “nature” or “the economy”, excavating their ideological origins.

In this essay the author outlines the basis for embracing a post-work agenda, rooted in an emancipatory potential from the domination of waged work, which could help answer both feminist and ecological concerns with work.

Das Paradigma der ökologischen Ökonomie (Ecological Economics) stellt einen multidisziplinärern Ansatz dar, um ein ganzheitliches Bild der wachsenden ökologischen Probleme und ihrer Verflechtungen mit der Ökonomie zu erhalten. Sie beschäftigt sich mit Ressourcenknappheit, Umweltverschmutzung, Klimawandel, Nahrungsmittelknappheit oder sozialer Ungleichheit. Hierbei werden wissenschaftliche Disziplinen wie Ökologie, Ökonomie, Physik und zunehmend auch andere Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften (z.B. Soziologie oder Philosophie) herangezogen, mit dem Ziel, im ökonomischen Denken auch ökologische, ethische, politische, institutionelle und soziale Faktoren zu berücksichtigen. In diesem Zusammenhang werden nichtzuletzt deshalb auch wesentliche Grundannahmen der orthodoxen Ökonomie sehr kritisch betrachtet (Constanza 1989, Ayres 2008, Spash 2010).

In this essay the authors take a look at how welfare could be provided in a degrowth society.

Der Umbau zu einer nachhaltigen, CO2-armen und solidarischen Ökonomie erfordert besonders in der Transformationsphase massive Investitionen sowohl in Institutionen und Infrastrukturen, die ein sozial gerechtes Leben für alle ermöglichen (ökologische Landwirtschaft, dezentrale erneuerbare Energien, ökologisches Wohnen, kollektive Mobilität etc.) als auch in Projekte zur Anpassung an und Entschärfung von Klimawandel und ökologischen Zerstörungen sowie finanzielle Transfers vom globalen Norden in den globalen Süden, die aus der historisch angehäuften Klimaschuld folgen.

Economic theory must distinguish between publicly owned and privately owned property if it is to account for the effect of institutions on the behavior of individuals. Careful study of the theories of Marxists and the real-world experience in the Soviet economy offer important lessons and insight for economic modeling and the ongoing development of theory. In this course, Marxist/Leninist theory and Soviet reality will be studied with an open mind, and with the goal of taking lessons from the case study. To what extent was the Soviet economy an accurate expression of Marxist theory? If Marxism were tried somewhere else would the results be the same?

Diane Perrons and Sigrid Stagl combine feminist and critical environmental economics perspectives to develop a critique of the free market growth model and offer new ideas for a more sustainable gender equitable model of development in the interests of all.

Marxian Political Economy focuses on the exploitation of labour by capital. The economy is not conceived as consisting of neutral transactions for exchange and cooperation, but instead as having developed historically out of asymmetric distributions of power, ideology and social conflicts.