1.
Introduction
How
can
one explore and explain new ways of interaction with one another and
with
nature? Or, to pose another question, how can one describe water to a
fish
while aiming to explore new ways of swimming? Both questions are
challenging as
they refer either to unknown or deeply embedded concepts. Likewise: what
are
the processes of the commons?; what does ‘sharing’ mean when we mostly
‘own’
things?; how can one explain commons-based management of resources when
there
are dozens of private and governmental management systems? These are
frequently
asked questions among researchers, activists and advocates of the
commons who
often find it difficult to explain their basic concepts.
Engaging with
the commons
is a marginalised practice that often transcends the dominant narrative,
embodying practices that are based outside of the main social imaginary
of
capitalism (Kioupkiolis 2019; Bauwens
and Kostakis 2014). The essential
characteristics of the natural and digital commons heavily differ from
the
profit-driven doctrine of our everyday lives. Thus, people often find it
difficult to perceive the core notions of the commons. At the same time,
commons are emerging in between the private and the public sphere,
forming a
third traction pole with radically different characteristics of social
reproduction in the fields of decision-making, human relations,
environmental
sustainability, value production and more (Kostakis,
Roos
and Bauwens 2016; Kostakis
and
Stavroulakis 2013). If developed adequately, the commons can form
a
decisive alternative route that can help us overcome the extremely
complex
socio-environmental problems we are facing (De
Angelis
and Harvie 2014; Bauwens, Kostakis and
Pazaitis 2019). Thus, being able to effectively communicate core
notions of
the commons can be of major importance.
This article
stands as an
endeavour in introducing non-expert audiences to the basic notions and
principles of the commons, applying non-formal education and active
learning
concepts. The commons, as a socio-economic and political system, can
only be
understood if studied in terms of the community/resources relationship.
This is
why I propose an educational scenario for the commons to be met within a
framework where a sense of community is created and participants are
then urged
to solve a resource management problem.
Any piece of
knowledge,
if explained merely in theory, is difficult to imprint in long-term
memory.
This is why the idea is to familiarise such audiences with the commons
not only
in theory but also in practice through processes that promote the
‘learning-by-doing’ concept. The approach of the workshop is that active
participation evolves into constructive collaboration and later results
in
collective reflection and peer learning. In this process, I utilise
Kolb’s
four-stage interaction (2015, 68) where the
participants a) actively experiment on something, b) experience the
activity,
c) consciously observe and reflect on it, d) conceptualise and criticise
what they
observed, and, after shifting some parameters, actively experiment
again.
The educational
workshop
under research is based on a variant of the popular game of musical
chairs.
This game is also known as the “chair game”, “chair dance” or “going to
Jerusalem”
(
the players
are
counted and a number of chairs one fewer than the number of players is
arranged, usually in a circle or in a line back to back [...] at the
start of
the game, the players stand in a circle outside the chairs. A nonplaying
person, usually an adult, plays recorded music or a musical instrument.
While
the music is playing, the players in the circle walk, march, or dance
around
the chairs. The music suddenly stops, and each player must rush to one
of the
chairs and try to sit down as quickly as possible. Of course, there is
one less
chair than there are people, and one player is always left standing.
This
person is eliminated and play continues until one player remains.
There
are
slightly different versions of the game: in Albania, participants are
found to
be standing on pieces of paper named “musical islands” with one piece at
a time
being removed; in Italy a “musical broomstick” held between the legs has
to
pass on among participants and is dropped out when the music stops; and
in Peru
“a balloon is passed beneath squatting bottoms” (You
Are What You Play 2020). Moreover, there
is a cooperative version of musical chairs where chairs are removed, yet
participants are asked to sit by sharing chairs or to sit on someone’s
lap (Padula 2009, 411).
According to
Padula, the
game practices visual, auditory, spatial and kinaesthetic abilities but
only
the cooperative version is considered to enhance the “ability to
interact
effectively in society, solving social problems and cooperating with
others” (2009, 410). Thus, apart from the
kinaesthetic skills,
one might well ask what the social skills enhanced through the
non-cooperative
versions of the game are. On closer inspection, the ‘classic’ versions
of the
game of musical chairs fortify resource competition, individualism among
players and possession via exclusion of the have-nots. This comes as no
surprise, as McCabe observes, since board games had often reproduced
dominant
concepts, amplified damaging stereotypes and even contributed to
colonial and
neo-colonial ideology (2018, 647). In order to
support his argument, McCabe refers to two well-known board games, Risk
and
Civilization, where the conquest and control of foreign territories and
people
“serve to normalise” colonial practices (2018, 647).
Having
its roots in the distant past, the musical chairs game seems to reflect
some of the most dominant values of today’s society. We laugh when
excluded
from the chairs because it is just a game, but if it were water, food,
livelihood
or shelter we had lost because somebody else got there before us, we
wouldn't
be laughing and we wouldn’t consider it a game at all. It is difficult
not to
wonder about the social reflexes, subconscious norms and power relations
that
are reinforced through this game. But, as strong as the lessons of the
classic
game are, so can the lessons conveyed be if we hack the game based on
different
principles.
This workshop
can enable
participants to realise that plenty of the commons’ applications are
featured
in their everyday lives, and they can also touch upon the ideas of
researchers
of the commons like Elinor Ostrom (1990/2015),
The rest of the
article
is organised as follows. I begin with an overview of educational
approaches
that have influenced this workshop. Then, I review a few cases where the
game
of musical chairs has been adopted as an educational practice. I
continue by
giving a detailed description of the six stages constituting the
workshop and,
finally, I reach conclusions based on participants’ reflections, and
discuss
future challenges.
2.
Active Learning and Teaching
Commons
Yoder
and
Bicksler were concerned about how to teach early-career students
concepts of
commons and institutions (2012, 364).
As they
put forward, there are plenty of academic programmes that contribute to
research on the commons, but very few university courses that teach
students
about the commons. In their teaching project, US-based students were
involved
in a programme in Thailand to learn about “commons resource-dependent
communities control and access regarding coasts, forests and rivers”.
Later on,
they “transferred this learning to other, more familiar settings [that]
are
built into the field-based courses” (Yoder
and
Bicksler 2012, 363). Their case can be looked into from a
political ecology
perspective and within a framework they called “institutional
arrangement” by
which they aimed to guide the students’ inquiries in the fieldwork. They
used
the term “institutions” (as introduced by Ostrom) as “sets of rules,
norms and
strategies that formal and informal organizations use to govern resource
ownership and access” (Ostrom 1990/2015, 369).
After
experiencing how communities manage their common resources, students
were asked
to apply acquired knowledge into their familiar contexts.
From a broader
perspective, what differentiates non-formal from formal education is
that the
latter’s focal point is hierarchical, often teacher-centred or
knowledge-centred, advocating standardised knowledge dissemination; by
contrast, non-formal education highlights students’ participation in the
learning process, putting the students’ experience in the centre (Ngaka,
Openjuru and Mazur 2012, 120; Blikstein
2013, 3). While informal education features
an incidental accumulation of experiences or skills stemming from daily
interaction with an environment, non-formal education stands as
something
between formal and informal (Dib 1988, 2-6). In
fact,
non-formal educational activities can be described as open, creative and
resilient to changing conditions and individual needs.
Putting aside
formal
schooling and university experiences, which are often seen by the
students as
monotonous and suppressive, non-formal education programs are usually
welcomed
by those who are genuinely interested in acquiring knowledge and skills,
often
outside institutions. Thus, a profile of education as self-committed
involvement and active participation usually leads to a more effective
learning
process. This is why such methodologies are particularly helpful when
the task
is to immerse students in new concepts, such as the concepts of the
commons.
As many
significant
figures of educational theory such as Maria Montessori (Wentworth
1999,
44; 100), Lev Vygotsky (van
der Veer 2007, 46) and Paulo
Freire (2000,
82-86; Freire et al. 2001, 25-30; 78) have pointed out, learning through
experience is
a key concept that renders the active involvement of participants
crucial. In
the same vein, Jean Piaget established the constructivist learning
theory (Kohler 2008, 256-257; Ackermann
2001,
3-4), while Papert characterised learning as “building knowledge
structures” (1994, 207),
3.
The Musical Chairs Game in
Education
The
analogy
of musical chairs was first used in sociological research by Waldinger
(1987). He likened the game to the economic
integration of different ethnic migrant groups in New York’s economic
life
It seems that
Susan R.
Takata (1997) is the first documented person
to
implement the musical chairs game for educational purposes. In her
article she
describes how she implemented this game with a view to introducing the
sociological theories of Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Lombardi and others to
her
students. As her inspiration, Takata (1997,
200-201)
mentions Robert Fulghum, who revised the musical chairs game into
inclusive
practice instead of exclusive as in the original version. Based on this
idea,
Takata hacks the game, asking students to sit on someone’s lap so that
nobody
is excluded from the game. Then, using Dewey’s learning-by-doing
approach, she
creates links between the students’ play experience and the sociological
theories to be taught by urging students to connect their reflections on
the
game with sociological theories. She uses this game to introduce
students to
the basic sociological theories that she further analyses during her
course, as
well as to showcase that cooperation, rather than competition, can
function as
a means of accomplishing a goal. Among other reasons, she used this game
in
order to discuss issues like group-processing skills, the challenges of
critical thinking, problem-solving and process-based learning (Takata
1997, 202). In Takata’s course on introductory
sociology, the chairs game “introduces sociology as a discipline and
illustrates how fun the discipline can be in helping us to understand
both
global perspectives and our everyday life” as “it is an effective
technique for
shifting the classroom focus from competition to cooperation” (1997,
202). She beautifully highlights the essence of
experiential education by referring to the old Chinese proverb “Tell me
and I
forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand” (1997,
204).
Being close to
Takata’s
approach, yet unaware of her work, I was concerned about finding
experiential
ways to teach commons-related concepts. For the last five years, I have
been
advocating for the commons and introducing their concept to academic and
activist audiences. As a result, I have had first-hand experience of the
conceptual difficulties faced; at the same time, however, talking about
these
difficulties has provided me with a thriving space for experimentation.
When I
read Jose Ramos’s article entitled “Reversing the Game of Musical
Chairs: the
Future of Work” (2016), I imagined transforming
the
article’s main idea into an actual experiential educational game. Ramos
compares the rules of the classic musical chairs game to capitalism and
proposes the reversal of musical chairs as a model for the commons-based
economy. As he articulates:
Most of us
are so busy
playing this game, we hardly realise that we must step away to play a
different
game altogether. This new game we can call the “commons economy”, in
which one
person’s gain is not to the exclusion of the other, but rather considers
and
nourishes a whole social community and whole ecological system (Ramos
2016).
Based
on
the two different musical chairs games that Ramos envisioned, I
developed an
experiential education workshop named “Musical chairs as commons”. In
the
following sections, I describe the process of this non-formal
educational tool
that advocates for the commons, analyse the remarks that came up during
practice and propose further steps.
4. Presentation
of
the “Musical Chairs as a Commons” Workshop
The
majority
of people are aware that the game of musical chairs is played with a
number of chairs and music. Participants walk or dance around the
chairs, and
when the music stops, the one that didn’t find a place to sit is
expelled. The
rules of the second version of the game reflect a strong intention to
provide
participants with cues about the notions around the practice of commons:
when
the music stops everybody has to find a way to be seated and nobody is
expelled. This control over the conditions of the mainstream version of
the
game blazes the trail for the attainment of the study's objectives. Ιt
was
hypothesized that the experiential style of learning would have a
positive
correlation with active participation and, at the secondary level, that
participants' interaction with the commons-based form of the game would
be
preferred.
This workshop is
a
structured experiential process communicating the very basic concept of
the
commons. In particular, it aims to bring to the attention of a general
audience
a new mode of social forms and production that is based on the commons.
It is a
workshop that facilitates how people can acquire knowledge and form an
opinion
about the commons from experience. Given that the workshop is developed
upon a
game, participants have to actively perform certain procedures. Two
different
procedures direct the workshop: in the first, participants play the
traditional
version of musical chairs whereas in the second they play the revised
version
of the game. The transition from the first to the second game process
enables
the comparison of the two versions. It is therefore anticipated that
participants will be overrun with emotions that differ, yet are
analogous to
each procedure. The comparison of the two procedures is evaluated
individually
by each participant based on the internal emotions and thoughts evoked
during
the whole process, but interpreted collectively in constructive and open
rounds
of reflection dialogue that take place among participants after each
round and
at the epilogue of the workshop.
The whole
workshop is not
solely inspired by the game but also developed on the basis of an
experiential
style of learning. This means that the workshop is divided into
integrated,
successive stages that participants go through in a fixed order. Play,
reflection, lecture, group work and presentation are the basic learning
‘bricks’.
It should be
mentioned
that the workshop was held ten times involving, among others, masters
students,
NGO members, artists and environmental activists; the procedures were
followed
in the same manner, though slightly enriched by gained experience in the
last
versions. The workshop has six stages: in the first introductory stage,
we
clarify to the participants what experiential education is about and how
a game
can also be a means to education. Thus, people are motivated to
participate
mindfully. In the second stage, participants play the classic version of
the
game and, in each round, stop for a collective reflection where they are
invited to share thoughts and feelings. In the third stage, participants
play
the hacked version of the game, also with intervals for reflecting. The
fourth
stage comprises a final big round of discussing and reflecting. The
fifth stage
includes an introduction to Ostrom’s principles, and to some more
thinkers of
the commons, and at the sixth stage, participants are divided into
groups
undertaking the task of forming management rules based on a real-life
case of
co-managing a shared resource. At the end, groups present their
management
rules and their reasoning, and a final roundtable discussion takes
place.
4.1.
Stage
1: Introduction
At
the
outset of the workshop, the facilitator begins with a short introduction
of the
main objectives and structure of the game and the addition of some
information
about the characteristics of non-formal education. The latter is
included
because few people are familiar with such types of activities, so an
explanation
of why this is not a ‘time-wasting game’ but a structured educational
experience and an encouragement for active participation is needed.
Consequently, the facilitator outlines the first activity in which the
participants will join.
Most people know
the
musical chairs game from their childhood, yet explaining the rules of
the game
to the participants ensures maximum inclusivity and the proper conduct
of the
game: for instance, participants’ dancing instead of walking is not
always
granted, so a preliminary explanation helps to foster it. Also, a short
4.2.
Stage
2: Classic Musical Chairs
In the first form of the game, participants
are asked to
dance around the circle of chairs; when the music stops they have to
sit,
knowing that in each round there will be one chair less than the number
of
participants and that whoever is not seated will be excluded from the
game. The
setup of the chairs looks inwards in an effort to facilitate
communication and
interaction.
Engagement takes
place
within a predetermined setting: chairs and music constitute the basic
instruments of the procedure. While playing, although participants seem
to get
carried away by the melody of the music, they are often observed to be
staring
at the chairs, perhaps out of fear of failing to take a seat when music
is
over. With either competitiveness or fear of failure driving their
motivation,
participants seem to grow more and more committed to the task as time
goes by.
The participants
left
standing when the music stops are expelled from the game by the
facilitator.
Sometimes, a strict attitude towards the loser is intentionally adopted,
so
that greater emphasis is placed on the fact that this type of game is
based on
competition and exclusion. In each round of the game,
a reflection circle follows on how
participants acted and felt; i.e. the feelings of an excluded person or
the
reason s/he didn’t find a chair are discussed.
Each elimination
signals
the initiation of a new round with fewer chairs. As soon as the music
stops and
one person is driven away from the game, the rest of the participants
prepare
for the next round. The more participants leave the game, the more
Attention must
also be
paid to what the expelled participants stated in terms of how they felt
and how
they reacted: “I don’t like being competitive, so I prefer to let others
sit”,
“at the first rounds, I caught myself cheating – dancing but staring at
the
chairs – so I decided to be more relaxed”. Others confessed that they
expected
to feel a lot worse for being eliminated than they actually felt: “while
dancing around the circle the prevailing emotion is anxiety, now I feel
relieved of the victory burden, it’s better observing from outside”.
In this view,
the classic
mode is a typical power game with players striving to survive on
antagonism. It
thus cannot be ignored that, in order to handle the sharp competitive
atmosphere, participants decide to approach the game through
4.3.
Stage
3: Musical Chairs as Commons
In
this
stage, both the purpose and the setting of the game are switched. The
main
modification is that even though in each round chairs are still
decreasing, no
participant is excluded and they all have to find a way to be seated.
Participants, once it was explained to them that they had to cooperate
in order
for all to have access to and enjoy the resources, started
brainstorming. In
this form of the game exclusion is no longer part of the procedure and
the new
challenge is that the community of participants have to mind-shift and
treat
chairs as a common resource. Τhey are encouraged to think of chairs as a
vital resource like bread or irrigation water. When the music stops,
participants are given some time to think and discuss so that they can
come up
with inclusive solutions that by definition stand against ostracism and
supremacy tactics. When all participants are seated, this means that
they have
made good use of their common resources.
However,
participants
were purposely not introduced to the ideas of commons so that they would
be
unbiased in order to first experience the commons-based game without
preconfigured schemas or prejudices. Thus, they could reflect freely on
what
they would experience while playing, and only after this stage would
they learn
more about the commons and make links with their recent experience and
prior
knowledge.
The game begins
and
participants appear to be more relaxed. When the music stops, instead of
running towards a chair, participants kindly offer their seat to another
person
and try to arrange the chairs so that no one is standing. Every round is
followed by reflection. Chairs are getting fewer and fewer and
participants
remain in the terrain trying to find out ways to fit (Figure 1).
Figure 1:
Photo of
players of “Musical chairs as commons” workshop inventing ways to be
seated
(Author’s personal archive)
After
each
round, a short discussion among participants about reflections on the
second version itself, and the differences between the two versions,
takes
place. How do participants feel in the absence of competition? What does
sharing a common resource mean in practice? What kind of collaboration,
power
relations and ideas took place and what kind of difficulties occurred?
Such
questions are posed during the reflection intervals.
The majority of
participants agreed on feeling considerably less anxiety through knowing
in
advance that no one would be expelled, even though at some point there
could be
15 people trying to fit on 4 chairs: “I was acting more loosely since I
knew
that I wouldn't be excluded or deprived of the resource”, “I was feeling
safe while
dancing since I had put faith in the community”. According to other
reflections: “I felt like everyone was enjoying the game instead of
being
pressured by the condition of exclusion”, “I noticed that while dancing
we were
also interacting with each other”. At each round, participants share
ideas
regarding novel solutions on how they can all fit on the chairs. Some
participants devoted time to brainstorming functional solutions, while
others
just enjoyed dancing.
Participants
usually join
the chairs in order for more people to fit. They also come up with
innovative
ways to do so such as offering their knees as a temporary place to sit
or even
removing the chair’s back, using it as an additional surface for
sitting. The
sociological characteristics of this procedure are rich. For example,
females
and males have the tendency to cluster; some participants try to
organise the
rest of the people or discuss solutions while others are just dancing;
and
people wonder about the actual state of sharing, which does not always
mean
that you get as much as you do in the state of owning.
4.4.
Stage
4: Reflecting
Apart
from
the intermediate reflection sessions, the musical chairs game ends and
the
workshop continues with an overall reflection procedure. Participants
openly
express their thoughts and feelings and share opinions they formed after
being
exposed to the two different situations. By experiencing two variants of
the
same game, participants come to understand aspects of individualism – in
the
first version – and communalism – in the second version – and the
practices of
capitalistic and commons-based approaches that each game encapsulates.
After
they had compared the procedures corresponding to each of the two
systems,
participants were surprised by the divergence in emergent values. They
also
contrasted their prior knowledge or preconceptions to what they had
experienced. Many mentioned that the fact that this classic, timeless
children’s game could be associated with notions of competitiveness,
inequality
and self-interest had never crossed their minds. On the critical side,
some
experienced commoners noticed that the game is not needs-driven but
resources-driven, downgrading the community’s role, or they questioned
authority: “Why are the chairs reduced? By whom?” (referring to
enclosures of
the commons); “What can we do so that our resources are not depleted?
Can we
build new chairs?”. Criticism is usually voiced concerning the focus of
the
game, namely that it shouldn’t be so much oriented toward resources but
that the
group should focus on different needs for accessing the resource that
each
participant might have and on the collective governance model. Of
course, the
interpretation of all participants’ comments needs to be carefully taken
into
account.
Up to now, this
workshop
has been able to stand alone since the experience and reflections formed
have
mobilised a rich tapestry of emotions and thoughts. However, it can also
serve
as a preface for introducing approaches to theories about the commons
that
reflect on the ways in which people collectively manage their needs. As
has
already been mentioned, Ostrom’s theory and other theories about the
commons
were purposefully not introduced before participants had been given the
opportunity to first live the actual experience unbiasedly, then to
reflect and
think for themselves based on both their new experience and their prior
knowledge and thus create their own knowledge ‘bricks’. Only then are
they
introduced to theories about the commons, before reflecting again.
4.5.
Stage
5: Introduction to Theories about the Commons and Case Studies Group
Game
The
reflection
phase ends with a short break. In the new phase, depending on
participants’ experience
Ostrom’s theory
and
principles are significant for teaching about the commons. Ostrom was a
leading
figure in theorising the commons in economic sciences with her
Nobel-Prize-winning study into the successful collective management of
natural
common-pool resources from the early 1960s. She examined hundreds of
cases
around the world where local communities managed natural common-pool
resources.
Ostrom’s magnum opus “Governing the Commons” challenged Hardin’s
“tragedy of
commons” theory (Ostrom 1990/2015) via her
collected
empirical evidence, proving that communities had self-governed their
natural
resources in a sustainable way for centuries, just the opposite of what
Hardin
proposed. The term “common”, for Ostrom, merely refers to a resource
shared by
a group of people. According to her, communication is vital for the
lifespan of
a community that self-manages a natural resource. She believes that when
a
problem exists, members of the community will find ways to solve it
through
communication and interaction. On the other hand, she acknowledges that
not all
commons are successful and therefore that they may be dissolved. In
order to
understand why some commons are successful and endure over time while
others
dissolve, she developed the “institutional analysis and development
framework”,
where she aimed to determine universal patterns in an attempt to explain
the
rules of successful commons. She defined these rules as “
The commons are
a triad
consisting of a resource, a community and the management rules that the
community forms in order to co-manage this resource (Bollier
2014,
18). Putting it differently, the triad of commoning consists of
“Social Life, Peer Governance, and Provisioning” (Bollier
and
Helfrich 2019, 93), thus is mainly about “creating and maintaining
relationships” (2019, 93). Tomašević
adds that the commons can be seen as the “social practice of governing a
resource” through the institutions that a community of users creates (Tomašević et al. 2018, 74). Up to now,
together with the participants, we have created an experience of how it
can be
to compete for or to share a resource, and have analysed some theories
on
successful management principles for natural commons, but we have
slightly
disregarded the actual process of commoning, which is where the triad
shines:
the actual deliberation among community members for the creation of
collective
rules. So, in order to put into practice everything that has been
mentioned so
far, participants split into groups consisting of 4 to 8 persons. The
purpose
is to focus on real-life problems and resolve them based on Ostrom’s set
of
principles and the experience from the musical chairs game. Each group
chooses
to deal with a case and has to discuss and
●
An off-grid town decides to
create a wind power
energy cooperative. After collectively choosing the size and
installation spot
of the wind turbines, residents have to set energy distribution rules
and any
other management issues. Participants are given, in the form of plastic
cards,
the annual amount of produced electricity, which is less than their
total
demand, and a list of the consumption rates of different needs.
Additionally,
participants are provided with a two-axes diagram that facilitates the
discussion about their needs: the horizontal axis describes whether the
need is
a necessity or a luxury and the vertical axis depicts whether the need
consumes
low or high amounts of energy. Participants then have to analyse and
agree on
actions and rules for the best management of the available electricity
among
them.
●
A town that depends on fishing in
a lake needs
to come up with rules about regulating the amount and type of fishing
based on
the fishing area, the quality of the fishing waters and the breeding
periods.
Participants are given the annual estimated amount of fish (which is
less than
their total needs), a list of needs for each fisherman and their
different
fishing tool capabilities.
●
An agricultural village needs to
come up with
rules about regulating the amount of irrigation water among farmlands.
Participants are given the annual amount of water that comes from the
river,
which is less than their total needs, a list of needs for each farmland,
and
the order in which the farms are located on the slope.
Based
on
their background, the reflections that emerged during the game and the
discussion about commons, participants are now called to synthesise
their
overall experience and come up with community rules. After a while, each
group
presents its management rules and then a final round of reflection and
discussion takes place. Some of the proposed ideas are: “Assess the
needs of
the community and then compare them with the available resources, don’t
start
with the availability of resources”, “Don't take scarcity for granted –
instead, look for solutions that can meet the needs of each community”,
“respect all community members’ needs”, “reduce consumption to meet the
available resources”, “use technology to monitor resource consumption”,
“prioritise community needs and agree on the ethical background of the
rules”,
“merge activities (e.g. cooking) in order to consume less resources” or
“distribute the resource to each member according to his/her needs
rather than
dividing the available resource”.
The community,
having
experienced how a rule-imposing game like musical chairs can be turned
into
a community-empowering
game, is now
asked to suggest rules to frame real-life problems. This initiative aims
at
conveying the genuine principle of the philosophy of the commons: each
community acts as a self-governing body, making decisions and
establishing its
own rules. This process, as analysed by Baur, is a way to reflect on how
players behave in dilemmas related to the commons and how this
influences the
sustainability of resources (Baur, Liechti and
Binder
2014, 658-662). Participants make final observations, and the
facilitator
of the workshop comments on the whole procedure and makes connections
between
theory, the case studies and the musical chairs game, or between the
work of
Ostrom and other researchers’ work related to the commons.
5. Discussion
The
conception
of this educational workshop was inspired by the will to best
communicate the essence of the commons.
First, the
classic
musical chairs game stands as a representation of the dominant system.
Provided
that in capitalistic environments, community members’ motivation for
productivity is based on the pursuit of personal profit maximization and
not on
the contribution to a shared resource, we come to the conclusion that
such an
environment is produced in the first version of the game. The chairs,
here, are
treated as
The second,
‘hacked’
version of musical chairs stands as an experiential reflection of what a
system
based on the idea of commons could look like. Here, participants are
once more
members of a community: this time, though, chairs have to be managed as
a
common resource. Now, with just a small shift in the rules of the game,
participants discuss and collaborate, offer their seats, smile at each
other
and join their efforts in producing innovative ideas to overcome
scarcity.
The classic and
the
commons-based game are radically conflicting with regard to their
overriding aim:
the former aims at cultivating competitive intentions that would
inescapably
give rise to inequalities between members; the latter aims at
strengthening
members’ relations by inclusion and collective practices.
In our case, the
two
games, apart from their goals, differ in their processes, too. In the
commons-based game, the elimination process is out of the question, even
though
resources are scarce. In addition to this, the pressure on the scarce
resources
increases at each round as chairs become fewer but participants remain
the same
(in the classic game, the number of participants is one greater than the
number
of chairs, and participants and chairs are reduced at an equal rate, so
the
competition is always for one chair). As the resources are not enough
for all
participants, they start discussing and collaborating in finding
solutions to
their common problem, for example: connecting two chairs, thereby
creating
space where more than two people can sit i.e. mutualising common
resources for
the benefit of the community; or sitting on top of one participant’s
knees i.e.
taking personal responsibility for helping the community; or removing
the
chair’s back and using it as a sitting surface i.e. community
innovation.
In order to
bring out the
experiential, embodied knowledge that is created in the game,
participants
follow a variation of Kolb’s learning circle (2015,
68):
in each round, there is a pause for reflection. Participants formulate
extremely insightful observations. “I dance much more relaxed than I did
in the
previous game version”, “It’s nice to know that I am not going to
exclude
anyone”, “I have time to enjoy the music while other people try to find
ways to
share the chairs while dancing: finally there is room for laziness!”,
“Why do
we lose chairs?; Is somebody destroying them or excluding us from our
common
resource?; should we question authority?”, “We should take care of the
cause
that reduces our resources”, “We should take action, building chairs or
repairing them, but should the ones that will do the maintenance sit
more?”,
“Men and women tend to share chairs with people of the same gender, why
is this
happening?”, “Sharing the same seat with 3 people is not as comfortable
as
before, sharing is nice but demands more effort”, “Maybe we should
employ a
form of rotation to make sitting less tiring” are some of the
reflections that
are often heard. Participants experience the remarkable difference
between the
two versions of the game, which leads to comparisons between the two
processes
and enforces the primary understanding of how commons-based management
functions around a tangible resource.
Even though the
workshop
took place in different conditions involving various groups of
participants,
everyone managed a smooth and quick transition to the spirit of commons
and
very few complained about feeling oppressed for having to share. When
something
like this happened, it was discussed with the whole group and resolved.
For
example, in one case the group agreed to give to the person that
disagreed with
the co-management of resources one chair for himself/herself and this
However, a
number of
identified weaknesses of the workshop and additional ideas that are
either
mentioned by participants or developed by the practitioner leave plenty
of room
for improvement, the most interesting of which are discussed below.
Most
importantly, the experiential
part of the workshop is resource-oriented instead of community-driven.
It is
difficult for a game that is based on possessing or sharing a chair not
to
focus on the resource.
Although from an
educational perspective it can be argued that an individual’s first ever
introduction to the commons has to be as tangible as possible, a
commoner would
argue that we should place the focus on the process of commoning rather
than on
a narrow resource management issue. Ostrom’s “closed” systems of commons
management
refer mostly to natural resources managed by geographically small,
defined
groups of people and, as it may well be argued, today’s cases of
commoning are
much more complex, including various localities, digital sphere, power
dynamics, social struggles and governance rules that diverge greatly
from
Ostrom’s 8 principles. For a more detailed discussion, please see the
excellent
description of the evolution of the notions on the commons by Tomašević
et
al. (2018) and the short overview on
the
commons by Massimo De Angelis and David Harvie (2014).
Another issue is
that
Scarce chairs
simulate
the case of natural commons, while immaterial resources like culture,
information or knowledge are often considered non-excludable, non-rival
or even
anti-rival. Can we create a version of musical chairs and case studies
that
will simulate cases of digital commons? How can we simulate the
experience of
sharing a non-rival resource? A resource that is strengthened when its
users
increase, for example as in the case of information and
knowledge-sharing, has
different intrinsic characteristics and management processes than the
tangible
natural commons (for a detailed description see Bauwens,
Kostakis
and Pazaitis 2019; Arvidsson et al.
2017; Arvidsson 2020). In musical
chairs, the
element of music is anti-rival – the more people listen to it, the more
value
it gets – but how can players manage music as a commons? Another idea is
that
in the case study of the energy cooperative, communities can have a
digital app
that will facilitate the sharing of the resource, for example an
open-source
smart grid app which will be developed and managed by the community. In
such a
scenario, natural commons and knowledge commons would have to be
combined in a
creative synthesis of management rules.
The second part
of the
workshop, where the introduction of theories about the commons takes
place,
should include a greater variety of thinkers, theorists and activists
about the
commons than Ostrom’s contribution alone. Additionally, in the case
studies
stage, working groups could be asked to form capitalistic and
commons-based
rules and then to compare and reflect upon those rules. Money could be
introduced to both versions of the game (e.g. someone with ‘money’ could
buy
extra chairs) and participants could thus reflect on whether/how money
can
change the dynamics of the concepts. Does the concept of currency
exchange
shift the rules of managing resources or do rules define the use of
money?
(This might be an important exercise for experienced commoners and
activists.)
Another case may be the assignment of secret roles to some of the
community
members. For example, a person could be given the role of the president
of an
association, giving priority to members’ access to the resources. How do
identity issues shift the way we act in commons-based management?
Another idea
that was
proposed by participants was to create two groups: some are humans and
some are
bears of the North Pole. Humans have chairs and bears stand on sheets of
paper
that represent ice. In each round, a piece of paper is ‘melting’ and
removed.
The group of humans has the capability to ask for extra chairs, but if
they do
so, more ‘ice’ will be melted from the bears’ group. In this case, the
sense of
community expands to non-human beings and on a global scale. Do we feel
differently when we have to share among humans than when we have to
share with
other, distant creatures like polar bears? How important is distance,
personal
contact, species proximity, community sense; and consequently how do
they
affect the practice of sharing?
Moreover, a
possible
addition to the workshop is to video record the participants (with their
consent)
during the first two stages and screen parts of the video footage during
the
final reflection. The body language between the two versions of the game
is so
strikingly different (intense vs. relaxed) that such a task would be
strongly
educative. However, the potential behaviour change or discomfort that
some
participants might feel knowing that they are filmed prevented me from
trying
this idea,
6. Concluding
Remarks
The
framework
of this workshop is concretised through an experiential style of
learning that uses a childhood’s game and a reflection process that is
based on
a variation of Kolb’s four-stage interaction. Thus, learners are
continuously
transforming experience into a learning process through reflection.
Participants enter the learning cycle first by being introduced to the
musical
chairs game probably known from their childhood and then practice an
alteration
of the game’s rules towards a commons-based logic. During this process,
participants are asked to consciously act and reflect on their
experience.
Next, participants are introduced to theories about the commons. Then,
in a
shift from thinking to doing once more, they are challenged to co-create
commons-based rules for real-life case studies about sharing a resource.
What
seems to create deep learning outcomes is the association of the ways
participants cope with sharing during the musical chairs game and deal
with
creating collective rules during the case studies exercise. Under this
process,
people both empathise and rationalise on concepts of commons, building
an
educational experience of what being a member of a commons-based
community
could feel like. This is the point where the embodied (and therefore
mostly
unconscious) lived experience becomes conscious through the reflection
process.
Thus, merging non-formal education with Kolb’s cycle entails powerful
educational dynamics.
Regarding the
power that
games may have, as Illich points out, when physical education games are
performed in “warlike tournaments” they “reinforce the competitive
nature of
schools” (1971, 35) and transform “playfulness
into
competition” (1971, 36). Contrastingly, games
like
this workshop, when used to build “awareness of the fact that formal
systems
are built on changeable axioms and that conceptual operations have a
gamelike
nature”, can “provide a unique way to penetrate formal systems” (1971,
35). Going further, we may ask: would societies
based on other values have different games, and how can we envision such
games?
According to Yates (2015, 1) some of the
processes
that characterise prefigurative politics include the collective
experimentation
and creation of new social norms. The intention to create a new society
“in the
shell of the old” characterises the prefigurative strategy that
“directly
implements the changes one seeks” (Leach 2013, 1).
Thus,
creating alternatives inside everyday activities (Yates
2015,
13) brings to some extent the future we envision into this very
present. Μany contemporary commons-based initiatives can be
characterised
as prefigurative, for they challenge the dominant narrative of how
societies
should function and build alternative ways in the present.
According to
Pechtelidis
and Kioupkiolis, the educational commons is a vibrant pedagogical
process that
creates new forms of subjectivities which are based on horizontal
relationships
and collaboration. If, as Foucault (1980)
says, the
subject is a product of power relations, then new forms of
subjectivities based
on the commons can challenge power relations (Pechtelidis
and Kioupkiolis 2020, 4). In
a commons-based society, we could envision that exclusion-based,
competitive
games will be the exception and not the rule. Instead, inclusion-based,
collaborative games will emerge, reflecting a “commonly shared moral
conception
of the ideal society” (O’Neill 2016, 2). We
cannot
learn to be collaborative through competitive games; thus we need to
change the
underlying concepts of our teaching and our educational workshops and
create
the conditions to experience new knowledge, norms and practices through
a
prefigurative commons-based education.
This workshop is
significantly enriched by various comments and feedback that was sent to
the
author, as it has been shared freely since March 2019 as an online
document and
through the web-based platform of Peer to Peer University (P2PU
2020a), a grassroots network created by librarians and community
organisers
that “seeks to create and sustain learning communities in public spaces
around
the world” (2020b). We consider this to be an
effort
for prefigurative education both in terms of content, by seeking to
create
transformative commons-alike experiences, and in terms of form, by
sharing the
knowledge through open and peer-to-peer means.
However,
various constraints are present, and
this educational concept, being a commons itself, calls for more
experimentation and improvement, as it can form a stepping stone for
live and
powerful understanding of classical commons theories as well as opening
up an
experiential practice for contemporary radical commons.
We hope that
this
workshop will be experienced, implemented and enriched by many more
facilitators,
educators and practitioners. We also hope that many more people will
reach a
rooted perception that the commons is not the fairy tale of an older
time but
an inclusive way for building vibrant, healthy societies. Finally, we
hope that
the underlying educational philosophy of this workshop will spark more
fascinating educational processes within the curriculum of universities
and,
also, outside them.
References
Ackermann, Εdith. 2001.
Piaget’s
Constructivism, Papert’s Constructionism: What’s the Difference?. Future of Learning Group
Publication 5
(3): 438. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://learning.media.mit.edu/content/publications/EA.Piaget%20_%20Papert.pdf
Arvidsson, Adam. 2020.
Capitalism and
the Commons. Theory, Culture
&
Society, 37(2): 3-30. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276419868838
Arvidsson, Adam,
Alessandro
Caliandro, Alberto Cossu, Maitrayee Deka, Alessandro Gandini, Vincenzo
Luise,
Brigida Orria and Guido Anselmi. 2017. Commons
Based
Peer Production in the Information Economy. Academia.edu
[website].
Accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.academia.edu/29210209/Commons_Based_Peer_Production_in_the_Information_Economy.
Baur, Ivo, Karina Liechti,
Claudia R.
Binder. 2014. Why do Individuals Behave Differently in Commons
Dilemmas? The
Case of Alpine Farmers Using Common Property Pastures in Grindelwald,
Switzerland. International
Journal of the
Commons 8 (2): 657-685. Accessed July 8, 2020. http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.469
Bauwens, Michel and
Vasilis
Kostakis. 2014. From the Communism of Capital to Capital for the
Commons:
Towards an Open Co-operativism. tripleC:
Communication,
Capitalism & Critique 12 (1): 356-361. Accessed July 8,
2020. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v12i1.561
Bauwens, Michel, Vasilis
Kostakis
and Alex Pazaitis. 2019. Peer to
Peer:
the Commons Manifesto. London: University of Westminster Press.
Accessed
July 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.16997/book33
Blikstein, Paulo. 2013.
Digital
Fabrication and “Making” in Education: the Democratization of Invention. In FabLabs: Of Machines,
Makers and
Inventors, edited by Julia Walter-Herrmann and Corinne Büching,
1-21.
Bielefeld: Transcript Publishers. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/da42/02df25a6085772f565d54c5aee6da6e6e1dd.pdf
Cavallo, David. 2000. Emergent
Design
and Learning Environments: Building on Indigenous Knowledge.
IBM Systems Journal 39: 768-781.
Accessed July 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1147/sj.393.0768
Dewey, John. 1997. Experience and Education. New York: Free Press.
Freire,
Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the
oppressed (30th anniversary
edition). New York: Continuum.
Illich, Ivan. 1971. Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row.
Kamat,
Jyotsna.
Kohonen, Viljo. 2012. Learning
to Learn
through Reflection: An Experiential Learning Perspective. Research
Paper.
University of Tampere. Accessed
July 8,
2020. http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/Elp_tt/Results/DM_layout/00_10/05/Supplementary%20text%20E.pdf
Kolb, Allen David. 2015. Experiential
Learning: Experience as the
Source of Learning and Development [2nd edition]. Upper Saddle
River:
Pearson Education, Inc. Accessed
July 8,
2020. http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780133892406/samplepages/9780133892406.pdf
Kostakis, Vasilis
and
Stelios Stavroulakis. 2013. The Parody of the Commons. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 11 (2): 412-424.
Accessed July 8, 2020. https://triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/561/678
Kostakis, Vasilis,
Andreas Roos,
Michel Bauwens. 2016. Towards a Political Ecology of the Digital
Economy:
Socio-environmental Implications of two Value Models. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 18, 82-100.
Accessed July 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2015.08.002
Leach, Darcy K. 2013.
Prefigurative
Politics. In The
Wiley-Blackwell
Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, edited by David
A. Snow,
Donatella Della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam. Oxford:
Blackwell
Publishing Ltd. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470674871.wbespm167
McCabe, Hugh. 2018. Civil War:
A Board
Game as Pedagogy and Critique. Studies
in
Health Technology and Informatics 256: 643-651. Accessed July 8,
2020. http://ebooks.iospress.nl/volumearticle/50616
Ngaka, Willy, George
Openjuru and
Robert E. Mazur. 2012. Exploring Formal and Non-formal Education
Practices for
Integrated and Diverse Learning Environments in Uganda. International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and
Nations 11 (6): 109-122. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.18848/1447-9532%2Fcgp%2Fv11i06%2F39059
O’Neill, John. 2016. Social
Imaginaries:
An Overview. In Encyclopedia of
Educational Philosophy and Theory,
edited by Michael Peters. Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Accessed July
8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_379-1
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990/2015. Governing the Commons: the
Evolution of
Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Accessed July 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316423936
Pechtelidis,
Yannis and
Alexandros Kioupkiolis. 2020. Education as Commons, Children as
Commoners: The
Case Study of the Little Tree Community. Democracy
and
Education 28 (1): Article 5. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol28/iss1/5
Peer to Peer University (P2PU).
2020a.
Hacking the musical chairs game: How to talk about the Commons
transition in
non-expert audiences? About [webpage]. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://community.p2pu.org/t/hacking-the-musical-chairs-game-how-to-talk-about-the-commons-transition-in-non-expert-audiences/3249
Peer to Peer University (P2PU).
2020b.
About. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.p2pu.org/en/about/
Ramos, Jose. 2016. Reversing the Game
of Musical
Chairs: the Future of Work. Resilience.
Accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-11-04/the-future-of-work/
Takata, Susan. 1997. The Chairs
Game:
Competition versus Cooperation: The Sociological Uses of Musical
Chairs. Teaching Sociology
25 (3): 200-206.
Accessed July 8, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1319395?seq=1
Waldinger, Roger. 1987.
Changing
Ladders and Musical Chairs: Ethnicity and Opportunity in
Post-Industrial New
York. Politics & Society 15
(4):
369-401. Accessed July 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/003232928701500401
Yates, Luke. 2015. Rethinking Prefiguration: Alternatives, Micropolitics and Goals in
Social Movements. Social Movement Studies, 14(1): 1-21. Accessed
July 8,
2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2013.870883
Yoder, Laura S. Meitzner
and
Abram Bicksler. 2012. Using Institutional Arrangements to Teach
Undergraduates
about Commons in Thailand, and Beyond. International
Journal
of the Commons 6 (2): 363-385. Accessed July 8, 2020. http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.340
You Are What You
Play. 2020.
Pan Intercultural Arts, Musical Chairs Game. Accessed July 8, 2020. http://www.youarewhatyouplay.co.uk/musical-chairs.html
About the Author
Alekos
Pantazis
Alekos Pantazis is
a Core
Member of the P2P Lab, an interdisciplinary research collective
focused on the
commons, and a Junior Research Fellow at the Ragnar Nurkse
Department of
Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology.
Moreover, Alekos
has 20 years of involvement in international civil movements,
focusing on
agrarian indigenous populations and the commons. His current
work
focuses on the convergence of convivial
technologies,
commons and non-formal education.