Beyond the Dichotomy between Natural and Knowledge Commons: Reflections on the IAD Framework from the Ubatuba Open Science Project

Sarita Albagli,Henrique Parra,Felipe Fonseca,Anne Clinio

doi:10.4000/proceedings.elpub.2018.28

Abstract

The paper presents a critical analysis of the possibilities and limits of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, proposed by Elinor Ostrom and team, specially addressing the mutual relations between natural and knowledge commons. It results from an action-research project on the role of open science (OS) in development, carried out in the municipality of Ubatuba, on the North Coast of the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2015-2017. The work involved: systematizing the literature on the IAD framework; mapping and selecting literature representative of other theoretical and conceptual approaches; critically using and adapting the framework to the case studied. The project provided the opportunity to observe how these dynamics take place in a relatively small-scale (while heavily interconnected) context. While the IAD framework helped us to analyse the institutional, political, and governance issues affecting knowledge production and circulation, we observed the higher complexity of our action arena, shedding light on the fact that natural and knowledge commons are the two dimensions of the same “commoning” process.

Highlights

Ubatuba’s key development challenges are related to how to conciliate: a. its rich and strategic natural, cultural, and knowledge commons; b. the necessity to provide access to local populations to social and economic benefits derived from the use of that wealth from a sustainable development perspective; c. political empowerment of local communities in a context of inequality of access to institutional deliberation processes; and d. the contributions that information and knowledge may make for these processes
5 At the end we observed that the relevance of Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework lies in the fact that the diffusion and adoption of open science is closely related to institutional issues that affect the open and collaborative nature of knowledge production and circulation
30 From the outset of our project, we questioned the current idea in the open science movement that open access to scientific information would be capable or be sufficient to reduce asymmetries and promote “better informed” and more egalitarian policies

Summary

Introduction

Beyond the Dichotomy between Natural and Knowledge Commons: Reflections on the IAD Framework from the Ubatuba Open Science Project We mobilized aspects of the IAD framework as a toolkit to help us select and organise relevant information, to characterize our “action arena” and to define an “action situation”, focusing on the local socio-institutional context, key actors and their (cooperative or conflictive) relationships.

Results

Conclusion